Carbon Footprints
This is my carbon footprint. What does it tell you about me?
What will yours say about you?
These are the things that will show them how we lived.
The left-overs from my life cataloged and documented in larger than life charcoal still life drawings. From the dusty darkness a strange self-portrait emerges – broken glass, empty boxes, discarded plastic.
We are what we eat? To the archaeologist, we are what we throw away afterwards.
Finding each new piece of trash was like unearthing treasures, conserving, preserving and consecrating my ephemeral (and not so ephemeral) daily detritus. Paying attention to the discarded; things useless and broken; things previous never really seen or looked at or even thought about. Discarded without a thought.
As I stroke the soft charcoal across the paper, enveloping the artifact, the image forms where the charcoal isn’t.
A footprint in the dust. Fragments of faded pastel, like a hand-colored photograph, speak of times past.
Although, not so long past. Eggshells from breakfast, broken yet perfect; my favorite chocolate, chocolate chip muffins, seduced by the elegant packaging; fast food detritus, irrefutable evidence of nutritional misdemeanors and bad planning.