Upcycled Innovations

Human kind are story tellers. From connecting the stars in the night sky to create images of our mythic understanding of the seasons and our own cyclic nature to the stories we tell through television and new media we express ourselves and our dreams, our fears and our hopes. The pendant pictured above is Sterling Silver and upcycled television circuit board material. Once finished and about to be given a name, i suddenly noticed that it has circuit solder points which reminded me of the constellation Orion. "Orionic" is the first in a series of upcycled creations using circuit boards. When i saw the broken television someone had dumped in a parking lot, i was immediately struck by the turquoise like hue of the circuit board. I didn't even think twice about harvesting one mans trash. The neo-primitive urban hunter gatherer in me took what i could use and cleaned up the rest of the mess. I remembered my fathers code of "Leave it cleaner than you found it." This bit of culture would come out when we arrived at the place we would camp after hiking through the Olympic Mountains and we would scour the immediate area for pop lids or any trash. These days i impart this "leave no trace" on to my children as well as emphasizing a lifestyle of recycling, precycling (making consumer choices which reduce the need to recycle, such as buying produce from a local farm instead of in a plastic bag or a can or jar), and upcycling (taking a piece of trash or found object and using it as a raw material in the creation of something of greater value). I am glad i have found this piece of circuit board, it feels like the perfect upcycling material to integrate into my work.