Unnatural Habitat
Unnatural Habitat
Embedded Files
GROUP ARTIST STATEMENT:
Our collaborative bird garbage collage brings attention to environmental pollution. Trash polluting the environment is a universally felt intuition but it isn’t emotionally understood by most people. Humans need the visceral and the vivid to actually gain the passion to make change. Our statue’s goal is to elicit this passion or at least bring to focal the effect trash has on our environment via visual representation. A bird of trash does this by very directly showing a natural force completely bastardized by actual garbage. One could make the argument that a bird represents a sort of freedom and that garbage represents an anchor made by man dragging it down. The sculpture is made of unsanitized trash to illustrate how disgusting what humanity is doing really is.
The choice to use garbage as our material reverts back to the idea that we lower birds to the level of garbage when we have made them become reliant on it for survival. For this project we walked around the city and collected trash from the ground and from natural spaces, thus helping our urban environment. Since this is also a group project, it demonstrates that with enough teamwork we can change the world while having fun doing it. That quality is important in trying to convince people to change their ways of living and affecting the Earth around them. We were inspired by the passion of the bird scientists and their endeavour to protect wildlife and study it with care. We connected personally to our bird, the dark-eyed junco, because it lives on our campus. Wildlife is deeply integrated into our daily lives as students of PSU and participants of humanity which is why we must protect it. A world without these wonderful creatures is a world that has lost the plot.
QUICK BIO FOR EACH GROUP MEMBER
Zared Carranza: "The choice to use garbage as our material reverts back to the idea that we lower birds to the level of garbage when we have made them become reliant on it for survival. To evoke empathy and change from the viewer, you must make a connection to there character or environment. Our statue will make viewers see a visual connection between the garbage we leave in urban environments and the birds we see." Zared Carranza is a born in raised Oregonian whos art has sprang from the washington county district. They focus on symbolism and common imagery across cultures to bring together viewers from all over the world. Currently a student at Portland State University, Zared has no set medium or focus. Rather seeking to explore and aquire the untapped scenes within the artworld.
Josh Oganezov: Born in Portland Oregon, Josh is a filmmaker and artist at PSU. He contributed to building the bird because he believes "Everybody knows that trash pollutes, but many don't have to be confronted with pollution effects face to face. This statue should serve as a reminder of what garbage is doing to the streets to those who pass by it". With his experience in art making through different mediums, he was set to make a physical piece that not only is made from Portlands trash, but also exposes brands that contribute to dirtying our city.
Boris Willmott: "What stood out to me was how normal trash has become in shared spaces. Walking around, it felt like people barely notice the waste anymore because it has blended into the background of everyday life, which made me think about how both people and wildlife are forced to exist within that pollution."
London: London Moore is a student at PSU. He helped by articulating the groups sentiments into a group statement. "I feel like trash is such an accepted part of city life that we've become desesitized too it. I was proud to be apart of a project that brought awareness to its impact which usually goes uncared about". London wants to have kids and wants the world to be a good place for them to grow up in which is why he felt good participating in this project.
Crystal Staley: Crystal is a working musician and singing coach based in Portland. They were born and raised in Chicago, and studied Opera and Musical Theatre at the Chicago High School for the Arts until 2013. They spent most of their early adulthood traveling the United States, Australia, and Mexico, playing music everywhere they went. Now, Crystal is a Sonic Arts and Music Production major at PSU, and hopes to bring awareness to the issues surrounding trash pollution with this project. The world we live in is beautiful. We should do our best to preserve it as much as we can.
Page updated
Report abuse