I wander the coastline in my kayak collecting driftwood from the beaches and headlands of Norfolk bay.
The shapes I have explored are inspired by Kanji the traditional Japanese script which in turn has its roots in the Chinese language.
Last year I travelled in Japan. Among the many highlights and influences was an early morning expedition to a beach in Shizuoka. Jane my companion is resident in Japan for an extended time each year. We set off at 6am to walk the beach and gather flotsam that rested on the waterline. In this case it wasn't driftwood. It was mostly plastic and synthetic fishing ropes. Each of us gathered a large rubbish bag of these bits. Jane goes 4 days a week to the same spot. It's the same each day. It just keeps washing in. I also saw another walker collecting rubbish that morning. It's not the Japanese thoughtlessly dropping rubbish it's simply the case that all the waterborne rubbish collects together and gets channelled into that beach by the oceanic currents.
At home the Japanese recycle more packaging than we would dream of here. They are well ahead of us, but then they need to be, as there are 126 million of them.
It was on that trip that I heard about the rubbish that gets rafted together by the currents to form this huge floating island roughly the size of the USA.
Plastic, as it breaks down, becomes fragmented until it is small enough for fish to swallow. Plastic ingested by fish makes its' way through the food chain and so into your body if you eat seafood.
On my return home I decided to avoid buying products packed in plastics. It is difficult and some times I have lapses, but as I read more about the toxic leaching of plastics into our wildlife, food and the environment, I realise it's worth the effort.