Personal Background
Caroline South grew up in the Isles of Wight, a small island five miles off the coast of Hampshire. South grew up taking walks on the beach where she would look for small treasures like shells and sea glass. She fell in love with art at a young age and went onto the Surry Institute of Art and Design where she studied 3DD Ceramics. South, who is now a mom of two, still draws inspiration from walks on the beaches of West Sussex and mainly uses the little pieces of sea glass and plastic she finds. She uses these colorful pieces to not only give all her photos the pop of color she loves so much, but also to spread awareness to the amount of plastic in our beaches and oceans.
Style
South's style consists of a lot of color, and a lot of small plastic pieces. South finds all her pieces from walks on the beach, and she uses anything she can find that provides a pop of color. She has gathered hundreds, probably even thousands, of pieces which she stores by color until she can find a way to use them. South then uses these pieces to create shapes and beautiful gradients. South especially enjoys finding pieces of legos that still float around at sea from the containers that fell off 1997 Tokyo Express ship. As seen in this particular image, she used a full rainbow of colors, which makes a perfect circle, while each little section was made up of entirely different pieces.
Philosophy
South uses her art to raise awareness to the amount of plastic in our oceans. While her work is beautiful, it's also incredibly thought provoking. In just this one piece theres probably over a hundred different pieces of plastic. In a quote from an interview by The Aesthetic of Joy, South states, "I hope that by sharing the plastic I find, I am drawing attention to the Marine litter crisis and raising awareness of the damage it is doing to our Marine life. I hope that images such as the tampon applicators and cotton buds, show the huge problem of plastic pollution, as people can see the evidence in front of them."
Influences
Caroline South has inspired me to use more color in my pieces. I love how she uses different colors and creates such amazing gradients out of the most ordinary plastic pieces. I also really like the message she is promoting, the call to help our marine life. Though this is still a major problem, I think we have become distracted by the virus and other important changes in our lives and once again have started to neglect the planet-especially our oceans. I thinks it's really inspiring how she takes something so important and conveys a message through her art.
Photos(I did not find any titles for South's work.)
This was my favorite of South's photos that I found. I love the gradient and how they flow out of the envelope. I did my best to recreate this photo and tried to find flowers with the closest colors. I think they look very similar but you can tell that mine was made by an amateur. The colors are darker in mine especially the background, despite my attempts to make it a light colored piece.
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Something Stormy
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This photo was the hardest to recreate. I spent a good three hours on this: sorting through buttons, paining the candles and using clay to make the cloud. South's piece is much cleaner and has a variety of different plastic objects in the cloud while I only used buttons. The cloud in South's piece was clearly some sort of plastic, but I was unable to find anything similar so I made a cloud out of cardboard and clay.
This photo took me the longest to recreate. I bought a variety of paints and it took me almost two hours to find colors I deemed 'close enough' to the photographed gradient. I decided to do a teal-green-blue color scheme in my pictures rather than a straight blue gradient. South looks like she moved her brushes closer together, and had more paint at her disposal, while I left more space between the colors.
Artist Statement
I really enjoyed recreating these pictures. I like being artsy and colorful, even if I'm not very good at it. I think that all of these pictures turned out very well. Even if the art is a little messy. But I think that makes me like it more. I am messy. I am easily distracted. I am unorganized. I think that it is okay that my work reflects the kind of person I am. I'm not perfect, in fact I am definitely imperfect, but that does not take away from my beauty. Sometimes all I can think about is my flaws; how I can be better, do better, look better, and I forget that my flaws do not make me less beautiful. I really enjoy these pieces, imperfections and all. My favorite photo would have to be Healing Words. I love all of the colors I was able to use and I really enjoy the concept of having an envelope explode with something beautiful. I was once told that every beautiful thing has at least one flaw, and I think thats a great motto to live by. Every one of these pieces are beautiful, and every one has a flaw. But they're still full of color and life and the hard work I put into them. Nothing is perfect, but everything is beautiful.