Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang

"CHEESE SPREADERS" (2008) digital pigment print, 24" x 36"   We have all been sold the myth of disposable plastic. We throw it away but it stays with us for centuries and may ultimately irreparably alter the planet. As beachcombers at Kehoe Beach, Point Reyes National Seashore, we became aware of this dire situation ten years ago. Since then, we have collected from this one beach almost 2 tons of plastic, which has washed ashore from as far away as Asia and as close to home as the San Francisco Bay. In order to demonstrate the ubiquity of plastic waste in our oceans, we have configured our collection of plastic material into the selected works presented here. Beauty First has become our creed; by exciting the aesthetic sensibility, we hope to inform and inspire all to action. When we found the first red rectangle, it was just a mysterious shape among our piles of colored shards. When we had three, we thought they might actually be something. When we had nine, they became a category. By the time we had 87, we knew they definitely had some significance but we could not figure out what. Finally, we asked a teenager who was shocked that we did not know about something that was obviously very common. How could we be so out of it as to not know about the red plastic cheese spreaders in the plastic pac of Kraft Handi-Snacks? We are thrilled (and relieved) to be in the know. We now have some 277 in our growing collection. All of the spreaders you see here were collected from Kehoe Beach in the Point Reyes National Seashore over a ten-year period. Derelict picnickers did not leave these. They all have washed up out of the ocean, arriving from some distant destination. There is evidence that they have been at sea for a long time. Some are broken. Some are pale, bleached by the sun. Some are patterned by the growth of coral accretions.       "DISPOSABLE LIGHTERS" (2008) digital pigment print, 24" x 36"   "BALLS" (2008) digital pigment print, 24" x 36"     - - - - - -

Judith Selby Lang is an artist whose work touches upon some of the key issues of our time, from environmental issues to political activism. For many years, she has been active teaching art to those with Alzheimer´s and dementia, offering them a means of creative self-expression when words and memory have begun to fail. Richard Lang is President of Electric Works, gallery, store and fine art printmaking studio located in San Francisco´s SOMA district. He is a poet, short story writer, painter, printmaker and is sometimes seen performing poetry as The Poetry Jukebox.