Our evironmentalist blogger with an eye for beauty, Pelf Nyok, has dropped by to introduce her latest find — an American artist who creates huge mandala wall pieces with other people’s throwaway plastic bags. The works are both colourful and green! ~ Jen

Plastic Artworks

A lot of things are being said about China’s recent announcement to ban the manufacture, sale, and use of plastic bags under 0.025 mm thick and to prohibit supermarkets and shops nationwide from handing out the sacks for free from June 1st.

And, apparently, Australia’s government also said recently that it hoped to phase out the use of plastic bags from the nation’s shopping centres by the end of the year.

With all the hoo-haas around the excessive use of plastic bags, it is heartening to learn that there are people who turn these plastic bags into beautiful art pieces!

Virginia Fleck began making artwork when she was a child and she eventually studied at Portland School of Art and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She has been the recipient of numerous grants and residencies including a fellowship for a residency and exhibition in Havana, Cuba.

My wall-sized mandalas, created from sections of used plastic shopping bags, analyze the activity of consumerism as a spiritual encounter. This visual experience of repetitive designs, indicative of meditative objects and advertising graphics, stimulates the viewer to yearn for more… Our hunger is insatiable; our fervor can be witnessed… Nirvana / paradise is easily obtained and owned…

- Virginia Fleck

Her work has been exhibited at Art Forum Berlin, Pulse Miami, Pulse New York, and Arte Fiera in Bologna, Italy. And she recently completed The Spin Cycle for Whole Foods World Headquarters and Mandala Constellation for the Dell Children’s Hospital. Her work appears in many prestigious collections including the Marino Golinelli collection in Bologna, Italy. In 2007, she was nominated for the Texas Prize, and won the juror’s award for the 2007 Texas Biennial.

Pelf Nyok, the author of The Giving Hands, is a grad-student who is trying to save the turtles, the environment and humankind. Charity, conservation and volunteerism are things that are very close to her heart.
pelf-ism is contagious!