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Before moving to Minnesota I spent much of my childhood in California. I have very happy memories of waking up to find strange plastic toys on my bedside table, the treasures my mother had gleaned from her morning walk on the beach.

Richard and Judith Lang also take walks on the beach, and they also collect small pieces of plastic. Tens of thousands of them, from a stretch of Kehoe Beach in Northern California. And then they turn the plastic into art.

The Langs' work has been shown at SFMOMA, the Berkeley Art Center, and other artistic venues.

But of course, while beautiful, the underlying message is a disturbing one. Their work shows that no matter where we throw our trash, there is really no such place as "away."

Arts and Culture

State of the Arts Blog

Marianne Combs

Author

Richard and Judith Lang say they don't comb the beach, they curate it.

Beach plastic: there’s no such place as ‘away’

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