Found and Lost Poster Series 2001-2012
Project Statement
Our relationship to trash is a false cultural construct – in the natural world, everything has value and is re-used. It’s only humans that forget this fundamental principle of nature.
Imagine if a stranger or alien – one connected to the land and use of resources – came into our communities, would she be confused by our throw-away culture? If everything were re-used and re-cycled and had value, wouldn’t a discarded Starbucks coffee cup be a found treasure?
These images have been distributed as flyers posted on telephone poles, in coffee shops, and anywhere one might find that ubiquitous flyer for that lost pet or valuable. Have you come across one, expecting it to be for a valuable item? I still have these ‘found’ items in my studio yet to be claimed. Call if they look familiar or you know the owner.
Found Posters naturally lead to Lost Posters, a reflection on the nature disappearing right before our eyes. We seem adept at ignoring the incremental changes happening on a daily basis. While Honeybees are disappearing in the blink of a geologic eye after 65 million years of pollinating plants, big agro-chemical pesticide business protects their bottomline. Poor zoning regulation, laziness, and short-sighted planning leads to swaths of forest turned into seas of pavement, disrupting so many aspects of a healthy community ecosystem.
With this series, I encourage reconsideration of our relationship to resources and challenge those who casually pollute our landscapes without second thought to take responsibility for their actions. These images document a community-wide distribution of Found & Lost Posters where volunteers pinned the series to bulletin boards and telephone polls and in coffee shops and stores. Communities across the U.S. have distributed these flyer campaings between 2002-2007.
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