Graeme Bagely - 2022

Artist's Statement

For my project I melted over fifty aluminum cans in a homemade foundry. My original idea for an artistic project was to create a globe that represented the Earth. I was able to create one hemisphere but before we could pour the second hemisphere, our crucible ruptured and the aluminum leaked out into the kiln. The project was still salvageable though. The two pieces that I melted put together resemble a melted globe into a puddle. It is a very fitting representation of what humanity is doing to the Earth. Over the course of this class we have seen and studied the evidence of climate change and the extreme pollution has done to the Earth. My aluminum sculpture represents how the Earth has changed and our impact on it. There is also the idea that recycling can reverse the effects that we have done to Earth, but this isn’t correct. Even though aluminum is very easy to recycle, it still takes a tremendous amount of energy. In order to melt the cans I had collected it took about an hour and half and half of a twenty five pound propane tank. Recycling is a good thing, but until we can be more efficient at it, it still creates carbon emissions and uses a lot of energy. Overall my sculpture has come to represent, through the medium of aluminum, what humanity is doing to the Earth.