Detail of duck (recycled sewn plastic)

“It was one of those days when it’s a minute away from snowing and there’s this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that’s the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video’s a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... and I need to remember... Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in.”

Ricky Fitts in American Beauty.

I accumulate and reuse plastic bags obtained from the shops, I cut the bags into squares and rectangles,then I sew together these fragments with the sewing machine to form a patchwork-like tissue.

The tissue seems to have the homemade way of making things, feminine, usual as a shopping bag,then I manufacture with this tissue my plastic birds that I use to form flocks of birds on a plane vertical surface.

left:

Herons,detail of mural“Great Flight”.

right:

ducks,detail of mural“Great Flight”.

Migratory birds like commercial logos overfly borders,moving from country to country without hindrance. North and South are one continuous space, but not so for humans, for them the borders define their identity and their lives. To be happy or to suffer depends largely on the location of your birth, the earth becomes more and more like a global appartheid witha private inside, rich and safe, andan public outside, violent and poor. Even in the developed world these reserves of welfare are declining, such as nature reserves,The number of people who canaccess this private happiness is reducing, as with the bird species every time there are lessthe people who can live free,without the concerns of meresubsistence, with worthy living conditions, conditions in line with technological development.

“Great flight”, mural installation sewn plastic, 10,8 x 2,8 meters

“Great flight”, mural installation sewn plastic, 10,8 x 2,8 meters

“RINGS OF DUCKS”, SEWN PLAST

IC,

DIAM

ETER

145

cm

There is at the epicenter of the North Pacific ocean Gyre a large island of garbage known as “plastic soup”, is between the coordinates 135 ° to 155 ° West and 35 ° to 42 ° North. It is estimated that has a size of 1,400,000 km ². Ocean currents rotate around a vortex that draws large amounts of plastic debris and microparticles in suspension. This plastic is taken up by numerous aquatic creatures and migrates through the food chain to larger fish, reaching seabirds.The artist Chris Jordan on his project “Midway: Message from the Gyre” has photographed some of the silent victims of this disaster, the detritus of our mass consumption surfaces in an astonishing place: inside the stomachs of Thousands of dead baby albatrosses.Near my studio, in a waste recycling plant I have discovered that there are also mountains of plastic.

I go very early in the morning with my camera to the bird observatory in the natural park “La Albufera” in Valencia, sheltered by a wooden shelter I patiently observe the arrival and departure of flocks of birds that perch to drink and rest in the Northern Lagoon, some are residents like terns and herons, others are migratory and they are just passing through or are only seen in the winter as the case of gulls, cormorants or red ducks, this resembles a natural airport, some stop to refuel and rest, and there are alsoopportunists like the marsh harrier which, like the duty free shops, they take advantage of the situation. I am interested in taking photographs of the movements of groups, formations, aerial choreography.I use these photos to compose my plastic birds installations.

I have being drawing baobabs for sometime, i love their solitude,I use the pen with a short stroke, insistent, almost obsessive.Sometimes I think that many of these birds that I photograph have flown between largebaobabs in their migration tosouthern Africa. Now I stick small plastic birds flying betweenmy baobabs.

From the “bunker”, Bird Observatory, 1 October 2011, 09:53, it was raining.

Lola Calzada

www.lolacalzada.com