Hey man cant say I'm proud of this next bit but as an artists we've all done some cringe worthy art. All I can do now is learn from it and evolve.
So, after Quarantine happened my brain went to jelly. Don't ask what I was thinking because I don't know. All I thought was I wanted my work to be more engaging and interesting and why not engage people with something cute and show them what is happening to them? I know bad idea, its literally the recipe for GCSE art campaign to save the turtles. But me being in Quarantine alone meant I didn't bounce the idea against anyone and the turtles idea became reality pretty immediately. In my head I thought hey how sick would it be to emulate these picture of animals dying from ingestion of cigarette butts and plastic but make the viewer them self go through the act of placing the cigarette in the baby turtles stomach. This is where the baby turtle ash trays came about. The hope was to leave them on a beach close to home where there are rocks always covered with butts, would people chose to drop the cigarette butts on the floor or use the provided ash tray? Even if that meant harming a baby animal which actually they're doing if they don't use the ashtray. Anyway seeing as its lockdown and an actual apocalypse I couldn't go the beach and get people to engage with the turtles, if they even would at all. I then spoke to Kate and friends and realised something very important. They were cool maybe for an etsy account or some emo Tumblr account but not really appropriate of effective in a fine art degree or as a piece of art work at all. Well, to conclude I would like to thank Kate for making me realise just how cringey and crap the turtles where and also the turtles, sorry for bringing you into this. I've realised I was being much to literal with my ideas and needed a way to explore my themes and context in a more abstract and creative way. Perhaps using materials that only allude to subject matter, letting the viewers come to their own assumptions and conclusions.
Pieces made from air dry clay, acrylic and collected cigarette butts (months old)
