Plastic Bottles

Plastic Bottles, 2007
By: Chris Jordan

Describe:

Photography, 2 million plastic bottles (Pepsi, Coke, Sprite, 7UP, Fanta, Water, Vitamin Water, etc.), different colors, different sizes of bottles

Analyze:

What was the reasoning for creating such a piece?
Does the piece relate to the life of the artist? If so, how?
How does it portray the artist’s personality?

Interpretation:

During my adventure at the Akron Art Museum, I viewed many pieces of different and interesting pieces of art. An interesting yet educational piece that caught my eye was Plastic Bottles, a photograph by Chris Jordan. He uses informational facts to help with the understanding of the environmental problems. In his piece, he uses two million plastic bottles –the number which the United States uses every five seconds- to help us visualize the statistics we see and hear in the news every day regarding our environment.
From a distance, the photo looked like a blur, but the closer I got to the piece, the clearer the photo became. Towards the top of the photo, it looked as if the bottles got deeper and deeper. The quality of the photo helps the viewer get a clearer view to help them understand the problem and the reasoning for such a piece of art.
I enjoyed viewing this piece because it helped me to realize the problems in the environment while viewing art at the same time. It was different to see such a piece in an art gallery. I was happy to see that people can express environmental issues through art as Chris Jordan did with his piece because it is a great way to help people become aware of and help them understand issues such as this one.

Judgment:

Jordan’s, Plastic Bottles, was successful, in my case, to help myself as the viewer, understand the statistics that are made each day with our environment. It seemed as you if I got closer to the piece; I got closer to knowing the problem. The clearer the problem is, the easier it is to understand.