Natural American Spirit

            This piece, entitled “Natural American Spirit,” is a two foot by two foot square pine plank, spray painted and covered with about 500 cigarette butts (Disgusting I know, but I of course used gloves every time I handled them). It was inspired by the artist Andy Goldsworthy; a man known for taking found objects from nature, and creating fantastic pieces out of the ordinary.

         Mr. Goldsworthy’s esthetic of using found objects drove me to search for things along the ground that I may use in an artistic manner, as Goldsworthy does. What I found, however, was that my college campus did not have an abundance of natural resources like the Scottish countryside from which Goldsworthy creates his best work. Instead I noticed that the grounds of the campus were littered with trash, particularly with hundreds of cigarette butts. Not only that, but the squirrels around campus eat the cigarettes, which one can definitely assume is not good for the environment. It became my personal goal to make something beautiful out of the ugly that I found, and as an added bonus, I was cleaning up campus as well.

Just a disclaimer, I don't smoke, and therefore none of these are originally mine... which may be better or worse than if they were depending on how you think about it.

Below are a set of failed attempts at ideas using the cigarette butts:

Not wanting to be too contrived or literal, I discarded the other ideas and eventually came up with my final composition. After eight hours of glue and shellac this is the finished product: