Mary Ellen Croteau is a fine artist who uses plastic bottle tops to create portraits and artworks. Mary's work asks what should we do with all the plastic waste we are creating? "It is made from petroleum. It doesn't compost or decompose. And what little is recycled creates it's own pollution. So I make art with this waste". Mary has produced multiple wall-based installation using plastic bottle tops, her self portrait 'CLOSE' took over 7000 bottle tops which were collected over the period of 2 years.
With 'CLOSE' being a self portrait, and the bottle tops being personally collected from products that have either been her own or those around her, this is another form of collecting personal data. A personal reflection of Mary's consumer history of the two years.
Seeing Mary's work helped me with understanding how to create more detail and depth by placing bottle tops within bottle tops. By using this as a technique it allows you to blend colours and create a smooth transition and balance between colours. It also adds more interest and makes it more technically impressive.
Mary's bottle top artworks aim to bring light to the amount of single use plastics we use, excessive packaging from products and the danger of our throw away culture. It was very helpful to see how Mary uses bottle tops in a fine art context as most of the other research I collected on how others manipulate the material were more on a craft level.
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Polly would love to hear any feedback and comments about her work, questions are also welcomed!