The river clean-up has come and gone. Around the park are clear plastic bags pregnant with rubbish. In a way, the garbage hasn’t gone anywhere…it’s still waiting to be taken out. All my sculptures are where I left them as are my caches of branches and Styrofoam. Time to make a figure from this day’s experiences!
As alarmed as I am about the water, the quality of the air is also a matter of concern. We live in the bottom of the Ohio Valley and during the summer the air can get quite thick with the residues of burning coal, ozone, and pollen. At the coroner’s office, they can tell if you lived in this valley just by the types of fungi found in your lung tissue. The river is getting cleaner…believe it or not, but the air we breathe needs help too!
People believe the atmosphere, like the ocean, is limitless. If you were to walk in a straight line for two miles and wrap that distance around the globe…well, that’s all the air there is to breathe. From space, the atmosphere is so thin you can barely make it out. It’s a bubble enclosing a rock. This figure began with finding the inhaler. More and more people are being affected by breathing issues like asthma. Oxygen bars are popular in other places in the world. I wonder if that would work here? The body of this figure is made from what I call “large curd” polystyrene…I don’t run into this stuff that often. Time for another puff.
Someone placed the brush in the hand of the figure wearing the clock. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to tell if anyone has been by recently. I really enjoy it when other people play along. It adds another dimension to my river project. I did have a family with four kids watch me work on this today. The children loved what I was doing, but the parents….?
Tomorrow is shaping up to be another nice weather day. I will try to make and post something else. This little dog face I found today makes me smile.
Artist at Exit 0 Riverblog 
Wow, I’m impressed by your sculptures and your photography! And I agree, the air we breathe and the atmosphere does need tending to, particulary in your area so it sounds.
I live in Bournemouth, England at the moment so we have the air coming in from the sea. Although that means the air isn’t an issue here, it’s sad to hear how fragile the world truely is. The point you raised about Asthma is true though and my partner suffers from it. All the more reason to clean up the earth really.
Keep up the good work. 🙂
-Jonathan
Thanks Jonathan…. Yes, we are talking about the very substrate all life as we know it clings to and it isn’t as big a world as we may wish. As an artist, I couldn’t see how my doing another painting was going to address these issues. Acting locally, the materials I use are what I find by our river. Since nothing I do requires any real technical knowledge…I hope others who come across my art will feel that they too can partcipate in some way. From where I sit, our innate creativity is our best chance for a remedy. Have a great day in the UK……. Al