Gallery

Ruth & Noelani

The concept for our project was to make art about things that identify us both and at the same time talk about how garbage consumes more and more of nature. We both love nature and thought it was fitting for the theme of the project because pollution from trash kills nature. Me and my partner each created a set of flowers using what we had around the house. Then after we created and photographed them, Ruth photoshopped them together to create a bouquet of flowers. For the background of the photo, we used a combination of nature scenes from where we live. We wanted to call attention to the pollution in the nature that surrounds us and that we can see with our own eyes such as the garbage flowers.  

This is the piece of art me and my partner made, two turtles emerge from a sea of plastic waste, their forms constructed from a collage of discarded wrappers and bottles. Their once graceful shells are now marred by the detritus of human consumption, a stark juxtaposition against the natural beauty of the ocean they inhabit. The turtles, symbols of resilience and vulnerability, serve as a powerful reminder of our collective responsibility to address the environmental crisis threatening our oceans 

Jacob & Gabriel

My partner Jacob and I made this project with our own trash. Our work is a representation of our shapes together with our personal trash, making a visual effect and a meaning of how we consume and also how the trash we produce define the kind of person we are. We live in a time and a generation where we consume so much products and, in consequence, we make a lot of trash. Searching trough my trash made me see the kind of consumer I was, and making me question if the products I consumer are really part of what I want to be.

Annalise & Cecilia

For my project, I focused on collecting cardboard boxes from food packages and other products for a few weeks from me and my roommates. I worked with my partner Cecilia on this project, she created sounds using trash. During this project, I became aware of how much trash I use and throw away in a short period of time. My portrait represents the transformation and new life that I gave to these materials and the potential beauty behind what is seen as trash. 

Cecilia & Annalise

Based off on the portrait my partner Annalise did by using cardboard boxes, I decided to create sounds with trash, just so that afterwards I could also add texture with that same trash to the portrait digitally, making a contrast with the geometrical figures she used, using mainly circles. That's how this video came to life, with the desire that people take a closer look at the details.

Audible art has been a constant in my life for some years now, so it kinda came normal and easy for me to get inspired by ASMR sounds for this work, which was also done after thinking about the social constructs of beauty and how it's the small-almost-invisible pieces of us the ones that actually matter.

It was wonderful to share ideas with Annalise and get inspired by her awesome work, as it made every part of my artwork flow smoothly.

Trash can become something beautiful if we put a little effort on it to become beautiful.

Sophya and Sharon

In the form of collaborative work, Sharon and I decided to present an artwork around fashion, femininity, and society. Each of us made a dress using waste (in my case sacks, CDs, plastic bottles, cardboard, and paper) based on the social presence of women in each of our cultures. 

Sharon and Sophya

We both use our own points of view to make our own way of empowering and showing feminism, while also empowering the female body and their curves. All the things we used to make these outfits are recycled materials that could be found around. 

Valentina and Ozzie

The concept my partner and I based our projects on was how trash can be used to 'build' cities, in a sense of reusable material and energy or even generating jobs for areas with low income. With this in mind, we both chose a specific place in our city, and with the trash we gathered, we represented the buildings and constructions from that place. My process started by using watercolors for the mountains and sky, and then for the actual buildings, I used markers to have a background to work on so I could start pasting the pieces of trash I previously cut. And lastly, I pasted the drawing of the clock, already painted and with the pieces of trash and cardboard. 

Ozzie and Valentina

Me and my partner decided to use the concept of our trash being used to build the cities we live in to enforce reusable material, job creation and lower-income city support. The focus of the city was directed towards areas we were familiar with, and the trash included lays down the foundation and other elements of buildings included. I decided to push the layout of the concept by also focusing on how Somerville, the city I live in, is both historical and modern. Even with several recognizable historical buildings around the city, including the Somerville Theater, City Hall, Central Library, Union Square Mural, and the Somerville Museum, there is so much that can be done to preserve and provide construction and architectural efforts to keep these same buildings green. 

Lizz & Kallyn

The concept that my partner and I decided to focus on revolved around the idea of how we make trash beautiful. We wondered how can stuff we typically throw away become something that is worth saving. We realized that even seemingly useless objects can acquire a new purpose, a new aesthetic, and a new meaning. The idea of exploring how we could creatively redefine waste excited us, turning what was once considered trash into something truly beautiful and meaningful. We set out to find new ways to reuse, recycle and reinvent, hoping to inspire others to see the potential in what is normally thrown away and to promote a greater awareness of the importance of reducing, reusing, and recycling in our day-to-day lives. What we did was to take recycled bottles and turn them into ornaments.

Kallyn & Lizz

Me and my partner collaborated through thinking of the concept "How can we make trash beautiful?" We both passed around ideas and landed on making flowers through plastic bottles. My partner Lizz Gomez made a beautiful flower made out of plastic and hanging beads. I loved her imagination throughout her work and I am so happy that we were able to communicate our ideas through trash. For my part of COIL, I decided to create a bouquet with similar materials as her. I collected and cut up dozens and dozens of water bottles. I then cut them into petal shapes and melted each individual petal with lighting a candle and holding the plastic over the petal to get an organic shape. I then glued each petal together one by one until I got a flower that I was proud of.