March 23: Litter

Sometimes on beaches we'll come across driftwood or dead trees bedecked with found buoys that washed up on shore. A "buoy tree" is a great way to clean up all the flotsam scattered across a beach and make something decorative, even sculptural, from the litter, especially when you don't have the means to carry all that trash off island. I thought of this today when I drove past a roadside brush pile in a grassy vacant lot. Someone had obviously put in some effort to clean up the lot, making a big heap of fallen branches and other detritus. What makes the brush pile distinctive are the discarded bottles and cans stuck on the ends of all the branches poking out. They make the pile somehow look both trashy and artistic at the same time. Someone must have decided that simply clearing the field wasn't enough, that creating such an installation (mixed media: wood, aluminum, plastic) was more interesting than simply tossing all those empties into a trash bag.

No longer mere trash,
these colorful cans are now
parts of a sculpture.