Image courtesy Art From Scrap

To The Sea, an unnatural journey opens at the Art From Scrap Gallery at 302 E. Cota St. on Friday. August 22, from 6–8 p.m. Curated by artist Holly Mackay, To The Sea is an all age collaborative installation and playful call to action aiming to empower and engage the community in finding solutions to the growing problem of plastics in our environment, specifically in our water.

“We all make choices that effect our environment and each other. By involving community directly and physically in the intimate details of this problem, my hope is to make this global issue personal and less intimidating, I want people to feel that their actions matter, and that huge triumphs are made of small steps,” says Mackay. “My impulse is to go beyond the fear and repulsion that permeate a problem like this and re-signify the process of cleaning up our environment as positive as opposed to an almighty burden. I think you’ll engage a greater swath of the general public if you present the matter with humor, beauty and kindness instead of lobbing at them yet another barrage of mind numbing statistics of the damage we are doing to ourselves.”

There are three main parts to the installation; a grid of carefully selected trash found on local beaches, a series of collaborative “Instructional Diagram” paintings depicting aspects of the “pollution process” and children’s reaction to it, and a Tidal Zone Diorama which will include a number of creatures made by community members from our very own beach trash.

To The Sea, an unnatural journey will be on view through October 4.

Originally published in Santa Barbara SEASONS on August 20, 2014.