Chris Jordan + BMOCA + Portfolio Mag

Back in the fall BMOCA held an exhibit called EcoArts. The museum was filled with wondrous works but I was most impacted by a piece by Chris Jordan. The piece is entitled plastic bottles and it represents 2 million plastic bottles - the number of bottles used in the US every 5 minutes. If you have ever wondered where all the bottles go, read the extremely sad article I posted some time ago - Plastic Ocean.
The two images below are the actual photo and the enlarged version. The piece is enormous 10x5 feet.
While at the gym, I picked up a copy of Portfolio magazine. In the mag was an interview with Chris. Reading about his work, philosophy and approach to art activism made him all the more interesting to me..."he creates work that translate the emotionless sums he finds in his research into visual metaphors that read on two levels - a piece needs to legible as one thing from afar and another up close. " I love the ingenuity and duality of his work.
The piece below is comprised of 200,000 packs of cigarettes. This stands for the number of Americans who die every 6 months from smoking. I have included two shots for you to get a feel for the the work but you should visit Chris' site to see for yourself. The smoking print is 6x8.5 feet