SOMETHING USEFUL

These sculptures are made from plastic gathered from Toronto’s Humber Bay shore, just east of the mouth of the Humber River. Woven from straws, water bottle lids, tampon applicators, miscellaneous strapping and bits of toys, they mimic what might happen in nature as creatures gather and weave whatever they find into something useful. They are strange, semi-intentional emanations. They twist and nest. Collecting them felt like a dark harvest, like picking berries growing low on the shore with the sound of the waves lapping, ducks launching and landing, trucks humming nearby. The combination of peace and ugliness, whimsical colour and grossness, bright promise and overwhelming despair has permeated the making of these little things.

When I am by the water, I am reminded that, despite the pollution, being in nature is its own reward. I won’t find a pristine beach anywhere, but I can still go to the water and be renewed. It’s a place of tension where I can breathe in the fresh open sky and let my eyes be drawn out to the distant horizon, but also a ground zero for an encounter with the plastic crisis. It’s a reality check. The plastics can never be removed; we can’t take them back. But we have to keep trying to hope, to push for change, to play and to love the life of the lake.

Rebecca Jane Houston (rebeccajanehouston.carbonmade.com) is a settler sculptor, art teacher and community artist inspired by feminist physicist Karen Barad and political theorist Jane Bennett. Her work explores and celebrates the inter- and intra-action of human and non-human bodies. Houston’s works have been shown at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada in Toronto, among other venues.