Rather than working with bits of prose from Allison Cobb’s forthcoming book, I decided to work with an idea that stood out to both of us from our conversation: plastic as “a concrete manifestation of humans’ relationship to the planet that is so essentially steeped in opposition, in violence.” I walked around Mt. Tabor Park for about an hour collecting plastic litter. This pile of plastic became the epicenter for long threads made of white flower petals and red thread, representing the grief, fear, and desire that Cobb contends undergirds all plastic trash. I chose to make the threads out of intricate, living entities to show how utterly entwined grief, fear, and desire are with the basic human condition.

Flower petals, thread, found plastic trash, 2014