November 10, 2009

Plastic Water Bottles as Art

Photos by Flickr user <a href="http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=fastforwardfossil&l=cc&ss=0&ct=0&mt=all&w=all&adv=1">See-ming Lee</a> under Creative Commons

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Turns out plastic bottles—like the ones Fiji Water comes in—are good for something after all: art. Earlier this year, environmental activist David de Rothschild set sail with a crew of six to steer a boat made entirely of used plastic bottles around the world. Meanwhile, back in the US, artist Ellen Driscoll constructed a miniature landscape made entirely of 2,600 #2 plastic bottles. According to Driscoll, the project, titled “FastForwardFossil: Part 2” is “a ghostly translucent visual fugue in which a nineteenth century trestle bridge plays host to an eighteenth century water-powered mill which spills a twenty-first century flood from its structure.” The exhibit closed this week at the Smack Mellon Gallery in Brooklyn, but photos are online here. And click through to see more below the jump.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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