Glendale Community College Art Gallery shares Our Reef!

Waterworks II (on the road!) September 12 - October 2, 2015 
My experience of installing our Something in the Water reef at Glendale Community College, Glendale, California was off the hook. I wish you all could have been flies on the wall because about one in five of the students and faculty passing by stopped to watch. How often do people stop in their tracks in this day and age??? About half of them were so intrigued that they came in to talk. These are busy students on their ways to and from class!

They wanted to know more about it. What IS this???? The more they heard the more their interest level spiked. Gallery attendants loved talking about that piece with visitors. It was located right by glass doors to the gallery and proved to be a major draw. You should all be thrilled by the attention your work continues to draw to important issues of plastic pollution review in the student paper, El Vaquero gives SIW prominent mention. The impact of our work is not diminishing. Remember if any of you want to start a reef where you live, let me know! I will help you any way I can.

A recent article in the LA Times reported new studies finding plastic and textile fibers in seafood. Please read this and pass it on! In it they also mention that industry sources say that amount of plastic produced each year is roughly 70 lbs for every human on earth!

Check out photos below of our beautiful reef........

Something in the Water/Ojai, CA

Our Something in the Water reef floated buoyantly front and center in the Waterworks2 exhibition at Porch Gallery in Ojai, CA from May 9-June 8! All works in the exhibition plumbed the depths of water issues amplifying each other in powerful ways. I think this was definitely the most advantageous installation of the piece to date. So many people were intrigued, curious, emotional, and impressed with everyone's contributions. All contributors were named individually in the wall text. The curators said they loved talking with visitors about it. Happily, the show is slated to travel to Glendale, CA in the fall, so I will be installing the piece there in September. Other interesting possibilities now loom for the piece. Will let you know when we hear for sure!

You can see how it dominates the space!

Here's me reef-side!

Artist depicts haunting plastic universe of ocean debris

Words cannot describe the haunting universes Mandy Barker creates with plastic debris she has collected from beaches around the world. I first saw her photographs in Smithsonian magazine, but check out her website. If the remote arctic waters of Kamchatka already harbor 185 tiny plastic litter pieces per square foot as far down as three miles below the surface, what can we look forward to if we don't change our ways? Maybe these photos will help.............Mandy Barker | Photography

Our Reef Lives On!!!

Opening May 9 in Ojai, CA our SIW reef will be front and center in "Waterworks II", an international juried exhibition presented by Porch Gallery and Venice Institute for Contemporary Art (ViCA) including works from as far away as China. Everyone who helped to create this reef will be acknowledged in the exhibition. 

When I moved to California, the platform did not make the cut. The platform allows the reef to 'float' just off the ground. Here are a few shots of the platform in progress....This documentation can also serve as a reference for how to construct a Something in the Water platform for your own reef. I made a paper pattern of the shape of the reef and then cut it to fit the plywood. 

I used scraps left from cutting out the platform to screw the pieces together. With four pieces, I can unscrew,  transport, and store them more easily. The edges are painted black to make them less apparent when the reef is assembled. An assortment of boxes, foam, and bubble wrap will create height and fill the breast shapes to all their glory. When I assemble, I will cover the support materials with black fabric and tack the edges in place to prevent shifting . (People cannot resist touching it!)

I will send installation shots as soon as they are available!