Sustainable Paper and Fiber Art by Leslie Espino

The pursuing report was published by artist Leslie Espino.

 

If I had a superpower, it would be the means to search at any piece of trash and see its potential as artwork. I make sustainable artwork from trash to demonstrate how you have the electric power to rethink waste.

I begun creating sustainable art by incident. Art is the secure place wherever I rediscovered the endurance to make as lots of mistakes as I necessary to discover my craft. In permitting go of this dread of failure, I also created stacks of unsuccessful paintings.

The creative in me was fulfilled. But the environmental scientist in me was dissatisfied.

Not comfortable with the amount of waste I designed in my pursuit of innovative flexibility, I commenced reusing these elements to check new strategies. I painted in excess of them. I reduce them. I stitched them. The good news is, the Strathmore 400 Series and Visible Journal watercolor paper I use withstood the cycles of repurposing and exploration

These scraps turned into the embroidered paper vegetation that are now my signature sustainable style.

Leslie Espino 3- Tongass Understory 02- Pure Earth Paints and Strathmore, Tongass Understory 02 by Leslie Espino (designed with Pure Earth Paint gouache, acrylic brush pens, and Strathmore 400 Sequence and Visible Journal  Briston paper.

Sustainability bridged the gap involving my vocation as an environmental scientist doing work at NASA and my profession as an artist.

This sustainable journey is a self-propelled cycle. At the time I exhausted my have resources to reuse, I commenced consciously paying for new elements. I researched models, study enterprise environmental effects statements, looked for secondhand resources, and so on.

Paper, fiber, and paint are the most important supplies in my storybook-design plant artwork. For paper, I look for Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) accredited papers. FSC-qualified papers are produced from pulp that can be traced back again to the origin forests. This traceability minimizes unsustainable techniques this sort of as illegal forest harvesting or applying old-advancement forests for wooden pulp.

Aged-development forests are an crucial source against weather change. They sequester more carbon than new development forests. The Tongass Countrywide Forest, for illustration, is the biggest aged-expansion forest in the U.S., and it holds a lot more biomass for every acre than any other rain forest in the world.

An outdated-expansion forest releases this stored carbon into the atmosphere when it is logged. Not like artifical carbon sequestration technologies, previous-expansion forests presently exist and demand no enhancement.

This tends to make outdated-growth forests a scarce source for climate stability that previously exists and necessitates no upkeep.

FSC-licensed paper does not occur from previous-growth forests like the Tongass Nationwide Forest.

My quest for sustainable artwork materials spurred modest changes which made a meaningful life-style modify.

For example, I now store for a lot more sustainable options to substitute solitary-use household items this sort of as sponges and plastic-bottled shampoo.

In limited, turning out to be a sustainable artist produced me a sustainable shopper.

In the end, I want you to glimpse at my sustainable art and be captivated by a thing that was the moment trash. I want my artwork to be the visible catalyst for alter.

If my artwork can aid you rethink trash, it will spark an consciousness that fuels your own personal sustainability journey of modest life style improvements.

Leslie Espino is a female environmental scientist operating at NASA in Houston, Texas. She results in sustainable art because it is an open up room wherever she is free of charge from both external and inner anticipations. As a lady doing the job in the male-dominated disciplines of STEM and art, Leslie makes use of her operate to check out safe spaces. Making use of new and repurposed fiber and paper, she makes storybook-design and style landscapes to recreate the globe as a harmless area for all. She hopes these landscapes invite the viewer to reconnect with their creativity and find their power as a steward of their ecosystem.