Kelly Jazvac Makes Art With Plastic Waste

×

Expand

Kelly Jazvac, "Plastiglomerate Sample," 2013

displayed as a found object sculpture (Plastiglomerate is a new type of stone made by the fusion of molten plastic with beach sediment, such as sand, wood, coral and rock. It is researched by a collaborative team including Jazvac, geologist Patricia Corcoran and oceanographer Charles Moore.) Photo by Jeff Elstone.

Kelly Jazvac’s heart fell when she first saw the plastic littering Kamilo Beach on the southeast coast of Hawaii’s Big Island.

“You could name a plastic object and find it on that beach,” she says. “You know, a door, a toothbrush, glue, a flip-flop, a pen that has a little sexy lady inside that slides up and down when you move the pen.”

To scoop up a handful of sand on that beach was to see myriad bits of degraded plastic, scraps that birds and other wildlife often mistake for food. Eventually, those animals are so full of plastic they can no longer eat and starve to death.

The garbage comes from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a vast soupy island of marine debris, mostly plastics, amassed by ocean currents from different countries around the world. At times, the beach is piled waist high, despite efforts by a couple of area residents to haul trash away to the dump.

“It was devastating,” says Jazvac, a professor at Western University in London, Ont.

Higher on the beach, she picked up what’s been dubbed plastiglomerate, a stone-like mix of melted plastics – things like ropes and bottle caps – that have bonded with natural materials such as sand, rock and coral.

This is not a beach that tourists visit. But locals use it, starting bonfires and perhaps intentionally burning plastic waste, as is done in other parts of the world where plastiglomerate is found.

Jazvac has displayed this strange new amalgam in art exhibitions across Canada and the United States. One chunk, about the size of a cantaloupe, is on view until June 30 at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba in Brandon as part of Jazvac’s solo show, Sharp and Numb. It shows a range of art she has made from plastic refuse over the last decade.

Plastiglomerate will also be part of a group show, An Absolute Movement, which looks at climate change and environmental crisis at Vancouver's Or Gallery from June 17 to July 22. 

Jazvac became interested in the potential of found plastic as an art medium when she used advertising wrap to do a trompe-l’oeil transformation of a 1998 Pontiac Sunfire into a Porsche 911 for the Toronto Sculpture Garden.

Her first wrapping was ruined by a printing error at the graphic design firm she had hired, but she wanted to repurpose the material. She was sent out to the dumpster, where she discovered a lode of other plastic waste.

Jazvac quickly saw its potential for art that comments not only on consumerism but also the environmental impact of plastic, which gained popularity in the mid-1900s. An estimated six billion tons have been manufactured, largely from petrochemicals. While some is recycled, much is simply cast off with little thought, creating major pollution problems.

×

1 of 3

Expand

Kelly Jazvac, "Hedgehog Bathtime," 2013

salvaged adhesive vinyl, banner, thread adhesive and Velcro, 28” x 21” x 3”

×

2 of 3

Expand

Kelly Jazvac, "Salps," 2012

salvaged adhesive vinyl, metal and chip clips, 42” x 28” x 1”

×

3 of 3

Expand

Kelly Jazvac, "Vuggy," 2016

salvaged vinyl, plastic, thread and thumbtacks, approximately 20" x 36”

Prev

Next

Jazvac’s show in Brandon includes collages she made from salvaged advertising. The pieces are abstract but also suggest animal forms. Fungible, for instance, looks like a diamond-shaped tarp from the distance. But as you move closer, Jazvac says it starts to resemble a manta ray.

Her work is also on show in the window gallery of Vancouver's Contemporary Art Gallery until Sept. 10. For that show, Ambient Advertising, she manipulated and sliced salvaged billboard images, reframing them in a seeming reference to the Canadian landscape.

Jazvac is aware of the health hazards of the materials she uses.

“You can smell it when you first get it from the printer,” she says. “It has very toxic properties to it, even though often when we think plastic, we think inert, because that’s what you make kids’ toys out of.” She takes precautions in her studio. “As I started amassing this stuff, I started realizing that I needed to open windows and protect myself against the fumes.”

Her concerns extend to the ways we dispose of plastic. “This material would leach into the soil in a landfill,” she says. “For example, there’s a lot of chemicals and fillers, things like phthalates, that are not healthy chemicals, that are put in plastic to make it more flexible and pliable.”

Jazvac first heard about plastiglomerate in 2012 when she attended a talk by Charles Moore, a California oceanographer who had noticed the phenomenon six years earlier. He spoke at Western at the invitation of geographer Patricia Corcoran. Jazvac was so intrigued she travelled to Hawaii with Corcoran to research it firsthand.

Jazvac does not manipulate the plastiglomerate she displays, but does provide information so viewers understand what they are seeing.

“I think it can be a powerful tool as scientific evidence, but also as an art object at the same time. I don’t think I can do anything better to it to make it a more powerful symbol. This plastic has travelled the world, ended up on a beach and melted in a way that I couldn’t replicate if I wanted to.”

Jazvac says her work prompts emotional reactions in viewers. “They feel angered or sad about it, but also stimulated.”

×

Expand

Kelly Jazvac, "Purse," 2017

salvaged banner, salvaged adhesive vinyl, thread and adhesive, 45” x 16” x .8”