Plastic Oceans is a series of realistic portraits of the ocean’s surface made from plastic. Each portrait begins with a monochromatic oil painting, which is then converted to a 3-D digital file and used to create a relief sculpture on a sheet of HDPE plastic.  This plastic has a beautiful translucency which allows the image to come to light when mounted on a light box. These plastic oceans are meant to shed more light on the problem of ocean plastic pollution, and inspire new thinking on creative solutions.

My plan was to use recycled HDPE plastic for this project, but it was not possible to source the material needed for the project, as it is not currently available in the US. In fact there is very little recycled plastic resin on the market at this time. This illustrates the myth of recycling—only a small percentage of plastic is actually recycled.  I want my viewers to understand that current recycling technology will not be able to recover even a fraction of all of the plastic we use, and that we need different solutions.