Sandy Lee (b. 1995, San Jose, CA, USA)
Downpour, 2019
Steel, recycled soft plastics, hot glue, ocean wave projector
8’ H x 5’ W
Over the course of industrialization, technology, and urbanization, we have created a
time bomb that is already ticking away. This bomb is in the depths of the ocean, floating
on the surface, and ingested by its inhabitants. The time bomb we created is plastic
waste.
I have been intrigued by the ocean since I first took a Marine Biology class in 2013, and
have been increasingly more concerned on how we have been treating it (or not at all
even). The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is “the largest accumulation of ocean plastic in
the world and is located between Hawaii and California.†1 It used to be roughly 22,000
square miles. 2 Now by the end of 2018, this plastic island is now three times the size of
France, approximately 1.6 million square miles compared to the 22,000 in 2013. 3 In just
five years, our amount of pollution has already grown tremendously and would estimate
to about 335,600 square miles of plastics we pollute per year.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is also known as the Pacific trash vortex, as it is
comprised of areas of rotating debris that are linked together by the north Pacific
Subtropical Convergence zone and also is in the center of an ocean gyre (a system of
currents formed by the Earth’s wind patterns in addition to the forces created by the
rotation of the planet). 4 With this in mind, I am drawing inspiration from that aerial
perspective into fabricating a spiral form that develops into a mid-crashing tsunami
wave overcasting the audience as if they are getting swallowed into the trash vortex
itself.
Downpour emphasizes on the distant but epidemic state we are in with the widespread
pollution of plastics. Although getting swallowed up in a crashing wave is horrifying and
detrimental, it also represents a way to wash away and cleanse and to start afresh.
1 https://www.theoceancleanup.com/great-pacific-garbage-patch/#what-is-the-great-pacific-
garbage-patch
2 https://www.leisurepro.com/blog/ocean-news/sobering-reality-great-pacific-garbage-patch/
3 https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/23/world/plastic-great-pacific-garbage-patch-intl/index.html
4 https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/great-pacific-garbage-patch/