Venice Blvd. Los Angeles, CA

There was a very interesting project that I worked on a few years ago that allowed me to experiment and find creative ways to reimagine designs that integrate the concept of recycling into the city landscape.

My inspiration for this design began with some leftover green craft paper -- lots of it. I had used this material to make to make paper trees for an architectural site model. For days, all I saw was crumpled green craft paper of various shades that I had arranged across the model.

One day, while working on this previous project, I stood back and suddenly realized that in the future the process of repurposing various materials could make for a very captivating sculptural pattern.

The Bigbelly design project came out of a city-wide competition asking artists to dress up new sets of Bigbelly recycling and composting bins. These bins were to be placed along Venice Boulevard, as part of the greening initiative organized by the Green Communications Initiative.

One of the requirements was that the color theme be blue. Water has always been my fascination, and since Venice Boulevard has direct access to the ocean, I thought that the imagery of water would be appropriate for my design.

My goals was to emphasize the importance of keeping our environment free of debris and pollution so that our oceans and sky could remain clear and natural.

Thinking back to my previous realization about the use of repurposing materials, I experimented to bring these two concepts together.

I got shades of blue paper, ripped them into pieces and crumbled them. I laid all of them on a sheet of mirror paper that would reflect the color of the sky. I arranged these materials in multiple ways and took a series of photographs. I selected my favorites for my submissions.

A few weeks later, when I was walking down Venice Boulevard, I saw that my design had already been printed and placed on the new Bigbelly bins. I was amazed at how well the color of the print connected with the color of the sky.

Architect Frank Gehry once told me, "No matter how small the project is, just do a good job." I always remember that when I take on a project -- no matter what the size.