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Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Artist Recognizes The Greater Good

I got a press release sent to me about an artist named Jeffrey Scott Holland who was in the third year of an art installation and realized that what he was doing was causing major harm to the environment. I kind of like his story because it's a great case of someone doing something they are passionate about, but walking away from it for the greater good. So I emailed him and he was kind enough to write back with a quick synopsis of what he was up to and included some pics.

Good on ya and Huzzah!

Project Egg was originally an egg hunt in several U.S. states, with green plastic Easter eggs containing miniature paintings, prints, stickers, etc. and it was so popular that I did it nationwide the next year, with eggs hidden in almost all 50 states. For the 2008 version, my goal had been to hide Easter eggs all over the world, with at least some eggs in every continent, even Antarctica. Then I learned about the stretches of dead ocean filled with rotting plastic that's only biodegrading to the molecular level. When I then consider that most of the eggs don't actually get found, I realized they might be getting washed by storms into the storm drains that go straight to rivers that go straight to the ocean. When the implications sunk in on me, I wanted to vomit. Hopefully, by cancelling this series of public art installations, I'll be able to call attention to the environmental disaster that's going on right now. I'm amazed that this plastic-molecule phenomena has been going on for so long now and I've only just now learned of it.




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