One ‘Melvillite’ takes on the conversation on conservation through an art piece
The paper headed to artist Sally Whines' Melville home to see how she turned waste into art in hopes of educating the community.
Sally Whines, a Melville resident for 20 years, describes herself as an artist who just recently stumbled across environmental awareness. From this insight, she started to explore how she impacts the world around her and what she can do to bring awareness to the issue.
After she had watched various documentaries on the matter, she got really depressed over the state of the world. “Then I thought, surely, we can do something and that every small thing we can do would be a step in the right direction.” So she got a few of her friends together from various industries and they came up with a website that helps people incorporate small elements into their lives that encourage them to live, eat, dress and travel greener – all in an effort to effect change.
“Last year, it turned into a goal of mine to do a ‘waste assessment’ to see how much waste my household can create. It is quite easy to fill up your recycling bag and hope it goes to recycling, but it doesn’t give you the bigger picture of how much waste one can create.” With this rationale in mind, Whines thought to collect a year’s worth of rubbish, and the subsequent question was ‘how can I display this’?”
So she started by covering a towering tree in her garden with rubbish, and once her ladder became too short to complete the task, she collected rubbish for the rest of the year and created an elephant as her December project. “I designed the elephant to have it nibbling at the waste which I thought was a nice visual statement that showed we are filling our world with rubbish, which is making it hard for wildlife to exist,” shared Whines.
Through this art piece, many have come to her to share how it has made them more aware of their behaviour and how they can take a shift to change it. She explained it is important for people not to get consumed by thoughts that there is little they can do. “Every person can do one little thing, and that little thing counts.”
The whole process encouraged her to find a few alternatives to how she had been living, and though she admits it has not been easy, she has found it important to do her part in changing the world for the better.
Related Article: The Melville Koppies proves it’s more than “just a bit a grass“
