Defining Water

The Clean Water Act protects “the waters of the United States” under the law as defined by the EPA and the Army. “Defining Water” examines that definition. This experimental doc is made entirely out of cyanotype prints.

Thrown Away
“Thrown Away”, is a collage series originally completed for the class Emerging Media I in Hunter College’s Integrated Media Arts MFA Program that was motivated by my own observations of how many usable items were being left on the curb. It struck me that these items did not have to me thrown away. They were only trash because someone chose not to reuse them, or to make them available for reuse. This choice made them no different than the many types of garbage that we have no means of reusing or recycling.

All of the background images are photographs of items that were left out for trash in my neighborhood on the Upper East Side during the Spring of 2021. I searched for items that were in good condition and not noticeably defective or damaged. All of the items they are covered in are scans of pieces of trash that I personally accumulated and threw away throughout the course of this project. The trash elements are either not widely recyclable (like the waxed paper that tea bags are packaged in), or not recyclable at all (like plastic tape). 

The larger reusable items pictured should not all be immediately recognizable. My intention is for the viewer to have to work to recognize them because once they are thrown away, they are trash and no different than the items covering them.