Ocean Gleaning
Ocean Gleaning
Ocean Gleaning proposes a collaboration between art, science, activism and like-minded groups that begins with the assumption that the ocean is a conscious entity that, in many different ways, from rising levels and temperatures to declining fish stocks to coral bleaching and finally to the deformed material plastic objects that float the world round, is attempting to communicate its declining state of being. Pam Longobardi has channeled her lifelong love of the ocean into an artistic practice that transforms the mountains of plastic debris that wash up on beaches around the world. For more than 15 years, Longobardi has utilized found ocean plastics as her primary source material, arranging hundreds of plastic pieces into wall-mounted artworks or floor-based sculptures. Working collaboratively with communities around the globe, Longobardi has cleaned beaches from Hawaii to Greece to Panama, and dozens of locations in between, removing tens of thousands of pounds of plastic from the environment and converting them into thought-provoking works of art that shed an unflinching light on the effects of global consumption on the natural world.