Box Vox

packaging as content

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July 7, 2009

Alicia Escott’s Drawings on Plastic Packaging

BarneysGarmentBag
Life-size drawing of ‘the’ California Brown Pelican on a Barney's New York garment bag (by Alicia Escott)

Alicia Escott makes drawings on plastic packaging. Her works—(often depicting endangered species or scenes of post-consumer waste)—are part commentary, partly deliberate effort to make art that, like packaging, seems ephemeral and (deceptively) impermanent.

Through these works I am physically recreating packaging while addressing the packaging of concepts such as nature and wilderness.

I am both interested in how the materials I use move through the consumer economy and how words and concepts like ‘sustainability’, ‘ecological’, ‘recyclable’ , wilderness and ‘nature’ are passed through the information economy.

The work challenges our perceptions of what is and is not permanent by being both precious and disposable.  Where local facilities exist, these drawings are often either recyclable or compostable and may be reincarnated into other consumer products such as polyester carpeting.

Alicia Escott

(More photos of Escott’s drawings on packaging, after the fold…)

EscottUpper left: Untitled, 2008; upper right: Crabmeat California Roll, 2008—(Box Store drawing with Rainbow on PETE disposable sushi container lid); lower left: 2008 drawing of blue fin tuna wrapped in plastic cellophane packaged on Styrofoam. Drawn on PETE plastic lid for take out sushi; lower right:  2008 drawing of people burning flame retardant off valuable copper wire at an E-waste recycling market in Ghana. Image from National Geographic article, High Tech Trash. Magazine bought at borders in Oakland. Drawn on unlabeled plastic package for pen. Pen made in china, the markers used in the drawing assembled in USA.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

No Responses to “Alicia Escott’s Drawings on Plastic Packaging”

  1. J.D. King says:
    August 23, 2009 at 5:43 pm

    Never smoked?
    Hmm…

  2. Randy Ludacer says:
    August 24, 2009 at 10:38 am

    Hey John,
    So you’re calling me on never having smoked? Well, yes I did smoke a few cigarettes in my younger days, but for some reason (luck not virtue) I never acquired an actual smoking habit. By “never smoked” I meant to say: I never regularly smoked, never carried a lighter, never had to struggle with quitting.