Rothko-esque Plastic Bags Go From Rubbish to Relevant

Rothko-esque Plastic Bags Go From Rubbish to Relevant

Karen Chernick | November 17th, 2011 | 1 Comment | Email this

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Colorful plastic bags are both the canvas and the paints in Aviva Sawicki’s artworks.

Plastic bags are a ubiquitous and un-eco-friendly material that many sustainable and upcycling designers have tried to reuse. One designer has turned plastic bags into shoes, another has made plastic bag wallets, and plastic bags can even be used as crocheting material to knit reusable shopping bags. There does seem to be a common trend among these designers, though, in that they fuse plastic bags together in order to make them more durable, usable, and pliable.

Israeli artist Aviva Sawicki is no exception, but she certainly is unique in the visual effects and textures that she creates in her plastic bag fusions.

Of her art, Sawicki writes that “the fusion of colored plastic bags becomes a vivid palette that allows unique color combinations, transparencies and textures which [are used] to create a vibrant transformation from rubbish to relevant.” Who knew fused plastic bags could be so Rothko-esque?

“The unique thing about the recycled plastic bags original works,” she continues, “is that unlike my previous work which was characterized by using self-made recycled paper as my support for paintings and prints, now the fusion of recycled colored plastic bags becomes both canvas and medium. No painting, not even one drop of paint!”

Sawicki is not only concerned with the visual, however, and her work has a clear environmental message.

Using only plastic bags that she procures from her local supermarket in northern Israel, she hopes that her artworks “remind us that we are a mainly consuming society and appeal to awareness of our environment.”