Over 20 years ago, I put an empty Starbucks gift card in my back pocket and thought, “I’m gonna make something with that one day.” Since 2002, and across the United States, I have been collecting landfill-destined credit cards and gift cards, processing hundreds of pounds of plastic into tiny shapes. This undertaking created a new medium for mosaic style art making. Through the exclusive use of defunct currency, the concepts in my work often ask several questions: Who owns this? Who deserves this? What does this system currently look like? Can we do it better?

What I hope to create through the observation of my mosaics is a conversation about value, ownership, and accessibility. What I hope to inspire is the ability to perform a type of alchemy in one’s own life: transforming “garbage” into beauty; remembering that narratives can hold the keys to this transformation, but require consideration and perspective to cultivate.

At the intersection of this conversation comes the opportunity to ponder a lateral problem: plastic waste. 8 million tons of waste in the form of single-use plastic is produced every year. The ability to turn pollution into a valuable artistic resource is the gift of creativity. The future of my work contains a small solution to this collective problem.