It’s concerning (isn’t it??) that we still need reminding of the perilous balance that exists between humans and the natural environment? And yet, it seems we do.
The 2021 Mosaic Artists of Australia and New Zealand (MAANZ) symposium was, for me, a powerful reminder of the agonizingly precarious balance existing between humans and our environment.
At enormous cost to the ecosystem we extract resources from the earth (mining - pollutes air and drinking water, harms wildlife and habitat, and scars our natural landscapes); produce something with what we take (manufacturing - factories alone are responsible for nearly two-thirds of the emissions to blame for global climate change); and disperse the product around the world (transportation - major user of energy, burns most of the world's petroleum, significant contributor to global warming through emission of CO2). We use the material until we no longer need it, or something “better” comes along; then discard or leave it to decay with little or no regard for the consequences.
With that concern in mind, I have focused my love affair with rusted materials in a series of mosaics with more regard for upcycling, and have added a bit of a twist.
In this series, Upcycled with..., I upcycle corroded construction materials that, despite being extracted from the earth at enormous financial cost, we now consider worthless and useless, but I combine them with materials also extracted from the earth that we prize for their worth and natural beauty - stained glass (made from potash and sand), amethyst, copper, gold, jade, lapis lazuli, silver, and turquoise (mined), pearls (harvested from oysters), and amber (fossilized tree resin).
Intentionally pairing the ugly with the beautiful, and hopefully giving these “useless” materials a new purpose and presence.
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