Tara Law is an artist currently living in Bucksport, Me. Her work explores environmental concerns and the power of story. She received both an ALC and an Eisenhower Grant for her book Connections and Reflections. She was commissioned to create sculptural installations for First Night Boston, Arts in the Parks, and Environmental Arts in Massachusetts. Tara has been a contributor to WATD’s program Spoken Voices. She is the founder of Kamikaze Publishing. Tara’s books are in collections at Harvard, Hayden Library, Bowdoin College, and in private collections from Washington, D.C. to Maine. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree in Intermedia from The University of Maine in August 2016. Tara currently teaches at Unity College.
Litmus
Bottled water is a conundrum. It can be convenient to grab a bottle knowing you will not have to worry about getting dehydrated; the problem is that disposable plastics create environmental problems.
Using reusable water bottles is a simple alternative that requires a change in human behavior. Sometimes consequences are enough to make you reconsider your actions. According to http://ecologycenter.org/plastics/ptf/report3/ Some chemicals diffuse (migrate) from the packaging polymer to the foods they contain.
Curbside plastic collection programs are driven in part by a wish to minimize municipal solid waste. Indeed, most legislation dealing with discarded containers has focused on creating mechanisms that would divert municipal plastic waste from incinerators or landfills. These initiatives include container deposit laws and landfill use-reduction laws. Although important, such measures do not solve the problem of over-packaging or reduce the production of plastic packaging. Only source reduction can do this. The term Litmus Test is a polysemy, it is a test for acidity or alkalinity using a dye obtained from lichens, it is also used to be indicative of how an event will play out over time.
The sculpture Litmus is a tower made up of recycled water bottles that have been filled with water dyed red to represent danger while also alluding to the chemical change in Litmus. Accompanying this sculpture is a series of questions regarding behavioral changes that the participant might consider taking, Anything rom a moments thought to a ban on plastic bottles. What do you think? And what are you willing to do?