Overwhelmed by JUNK

Lost and Found. Please Claim.

STORY & PHOTOS BY JULIETTE WOODS

The juxtaposition of trash in paradise is unmissable to me. I thought of how I, like many of us, take “postcard worthy” or “Instagrammable” photos, with careful angles or cropping out the unsightly and the seed was planted for sharing more accurate views on social media, and slowly it began to populate my posts.

In 2018, I held a vision quest opportunity on one of the local gulf islands. Over the course of those ceremonial days on the beach, I began collecting the trash that I found. It was utterly heart breaking the vast amount that I found and it changed me on a soul level. For three days the island itself had been speaking to and showing me a call for people to return to reverence. On an impulse, I created a visual representation of this disconnect as a large mandala-like arrangement on the sand.

Last spring I began posting “artsy” photos of trash mostly along Palm Beach, with tongue-in-cheek quips into a public Facebook album called “Lost and Found. Please Claim” and more recently, created an Instagram account for them. People began asking for prints and interviews. In these ways, I can share the constant aspect of trash washing ashore, highlight the beauty, and keep it from being too overwhelming on the heart. As a side effect, others began to notice and collect trash in paradise.