We all get inundated with seemingly never-ending streams of junk mail in our mailboxes, but Barbara Hashimoto is waist-deep in it. The New Jersey-born artist has been collecting it since 2007 for an installation called ‘Reverse Trash Streams: The Junk Mail Project’, and it’s truly amazing to see how much wasteful junk mail one woman was able to gather and shred. She has filled room upon room with it, creating ethereal seas of paper. Perhaps the most poignant moment of this project was the night Hashimoto piled armload after armload of it onto a piano while musician Edward Torrez played, creating a mountain of junk mail that threatened to engulf him.
The project was inspired by stomach-turning statistics about the wastefulness of junk mail, including these ones: Americans receive 77 billion pieces of junk mail annually, and the average American will spend an 8 months of his or her life handling junk mail. Amazing.
Check out this video by EarthFirst’s own Dorothee Royal-Hedinger for Fresh Cut:
Hashimoto’s sculptures, installations and performances have been presented from Chicago to Los Angeles, and you can still see the installations through the 45-foot floor-to-ceiling storefront windows at the 2003 South Halsted Street complex of the Chicago Arts District until December 31st.
Link [Barbara Hashimoto]
