Anthusai - An Alternative Storytellers view

My story is about the inevitable evolution of what I do, where I have been, the slow progression of my growth about making changes in my own life. I have lived by my sustainable and recycling premise, I have been recycling since for ever, always recycling discarded materials into something new, not because I heard we were headed where we are at today, not because I got whiff of it becoming the in thing one day but because I could NEVER understand why things were being tossed when they still had life in them or the potential of a rebirth. My family would throw away perfectly good wooden and metal boxes, bottles, clothing, broken jewelry and so on, I would take them all and paint them, collage, meld, mold, cut and inject new life in them. 

Plasticine Porters  is about the pressing issue at hand today; Climate Change and the damage we are doing to the planet with single use plastic in particular. It is becoming so pervasive it's in everything, everyone, everywhere. I am attempting to shine a light to how we are altering everything in the name of progress, convenience and the speed in which we live, and create images of what nature might look like in the future adapting and living with the waste we are creating. Some vegetation will disappear like some animal species and some will adapt and evolve with the poison. 

Anthusai is my first survivor, a standing testament to the future, to what we are inevitably causing with global warming and the amount to plastic waste. She is the metamorphosis or genetic mutation of nature infused with plastic. The body is made with willow branches harvested from the river walk by the rangers clearing the overgrowth. I added a paper mache` skin and a ruffle of willow tips. Topped it with a ruffling of dryer sheet to give it the intended trifecta blend. 

Did you know that the original banana tree has been wiped out by an invasive disease? the Bananas we eat today are from a completely different banana plant. In the 1950s, various fungal plagues (most notably Panama disease) devastated banana crops. By the 1960s, the Gros Michel was effectively extinct, in terms of large scale growing and selling. Enter: the Cavendish, a banana cultivar resistant to the fungal plague. It's the banana that we eat today. There is no understanding where or how the disease started but it wiped out that species entirely. 

dryer sheet are made with polyester (PET) sheets that's been covered in a fabric softener chemical and, usually, fragrance chemicals.

Fragrances in Fabric Softeners can include tens to hundreds of different chemicals, some of which are toxic, and many of which are known allergens, like limonene and linalool

Dryer sheets can contain volatile organic compounds like acetaldehyde and butane, which can cause respiratory irritation.

Quats, a fabric softener chemical, is often part of a family of chemicals called quaternary ammonium compounds, many of which are linked to asthma. Acetone, used in dryer sheets, can cause nervous system effects like headaches or dizziness.