What if every time you washed your clothes, put on cosmetics, or drank a bottle of water you were unknowingly feeding a destructive sea monster that would grow to enormous proportions and ruin the planet?

“See!” Is an art piece/project by Ingrid Goldbloom Bloch that gives a window into how our actions are contributing to mass destruction without us even knowing it?

Created out of hundreds of discarded plastic eyeglass lenses and plastic acupuncture needle guides, “See!” visually shows the mathematical modelling of ocean dynamics and why plastics converge into a giant garbage heap. The eyeglass lenses are meant to be windows into the problem and also represent a tentacle of an ever-expanding man-made sea creature that is harming the world’s oceans.

 

 

Action 1:

The artist Ingrid Goldbloom Bloch aims to recreate this artwork on a large scale where the public will contribute to a communal piece. Using both mathematical drawings and recycled materials people are invited to contribute their own plastic flotsam (in place of the lenses) that will become part of a colourful public installation that visually depicts how quickly small pieces of plastic converge into something large.

People are asked to find plastic trash on the ground (help clean up the city) or bring in plastic pieces from home that contribute to pollution problem to add to the “See!” – Installation. The public is invited to review actions they can take and write one on their plastic piece, as an intention, before adding it to the growing collective art piece. People can experience themselves, how: 1) Each individual piece of plastic flows into a collective mass and 2) How each individual person can become part of a collective voice.

Action 2:

She plans to engage with elementary age school children (school visits/workshops) to teach kids to think about plastic pollution in the world’s oceans through a hands-on art project that combines mathematics, recycling, and art. The goal is to educate the next generation of consumers on the importance of proper recycling and making choices that can help or hurt the planet.

Action 3:

She will give a public lecture on creative reuse and how items that are normally considered trash can be given a new life.

Artist Statement

Ingrid Goldbloom Bloch sees the beauty in common and discarded objects. The inspiration for the mixed media sculptures and art pieces she creates comes from human ejecta, jetsam, and trash floating in our oceans and dominating our landfills. By using everyday items and transforming them into something entirely different from their intended purpose, the artist tries to draw the viewer in to take a closer look at materials, objects and subject matter.

Her fascination with everyday materials began as a little girl when she would accompany her father on his errands to the hardware store. She would get lost in the aisles imagining all of the things she could make from the bits and pieces she came across. This curiosity has continued to the present day where Goldbloom Bloch creates new objects from surprising materials to tell a story about deeper societal and environmental issues.

Ingrid Goldbloom Bloch was born in 1963 in Chapel Hill North Carolina, USA and raised in New Mexico, USA, and Wisconsin, USA before settling in Massachusetts, USA. She is a self-taught artist who combines her knowledge of contemporary fibre art, metal work, assemblage, and beadwork to create her mixed media-sculptures.

She has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the world and has been collected by private collectors as well as museums. She has appeared in numerous magazines, books, and international newspapers and has been interviewed and featured on US Television.

Her highly publicized “Trashy Lingerie” Series and Bathing suits made out of woven soda cans inspired beach litter was purchased by The Bikini Museum in Resenburg, Germany and Ripley’s Believe it or Not! Museums in Los Angeles, California and Orlando Florida, USA. Four of her recycled teapots reside with the Sparta Teapot Museum, Sparta, North Carolina, USA.

In 2016 she was invited to Baku, Azerbaijan to be one of 2 US artists to create art for the Waste To Art Museum. Her recent piece on gun violence, fashioned from plastic tampon applicators (that wash ashore!) has made headlines in the US being featured in New York City, Boston, Fiber Arts International and purchased by the Wascomium Museum, Burlington, Vermont, USA.

Ingrid studied Psychology and Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA and holds an MA degree in Counseling Psychology from Lesley University, USA. Her art training has been self-directed having taken classes from well-known bead and fiber artists along with classes in welding.

Website IGBStudio.com