This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. If you've passed through Bradley International Airport recently, you may have noticed a sixty foot long, twenty foot wide, life size portrait of a sperm whale made from discarded plastic bags and shipping mailers. The piece was created by My Guest Today as part of her ongoing Entangled and Ingested art series. Tat Owens is not only an ambitious artist, she is also a plastic pollution researcher, activist,
and professor. Owens merges science, policy and the arts to create life size portraits of the animals harmed by plastic pollution to raise environmental awareness. Caat Owens is also a National Geographic Explorer, Fulbright Nehrew Fellow and a professor at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. Owens seamlessly blacken her visual art with her day to day work. I wanted to know if she first considered herself to be an artist or an environmentalist.
That's a good question. I would say an artist first. Definitely. From a young age, I was very interested in drawing and making things, and fortunately was able to get some art lessons and things before I got to school age where it was available through schools. And then I went to college, the College of Charleston in South Carolina, and I was a studio art major there and got exposed to all kinds of amazing things painting, printmaking, a little
bit of sculpture drawing. But when I was at college, the subject matter for all of my work was insects. I was really into bugs.
Yeah, so bugs came into the picture when.
In high school I had a high school biology class where we had to do a bug collection. And I was always like an outdoorsy kind of kid, but that's when I started collecting bug And then I went to college and I was kind of just you know, your art teacher says like make something, and you don't know what to make, right, you know, Nothing's like your brain's not working like that yet, really like thinking about deep
thoughts quite yet. So I was like, oh, I'm going to make I've got all these insects, I'm going to start making art. And so I really got into it and would be like I was the bug girl at my college and people would bring me bugs. I would go out to bars and people would be like Oh my god, I found this great moth. I'm going to bring it to you to the studio next week and they would, which was really fun. Then I graduated with an art degree, and back then in the nineties, they
were kind of like, yeah, good luck. No information about like how to start a career. They said, if you're lucky, after you're dead, people might be interested in your art work. So I waitressed for two years and then I was like, you know, I think I'd like to study science more formally, and so I sat in on an entomology class. The professor at the College of Charleston let me in on his class, and I really loved it, and so then
I decided to take the plunge. I went back to school and got degrees in biology and anthropology and all the work what I was doing was connected to insects. Why, well, they're fascinating.
No, I mean, I agree, there are great I watched my share of insect documentaries, But like, you really go down this road, I mean, you get degrees and all these really really heady subjects. What was the goal? Where were you? You weren't going to be an artist, you were going to do what.
I thought at the time that I would be a scientist, that I would go to graduate school and study entomology. I was especially into beatles, and I started a master's degree at the College of Charleston and environmental studies, and I was on the brink of doing a project about ground beetles in the Smoky Mountains and I loved it. But then over time I had realized, if you're an entomologist, you spend like six weeks out collecting bugs and the
rest of the year looking through microscopes counting leg parts. Know, And I thought, I don't know if I if I want to spend the rest of my life indoors looking through a microscope. And so I got more interested in sort of like the environmental policy side of things. And so I switched from the science track to the policy track in my master's program and started.
Studying this is where's what's school at.
The College of Charleston in South Carolina?
And what is this place you went? It's called twin It's.
Called University of Fenta in the Netherlands.
And you were there how long a while?
Almost five years? It was amazing that was for what program? It was a PhD program in sustainability and governance.
So you have Do you have a PhD? You finished? Yeah?
Definitely, My god.
What was it like studying that there?
Very cool? I mean I loved being in the Netherlands, you know, no car biking everywhere. Wonderful place to be, sort of like young and broke. I have my two oldest children. I had the there because it was free and you got all kinds of support.
How old are your kids now?
They are just turning. Their birthdays are last week and next week, twenty and eighteen.
No, yeah, what does your husband do?
He at the time, he was for a long time he was building timber barns out of like you know they do like hand barn raising.
Sure, and very expensive barns.
Yeah, I know a guy if you need a cheap one. But he did that for a long time, and then about ten years ago he's like, I can't keep climbing up these ladders, like this is I'm getting too old for this. And he went back to school and now he teaches botany in Connecticut.
So you stayed five years in the Netherlands. Yeah, but that's what it took for you to do the program the doctor. Yeah, and the degree was in what again.
It's governance and sustainability. It's like environmental policy, right.
And when you went into that knowing it was going to be five years of your life, what was the goal? Meaning? Year along the way before you started making artwork of innocent animals being contaminated and poisoned by our hands. What was the goal before? Were you thinking of going into some kind of administrative job, or you wanted an appointment, you wanted to work for a state, you wanted to run for office. What was the goal then?
I think, I, you know, I had all these degrees, right, I spent a lot of time as an undergraduate. I loved the professors I had, and I thought I want to be like them. I want to get a PhD and teach at a university. And that's how I ended up kind of on that track.
When you finished in the University of Venta, when you graduated from that.
What year was that two thousand and eight?
Okay, so that's a while ago, that's seventeen years ago. And what was the plan you were going to go do?
What?
And what happened?
I started looking for jobs at colleges, at universities, full time teaching jobs. Yeah, that's when I came over. My husband was doing the timber framing at that time, and he was like, can we go somewhere where there are trees and barns, like a history of trees and barns, And so we were almost exclusively looking in New England. And I applied for the job at the University of Hartford and I got that and I've been there for eighteen years.
So nothing in your academic career revisited Georgia. When you grew up in Georgia, you left Georgia never to return.
I mean, I go to sea family, but I haven't lived there since I was eighteen.
Now.
I lived in Charleston for ten years, and then the Netherlands, and then I've been in Connecticut ever since.
When you started this work, what did you see like for me, I see that plastics pollution has usurped many other environmental issues because everybody's under the impression we've all been contaminated by massive amounts of plastics pollution. What was the thing that alarmed you that you decided you wanted to pivot into this art project you've been doing.
I was playing around with it as early as twenty twelve, but I really started during the pandemic, doing the the artwork, and focusing on this particular project. So at that time, I'd been studying water policy for about twenty years, and plastic pollution started to be a big issue within environmental
policy and water policy. And the more I looked at it, I knew in Connecticut, on Long Island Sound, we weren't one of these places like you can see stories on the Midway Islands in Hawaii where they just get like tons of plastic like showing up on their islands. And I knew we weren't one of those kinds of places. But I wanted to know sort of like what this big global problem looked like in my neck of the woods.
So I applied for funding from NOAH, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the idea of the project was that I would take my students from the University of Hartford and we'd go down to the beach and collect debris and analyze it and then share the results with policymakers, like I wanted to make that connection.
Between state or federal.
State level policymakers, so we did that. That was funding that I got in twenty sixteen to do that project. And it was really fun, really cool experience for my students. And then based on that, I applied for funding from the Fulbright Foundation to replicate that project in a place called Thoruvn and Thaperam, India, which is in southwest India. And it's the same idea. We go, we collect debris and we analyze it, we use scientific methods to do
it and then share the results with policymakers. And you know, while I was there, I got it funded from the National Geographic Society too, to train other folks from around India in these methods.
Did they have a lot of money available for that kind of thing?
National Geographic Society they have a really strong grant program and once you get in the door as an explorer, they offer all kinds of like really great opportunities to collaborate with other explorers and do all kinds of neat projects. So I'm very grateful.
No these grants or grants that we might assume maybe not that are going to evaporate pretty soon.
I don't know. I mean, National Geographic is independent, but Noah has certainly been impacted.
Right, That's what I's referring to.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is a shame, right, because it's really about like protecting resources for all of us that are critical for our survival, something we should all care about.
Well, you know, for me, the beginnings or some of the beginnings of this. I mean, I've worked with people at U n EP, the former U n DP Development Program. I've worked with people for years now, and much of
it related to plastics pollution. And you know, some of the initial you know, pulsing, dramatic presentations were about the Pacific garbage gyre out there throwing off all kinds of you know, it's just a piece of a giant garbage jump leeching plastic into the water in the baking sun, the size of Rhode Island or whatever the hell it is now Texas. Okay, Well, I was hoping you wouldn't say that, But I'm so sorry, Saith, but the I
don't want to discourage our listeners. But when I was young, recycling was it you were told and if you could compose or whatever, you know. I made efforts in all those areas. But now plastics pollution seems to be the devil. I mean, everybody's really, really, really uptight about this. When did you first become aware of this and what kind of work were you doing even as a child.
I mean, I wasn't really engaged on things around plastic and climate change or things like that as a child. My awareness came much later because I am from a very small town, rural town in Georgia. But you know, it's definitely for me in college and then later in graduate school and even as someone who studies it. You know, my eyes have been opened so much over the last decade about recycling and what's really happening with recycling. I
do recycle. I try to recycle, but it doesn't make me feel good all the time because I don't truly believe that a lot of the recycling is happening.
Right being handled properly.
Yeah, yeah, And so what happened in twenty eighteen or twenty nineteen, China put this policy in place called the National Sword Policy, where they said they were no longer going to take our basically like shredded bales of plastic and recycle them anymore. And when that happened, the sort of market for recycling disappeared because no one wants it. And so I know that, you know, whereas local government's, municipal governments used to get a little bit of money.
I mean it probably added up to like a couple ten thousand dollars, you know, for a town like my town over the year. Now there's no market for it.
Researcher, activist, and artist kat Owens. If you enjoy conversations with artists inspired by nature, check out my episode with photographer Carolyn Marx Blackwood. So singing writing the photography on that level, do they overlap.
Yes, and they overlap to this day, I'm doing photography. I'm having museum shows that are coming up, i have galleries where I have shows, and I'm making movies with my partner. So when one part of my brain gets tired, I go to the other thing, and it's just a whole other part of my brain. It's wonderful.
To hear my conversation with Carolyn Marx Blackwood. Go to Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break, kat Owens talks about the goal behind her Entangled and Ingested series and what she is trying to say through art. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Has traveled the world for her research. After attending college in Charleston, Owens spent five years in the Netherlands completing her PhD. She continued her research in Finland, India, Indonesia, and Uganda.
These days, Owens resides in Connecticut and teaches at the University of Hartford. Owens and her students gather samples and data from marine debris collected along the Connecticut shorelines. Having lived and studied in so many unique places across the world, I wanted to know what drew Owens to Connecticut.
I applied to a few universities in the Northeast for a job, and I came to Hartford, and I really loved it. It has a real potential for interdisciplinary work because it has a music school, an art school, an engineering school, a College of Arts and Sciences, a business school. So it's got a lot of depth, even though it's
a really small institution, relatively small institution. So I thought that would be that they might kind of get my whole interdisciplinary way of doing things and it might be more, you know, just like a good place to grow and thrive. And then they hired me, so like that all came together.
Yeah, they're geniuses if they hired me. Now described for me. You said you started this that the artwork, the specific artwork we're talking about in doing COVID, and interesting how a lot of people needed something like that to soothe them and we all had our way to negotiate our way through COVID. Described to me the genesis of the pieces, described me, how that process begins. Is it all recycled material? Described to me what you're making as an artist.
Yeah, So this began during COVID when all of that research that I was doing out in the field got canceled and my regular job. And it's true, I'm sure for everyone who was in education at any level at that time, like it just exploded into all this terrible you know, you're stuck in these meetings, you're making choices that aren't great. And I was really stuck in a lot of ZOOM meetings at that time and struggling with
it because I'd just come back from India. I had all this kind of momentum behind my work and I thought like things are really coming together, like maybe we can change policy on this issue. So what I started to do is to create these life size portraits of different species that are harmed by plastic pollution, such as well, I mean, they're over five hundred of them.
Sure, what was your first one?
The fairy penguin, which is a little, a little cute blue penguin that I believe is from It goes between South Africa and Antarctica. I'm not a penguin.
Why that animal?
Why it's cute and it's small. I started small because I wasn't. So what I do is I hand so film plastics onto canvas to make these portraits.
When you say film plastics, you mean what by that?
I mean any kind of like soft PLI A plastic that's not too.
Thick, plastic bags.
Yeah, it's plastic bags. It's a lot of like food packaging, a lot of mailers, you know from online stores.
Remember like the little window you cut out?
No, not that that's cellulos. I don't really worry about that because I'm often looking for colors, not for clear plastic.
Right too. You have a storage facility for this material?
I mean I have a lot of bins, and my biggest problem is that people save it for me, and they give it to me and it's almost too much for me to process. I've had to ask and I only have like four or five people who save stuff for me. And then give it to me. But it's overwhelming because there's so much. And you know, I have one friend. Every time we go for a walk, she hands me like a bag of garbage because it's all the stuff her family, you know, the squash they eat
and the fruit that they make smoothies from. It all comes in these plastic bags.
So the first one you did, and when you say life size, what's the biggest issue made?
So the biggest one I've made so far is the sixty foot sperm whale. It's sixty feet long.
No, yeah, and you did this? Where where do you? Where's your studio?
My studio is not that big post COVID. In my town, Middletown, Connecticut, the downtown business district was trying to get people onto main street because people had stopped going outside right And there was an old Woolworth's building and they let me get in there and use it a local kids museum built like some walls around the front of it. It's a place called kid City, and they let me use it as an open studio for six months, which was huge. I mean I never would have been able to do
that in my living room. And I had just open studio days where people could show up. A lot of people would just walk by and kind of say, like, what is happening here?
You know, they can see into this glass out receiver.
Yeah, big glass windows.
Spot a glass okay.
Yeah yeah, big open front. And I had all the pieces that were done at that time. It was probably like twenty pieces up on the walls around and so people could come in and just like check it out or sow and you know, I would have people sew for like a few minutes, and I had some people who kept coming back over and over again for weeks, which was really cool.
Well, but you worked your way toward the whale. You didn't go full on whale now, you know day three.
Right, No, No, I had done probably thirty of them, you know by the time I tried with the whale and crammed as many, you know, of the larger pieces as I could into my home studio. So I had sharks like going around like walls, you know, two or three walls of the studio because they didn't fit otherwise. And I've definitely had them out in our living room. My family's like can you please put that away? I mean,
I was trying to with this project. What I'm trying to do is make connections between all of us and this problem, because it's often in the scientific literature, they're often like kind of pointing a finger towards developing world and saying, of course, these are the dirtiest places in the world. These are the worst polluting countries. These rivers are the top ten dirtiest rivers. And it's always the global South. And I'm not an expert in India. After spending six months there.
Why do you think it's that way there? Why when you see footage of like some river in India, it's just like a stream of garbage going.
Yes, yeah, I mean it is a huge problem there. They don't have the waste infrastructure that we have, so like their garbage isn't picked up the way are garbage is. And like in our community where we lived in India, you know, it's very common to gather all kinds of garbage and just burn it, you know, which would you know is not good at all for the people living nearby and certainly for the people who are burning that waste.
Now, No, I want to also want to indicate what's the difference between a full bright and a full Bright nehrew I never heard of that before.
Yeah, the full Bright Neahrews are just the full Brights that happen in India.
India.
That's it. They get money from the American government and the Indian government and so they have like co naming of that grant over.
What period of time were you in and out of India?
I was there in twenty nineteen for six months. I took my whole family and we lived there for six months.
What did your was your husband building shelving or cabinets or were working over there? No?
No, no, he was not. I mean he checked out some interesting buildings there, but no, he was actually doing a graduate degree at that time. He was doing it the Yale School of Forestry. But he was able to do it remotely because he was at a point in his research where he was working independently.
What did your children How old were they during the Indian phase?
They were six, twelve, and fourteen. It was an incredible experience.
What was it like for them? I'm sure I want to pivot to that. What was it like for them for that?
You know, you tell your kids about the world, but you can't explain things to them in the same way of seeing it. So, I mean it really blew their mind. They got to go to school there. We lived in this big apartment tower. We were the only sort of like non Indian family in this group of three towers. And they were kind of like it was funny. They were kind of like locally famous, you know, because we stood out. You know, my husband's six', eight so he
stands out. Anywhere but like traffic would stop when we were crossing streets, sometimes like people would hand me their baby at a mall And i'm, like what is happening here just to take a Picture that probably happens to you all the, time but it doesn't happen to.
Me, WELL i, MEAN i don't. DON'T i don't. KNOW i got to go To india and find that it's going to. Happen what's going on for me In india because my career doing In. India but let me ask you, this which is THAT i don't understand why this country is struggling still with this. Issue, yeah why we're not investing so much money into you, know you want people to you can use glass for THESE i mean, again right when you have a little puff of air under your,
wings here in terms of your. Hope then they tell, you, well you realize every cokecin is lined with, plastic, right there's a plastic, lining and they show you the work they do to take. Them and then also the plastic bag comes out and they peel it out of the cokecin and you're, like oh, god you know WHAT i, mean what is it you think about this country that you believe were so disengaged from our environmental?
RESPONSIBILITY m, Yeah SO i teach environmental, policy and you, know you look at the history of polluters in our. Country. RIGHT a good example is ge putting PCBs in The Hudson. River so you look at that historically and you think what were people, Thinking like did they not? Know were they? Naive were they not paying? Attention AND i really feel
like plastic is that for us? Now? Right you, know because what happened, eventually, right is that people cottoned onto it and said this is, unacceptable and it became a super fun, site, right and they're putting billions of dollars into cleaning it. Up but of course it's like unringing a. Bell you can't get all of that. Out and it's true for any kind of. Pollutant it's so much more
efficient and. Inexpensive the GOLF bp just, forgotten just. Forgotten yeah, Right and it's like preventing it makes so much sense, environmentally, economically in every, way and yet our leaders don't are not. INTERESTED i would say our business leaders and our political leaders are both focused on the things that can get, them you, know clout in the short term and not
the long. TERM i, MEAN i think a politician would would never say, like, well we're going to do, this it's going to cost a little bit more, money but your grandchildren and your great grandchildren are going to have clean air and soil and water because of. IT i think that's just, sadly like it's really hard to get people to. Care BUT i talk to people all the time who know about this issue and care about this, issue and they take a canvas back to the grocery,
store but everything in there is like wrapped in. Plastic so it's like decisions were made long before you showed up at the grocery store that you seem to have no way of.
Changing, well people aren't willing to change their lifestyle in that. Way they think the long term, effects let's, say of plastic are something that takes decades to have any real impact in your. Life but are people willing to trade off slowing down and living their life more thoughtfully in order to avoid plastic? Contamination in other, words your life is one of the reasons that enables you to live this kind of. Life is this? Product are people willing
to make a? Switch i'm terrified to. SAY i don't believe.
So. YEAH i think it depends right on some of. It BUT i think they're taking advantage of the fact that people are so overtired and being scheduled. Overscheduled. RIGHT a lot of plastic packaging for food is certainly convenience, based, Right SO i think it's hard to ask people who are already overburdened by other things to give up all of. That water bottles are different for, me, though because that's so it's so easy to stop drinking bottled. Water there
are very few communities in the. Country there are, some of, course right where the water is not safe to, drink but for most of, us like our tap waters is. Great, yeah, YEAH i, Drink.
YEAH i DRINK i drink filter tapwater old long.
YEAH i, mean you're just taking a public resource and they've taken that public resource and they put it in a, bottle and they're charging you for it at a rate like higher than you know you would pay for gasoline for your, car and it's in a container that's like slowly breaking.
Down, researcher activist and Artist Cat. Owens if you're enjoying this, conversation tell a friend and be sure to Follow here's The thing on the, iHeartRadio, Apps spotify or wherever you get your. Podcasts when we come, back Kat owens talks about her art stick process Creating entangled And ingested and how she works in a plastic based. Medium I'm Alec
baldwin and this Is here's the. Thing in twenty, twenty Cat owens had plans to continue her research In, Uganda, colombia And, india but when her travel plans were disrupted by THE covid nineteen, pandemic she began exploring rivers closer to. Home it was these local waterways that inspired the idea for owens art Series entangled And. Ingested six years, Later owens has created one hundred and nineteen portraits of animals
who have been harmed by plastic. Pollution some Of owen's pieces are created on a massive, scale including the sixty foot long sperm whale recently on display at The Bradley. AIRPORT i wondered where else has once had the opportunity to exhibit her.
WORK i have had shows with many of the pieces in, them AND i have a few coming up next. Year i'm going to be at The Hartford Public library in the spring of twenty twenty six and at this place In West Palm, Beach florida in the summer of twenty twenty six Called Resource depot that tries to keep waste out of the waste.
Stream tell me you have a somewhat longer relationship With Resource, depot meaning what's the environmental what's the market for your environmentally based art In Palm, Beach. FLORIDA i don't. KNOW i mean you're about to find, out, RIGHT i.
Find out the hard.
Way.
Yeah they had a, show like a group, show AND i applied for, it and then the director contacted me and, said you know what you should. Do we should do just a solo show with your work here because it's such a good match for what we. Do SO i was, like that sounds, great but my dream is to see all forty six of these pieces together in one, room you, know, LIKE i think that could really make an impact on
how people think about this. PROBLEM i take it around to, schools and you, KNOW i have had exhibits in several. Places the big, whale the sperm whale has been at The Hartford airport for about a year and a.
HALF i think all of your, art if you keep going in this direction with these large, pieces the only place to display your art would be like The Javits.
Center, YEAH i, KNOW i need like A i don't, know like an airplane hangar that doesn't have anything in, it you, know something, huge Because i've got at least two whales over three whales over fifty feet And i'm working on right now the fin, whale which will ultimately be eighty feet, Long SO i need more. Space.
Yeah is the size of the piece now become your? Obsessions like what's the? Biggest let me get some dinosaurs in.
Here, well it's all based on the, Literature So i'm working down this list from the scientific, literature a list of all the different species that are affected by entanglement and. Ingestion so the biggest whale on my list is the fin. Whale it's not the biggest. Whale the blue whale is the biggest whale out, there but the fin whale is the biggest one on my. List.
Yeah now when you approach a piece whale mouse in. Between when you're doing, that how does it? Work you on a? Canvas?
Canvas cotton. CANVAS i buy it in six foot tall rolls that are ninety feet, long and then cut it down to the sizes THAT i. Need and, YEAH i cut down the, CANVAS i sketch out the. Animal if it's, SMALL i can just sort of eyeball it and do. It if it's a big, WHALE i have to do like a schematic Where i'm measuring. Computers, no just by.
Hand, yeah then what are you applying to the?
Canvas So i'm hand sewing all the. Scholastic, YEAH i sew the plastic onto the. Canvas BUT i, mean in terms.
Of your identifying the material you, use it's all we cycle.
Material, Yeah it's not the STUFF i find WHEN i go into a beach clean, up because that stuff is really gross and not. Healthy wouldn't want to be in a room with it or touch it very. Much but WHEN i started this, project i'd been saving this kind of film, plastic the film plastic that my family used BECAUSE i was often it's marked with those chasing arrows that say like please, recycle and you, think, okay this must be. RECYCLABLE i just have to figure out how
to recycle. It so this is my. Field and it took me two years to realize that actually you can't recycle most of.
It, now your husband did he wake up at one point and you woke up and he's like leaning over, you staring at, you and you, say what's his?
Name?
Michael and you, say what is, It? Michael and he, goes it's got to, stop, honey it's gotta. Stop stop bringing all this plastic into our.
House he does get a little frustrated with. It sometimes he's, Like i'm, Honey i'm just so glad you're not into like metal, recycling because at least this can be like folded up and rolled up and put. Away LIKE i have a closet with a row of hangars on it and it just has like penguins anduffins and you, know dolphins hanging from.
Them, now when you do the, piece you are sketching something in terms of. Color you're creating an image in whatever fashion computer or on a. Paper and then and then and you're bringing to the piece itself multi colored pieces of plastic to create a to can or whatever. Is you're going to make something with a lot of vibrant.
Color, Correct, yes absolutely, So, Yeah i'm JUST i have it all divided out by. COLOR i have like a bin of, yellow a bin of, orange of purple, blue and THEN i just sort of make decisions As i'm sewing. It and SOMETIMES i use things like patterns from different, materials and SOMETIMES i use those to create depth or to build like the turtle behind.
Me, yes it's. Gorgeous, oh thank, you.
Gorgeous that's a green sea. Turtle and so sometimes that's like coffee bags that have like modeled coloration on, them, right so THAT i can sort of try to build like what a turtle shell actually looks like through pattern and color and that kind of.
Thing, now you say you do exhibit in MUSEUMS i have is anything hanging? Anywhere? NOW i?
Think, well so mostly local stuff happening right. Now The Bradley airport In Central connecticut has the sperm whale In. HARTFORD i have four or five pieces in The Connecticut Science. CENTER i have a place at The parks And Rec pool In. Middletown the indoor pool has a big orca THAT i made with elementary school kids from my. TOWN i went around to all the elementary schools and did. That and next Month i'm going to be In iceland for the month on an artist. Residency if anyone's in
a Kirie, iceland they might find me there sewing. PUFFINS i guess probably in a harp. Seal what do you make in a harp? Seal but, Yeah i'm always trying to find more places to exhibit my work because the whole point of it IS i want. THIS i want people to make between this problem and their own, lives and then ideally get them to take political action about, it BECAUSE i really do think we can still influence our political systems and we need to.
Try, now let's talk about your understanding through your other, work all of your credentials and so. FORTH i, mean what's happening in your, mind what's the biggest problem pollution wise in this? Country where's it coming?
From, OH i mean it's coming from a million, communities, RIGHT i, mean we do have relatively good waste, management and yet you, know go outside any parking lot you've ever been, in and there's waste. Everywhere AND i go down WHEN i, travel you, know you see the, highway there's all kinds of litter all along the, streets and so a lot of, it whether intentionally or, unintentionally it gets out of the waste stream and then goes into.
RIVERS i read a statistic the other day that said ten thousand tons of plastic in or The Great lakes every? Year just.
Crazy did any of the work you've worked on address specific outcomes of plastic? Pollution have you gotten into that at?
ALL i don't study sort of like the impact on. HEALTH i don't study microplastics or. NANOPLASTICS i know people who, do but we really don't know what the health impacts are going to be yet of accumulated contact with plastics over. Decades but you, know part of the. Issue so global markets all together produce over four hundred million tons of plastic every, year and their stated goal is to increase that, number.
Right, right the petroleum, Industry.
Yeah, yeah and they absolutely want to increase that. Production so at this point in, time we're not even talking about what are the important uses of this? Material, Right, like certainly there are important uses of this. Material it is all around. Us it's there's a reason it's so. Popular it's, inexpensive and it's well because we're only counting like how much it, costs not how much it costs
for its full. Life but you, know we're not even having a conversation, about like what's the most important use of this. MATERIAL i was with a friend at the hospital. Recently you, know hospitals use lots of single use. Plastics that's, great, Right but then they brought the patient water and it was in a styrofoam, cup AND i was, like are you kidding?
Me like WHEN i see people back packages with, styrofoam the peanuts that they call them Styro i'm, Like i'm never going to speak to you again for the rest of my life now that you sent my birthday present in the styrofoam.
Peanuts but the steam come out of my. Ears oh my.
God but the plastic, industry like the tobacco, industry the same. Thing they know what's going, on they know what's. Happening they know what the deleterious effects of all of us.
ARE i, mean in their moo is kind of like to throw a little money towards some vague recycling programs and then continued to produce and ninety nine percent of plastic is still made with virgin fossil fuels because that's the deepest and the easiest way to do. It and so they're actually things that they could do to have to lessen the, impact BUT i don't see a lot
of companies that are really trying to do. That there are, some like food companies who seem to be making choices and packaging to get away from, plastic which is exciting to, see but it's a tiny. Amount and things that used to be you, KNOW i encounter packaging all the time
from cat, litter dog, food bird. Seed all of that is like in plastic, now and it wasn't that long ago when all of that came, in like multi layered, paper, right and and for most people in the, world like that's a fine way to package that, good, right you, know we're, yes you might have like mice get into your, garage but for most of us it's it's it's an okay packaging. Type but it has become the, standard right where our expectations if something's good or if it you,
know we want it to look a certain. Way it's going to come wrapped in.
PLASTIC i want to mention one more, thing which is just for people to, understand you have these pictures and this beautiful artwork you do with these materials and this kind of you, know obviously without it goes without saying unorthodox methodology with what you're, Doing but you ever get sick of, It you ever sit there and GO i want to get back into policy and try to fix.
This, WELL i mean two things. THERE i don't get sick of. It, like it's very calming and meditative practice for me to, sew SO i really enjoy that. Process but at the same time a huge Materials, yeah there's a lot of, sewing BUT i hate the. Materials it's very. Weird as an, artist usually you, know you're excited about the oil paints and the materials you're, using the. Watercolors it's very weird to be spending so much time with
something that you really. Hate BUT i, THINK i, mean part of the REASON i took on this project is BECAUSE i was tired of just communicating with other scientists about this, issue BECAUSE i think it's no fun to talk about it with a bunch of people who already know everything about, it, Right LIKE i want to connect with people and then get them to contact their leaders and demand something.
BETTER i just want to, say first of, all thank you for doing this with. ME i feel like this is the one we've got to. Solve we've got to, solve, yes because it's really REALLY i think doing a lot of more importantly unseen, things unknown. Things who knows what's going to be the plastic the bill we're going to get handed twenty five years from. Now so thank you so, much.
Thank you for having. ME i really appreciate.
It my thanks to Kat. Owens this episode was recorded AT Cdm studios In New York. City we're produced By Kathleen, Russo Zach, MacNeice And victoria De. Martin our engineer Is Frank. Imperial our social media manager Is Danielle. Gingrich I'm Alec. Baldwin here's the thing that is brought to you By iHeart. Radio name