Trash and recycling bags

Every day thousands of trash and recycling bags pile up on the sidewalks on New York City, ever-present but overlooked. Their contents are also largely ignored: they are the waste of consumerism, unwanted packaging reduced to potential recycling material — yet they are also carefully crafted examples of industrial manufacturing and graphic design. These paintings seek to capture those items, as well as the waves and folds of the plastic bags enshrouding them, which catch the light like fabric in a classical sculpture.

Water pollution on Newtown Creek

Paintings from the solo show, “Recovered Landscapes: Newtown Creek,” funded by a 2019 Queens Council on the Arts New Works grant. 
Beneath and on top of the waters of Newtown Creek lie uncountable multitudes of objects, detritus and decaying life, swirling in a thick ooze of industrial pollution nicknamed “black mayonnaise.” We can catch brief glimpses of the mysteries hidden within the creek only as the tides rush in and out each day.