After moving to New York from Paris, Miwa Koizumi was astounded by the piles of garbage that lined the city’s streets. And, in the eco-aware tradition of artists like Chris Jordan, she wanted to do something artistic about it. Faced with a low budget for art supplies, an abundance of free trash, and a fascination for sea creatures, Koizumi started converting plastic and glass bottles into beautiful, complex, and surprisingly lifelike jellyfish sculptures, which are featured in the Fall 2007 issue of Theme magazine.
Koizumi uses a number of tools to painstakingly craft her sea creatures–unfortunately, the sculptures don’t reproduce as quickly as their underwater brethren–but on the upside, her costs probably stay relatively low. “I have as much material as I want,” she writes on her website, “just by fishing in the garbage.”
Photo by Dylan Griffin, courtesy of Theme magazine.
