StrawFree.org Attends
Plastic Ocean Art Exhibit at UC Irvine
The Plastic Ocean Art Exhibit will be on display at University of California, Irvine’s Student Center until February 13, 2017.
Plastic Ocean Artist, Bonnie Monteleone (right), and StrawFree.org founder, Diana Lofflin, pose with a bamboo straw.
As soon as you take the first step into the Plastic Ocean Art Exhibit, a 3D rendering of an ocean wave, reminiscent of Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave, greets you.
The walls of the exhibit are decorated with five, 4’x5’ digital images also reminiscent of The Great Wave. A closer look reveals that all of the art pieces depict the wave completely covered in pieces of plastic, a deliberate move by the artist, Bonnie Monteleone, to show that our oceans are disturbingly different than the ocean that Hokusai saw 180 years ago due to plastic pollution. The five paintings represent the five gyres, each more convoluted and unrecognizable than the last, to address the massive amounts of plastic accumulating in our oceans.
Bonnie Monteleone shows a young audience member her art at the Plastic Oceans Art Exhibit at UCI.
Bonnie Monteleone is the executive director and a researcher for the Plastic Ocean Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to the prevention and removal of marine plastics on and off-shore. Much of the plastic used in Monteleone’s art exhibit are plastic debris that she has collecting during her explorations of four of the five gyres. Check out their website to learn more about the amazing work the Plastic Ocean Project is doing for our oceans at www.plasticoceanproject.org.
Members of Roger Middle School’s Green Team pose with bamboo straws in front of the sea turtle they constructed out of plastic straws they picked up in their cafeteria.
StrawFree.org
Our team at StrawFree.org took part in the opening reception of Monteleone’s Plastic Ocean Art Exhibit by hosting an educational booth in which we talked about plastic straw pollution and gave away bamboo straws (we ended up giving away 150 straws). We even had the chance to showcase an amazing display of a sea turtle made out of used plastic straws made by the students of Rogers’ Middle School’s Green Team.
Our founder, Diana Lofflin, also spoke about the impactful gesture of refusing a plastic straw. “This is an item that we can actually say no to,” says Diana. “This is your opportunity to make an individual choice to say no to something that makes a difference.”
Do you want to make a difference? Take our Straw Free pledge at strawfree.org/pledge.