Sustainability As An Artist
One of the most important aspects of my creative process is being low-waste and environmentally sustainable. I reuse until it can’t be reused anymore, I keep scraps of paper and fabric to use in later projects rather than throwing them away, and I do what I can to keep my waste out of the ocean and land fills. I hope this page can be a resource for other artists to gain inspiration for sustainability and convey the immense impact of waste.
Reuse, Renew, Recycle
Use what you have. Don’t buy new. The most sustainable thing a consumer can do is to simply reuse materials that already exist. Buy used canvasses from thrift stores, they’re cheaper anyway! Visit gently used art supply shops instead of corporations. By limiting yourself in this way, you can expose yourself to a new level of creativity. I didn’t start painting until quarantine, I didn’t have canvasses so I used furniture sitting in the crawl space. A stool can be a much more interesting canvas than a rectangle.
Give materials a new purpose. I have been collecting fabric scraps since I started sewing. I have boxes filled with scraps. I used them to fill stuffed fruits I painted and sewed myself. The solidity of the fabric compared to polyfil adds a a realistic weight to the fruit and made the project more interesting. I’ve used them to create stitch and slash pieces, making garments more captivating than flat fabric.
Send your waste to companies that can use it. Sustainable fashion is having the strongest resurgence yet. There are designers and companies that outsource material scraps to use in their own projects which stops them from landing in the landfill.
Scraplanta @scrapatl on Instagram
Save the oceans from your pigments.
Paint water (acrylic or otherwise) is harmful for the bodies of water it is dumped in. It is essentially micro plastics, pieces of waste so small they cannot be cleaned from the water, forever endangering the ecostystems that live there.
Separate your water from the paint by evaporation. Ceramic dishes are often the quickest in this process. Once the water has evaporated, you’ll be left with a small amount of pigment or paint. This you can save in a container and as the collection grows it becomes a new material!
Sprinkling these paint chips over an adhesive or wet paint creates a new design you wouldn’t be able to create any other way! By being low waste you are only giving yourself more opportunities for creativity and production.