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Michael is on a quest to get his environmental footprint as low as humanly possible. So he built his own off-grid Tiny House. But downsizing and minimizing weren’t enough. He had to take more drastic measures, altering his lifestyle in some extreme ways, all in the name of saving the planet. But when it comes to his goal, he still feels in over his head. He doesn’t know if all the downsizing, minimizing, reducing, reusing, recycling, and sacrificing make a difference. It’s time to bring in the experts.
Join Michael as he sits down with scientists, policymakers, industry leaders, and environmental experts to figure out how to effectively reduce his footprint in all aspects of life. From food and fast fashion to cars and caskets, he gets into what the worst culprits really are and how we can all make more informed choices when it comes to the impact we have on the planet.
If you have feedback or would like to be a guest on In Over My Head, please email: info@inovermyhead.com
(00:00):
Well, I'm in over my head. No one told me tryin' to keep my footprints harder than I thought it could be. I'm in over my head, what do I really need trying to save the planet, Oh, will someone please save me?
Trying to save the planet. Oh, will someone please save me?
(00:24):
Welcome to In Over My Head. I'm Michael Bartz. My guest today is Arianna Richardson. Arianna is a sculptor performance artist and sewist from Lethbridge, Alberta in Treaty Seven Territory. She's a lifelong
crafter and thrift store enthusiast, constantly collecting plastic-based trash and discarded craft materials. Arianna often performs under the pseudonym, The Hobbyist, employing hobby craft techniques to work
through an investigation of ubiquitous consumption, gendered labor, waste, excess, and spectacle. Welcome to In Over My Head, Arianna.
(00:56):
Thank you for having me, Michael.
(00:58):
So I was thinking about in the past, I've talked about consumerism and waste and things like that, and then I came across your work and that touches on some of those things. So you're an artist. Tell me about
your art.
(01:10):
I make art with garbage as a main source of my material and also things collected from the thrift store, which is kind of almost garbage. It's garbage adjacent. And yeah, I do performance work, mostly
sculpture, though, a lot of textile soft sculptures using plastic. It all boils down to just plastic, I guess. Everything from the thrift store, all the garbage. It's all plastic.
(01:39):
And what made you want to use plastic as a medium for your art?
(01:43):
Well, I was doing my master's degree, and they kind of get you to really think, what am I doing? Why am I doing the things I'm doing? So I'm just sitting there looking around my studio and thinking like, wow,
everything around me is plastic. Every little thing I've collected and everything I'm attracted to aesthetically and materially. I look at it and as a whole, it's all plastic and just for me, it was just a big epiphany of, wow, okay, what does that mean? So I've just been exploring that, I guess, for six or eight years now.
(02:18):
Yeah, maybe tell me about maybe the last piece you're working on. What would something look like that you're working on?
(02:24):
I'll just do a broad description first. Everything I do is really kitschy and bright and colorful, a lot of decoration. I try to really push the limits of frivolous decoration and just try and put layer upon layer. It's often sparkly, and multicolored. Right now I'm working on a set of pillows. I've been really obsessed with making pillows lately for many reasons, but it's a good place to stuff garbage, plastic waste. It's a good, interesting use of that material. So just making really decorative pillows, kind of with little catchphrases on them sometimes, and it's always playful and fun and absurd and kind of invites you in to a whole new world.
(03:08):
Tell me more about these pillows. What do they look like? Are they for a couch?
(03:13):
Well,
(03:13):
I mean, I know that's an art piece, but Yeah.
(03:15):
Well, these ones are, well, I decided to make them. I was at Value Village and I found these two purple satin pillowcases that were quilted and roughly, and it was obviously some sort of project that someone had made. It was homemade, and I just fell in love with them. That's kind of my main jam. I love homemade things. I love hobby craft, all of that. So I picked 'em up. They were set, and I've been making lots of stipticks lately. Two pieces that go together to make one. I'm using a very well, a phrase, I'm very obsessed with time I spent and time I wasted. So when I found this duo pillow set, I was like, oh, perfect. This is just what I need. And one is time I spent, and one is time I wasted, and I'm just decorating them and applicating the font. I'm doing a whole bunches of sewing, tedious little sewing projects, but they're going to be amazing. They're beautiful. They're kind of this size of a pillow you would sleep on. My
vision is I want to have a huge pile of pillows. I want to have a hundred pillows, maybe all saying the same phrases or maybe having different phrases. Maybe some with none. I dunno. But I want to have a
huge pile of pillows. That's my end vision. We'll see when it realizes.
(04:29):
Tell me more about that phrase you said time spent, time wasted. Why is that a theme for you?
(04:34):
I just find it to be a really rich source of thought for me, thinking about my labor and the time and energy I spend in my life. When is it valued? When is it not valued? It's so arbitrary. So I always make the pillows identical except for the phrase. So it kind of makes that ambivalence or I don't know, when I'm at the studio, toiling away on these silly pillows that don't have a home. They're not for, I haven't sold them to someone. They're not going to be in a show necessarily in the immediate future. It's kind of like, am I wasting my time to me? I'm spending it maybe to someone else I'd be wasting it. So it's kind of just this arbitrary distinction, and I like to think about it a lot and thinking about, I know we're going to be talking
about consumerism and kind of environmentalism and thinking about that. The time you spend worrying about the end of the world and not being able to stop it or worrying about, am I doing enough to be helpful on this earth, or is that time you're spending wisely or is it waste of time? Because no one can ever know. It's a kind of an existential quandary in some ways, even though it's just a simple little quippy catchphrase.
(05:48):
And so along those lines, like you said, yes, a lot of your work revolves around questioning consumerism, things like that. Tell more about that side of your work.
(05:59):
Well, I've always been a lifelong thrift store person for my whole life. But then as I started to go there after thinking about art and all of that, a lot of the things I was attracted to there or wanting to collect, I'm really a collector. I feel like that's a huge part of my art practice is just collecting things and having them inform what I make. I'm sure that's what everyone would say, whatever their material is. But a lot of the things I was collecting were these really cheesy, kitschy little consumer products that I just was attracted to the imagery of marketing and the certain colors that are in there, or the materials that it started with
souvenirs a lot how souvenirs are. So it's like consumerism for consumerism's sake, basically. It's like, buy this thing to commemorate your memories. And so I was thinking a lot about souvenirs for a long time, and then it kind of morphed into packaging somehow.
(07:00):
I don't really know how that happened. I just find it to be a good source of inspiration. I guess consumerism because of marketing and because of all of that that goes into it that is really aesthetically geared. So with packaging, I really love tinsel. That's a whole thing with my practice is I've always really loved the sparkly sparkles, tinsel sequence, all the things, rhinestones, you name it. So I was thinking about that and thinking about plastic and environmentalism, becoming more aware of the plastic pollution problem. So then I was eating chips. I also love to eat chips. It's a great delicious snack. And I'm looking there eating. I'm like, wow, the inside of the bag looks like tinsel. I'm like, why is that? Does it have to do
with keeping the chips fresh? Is it aesthetic does excite our mind and it makes us want to eat more chips?
(07:55):
Maybe there's a psychological element there that the packaging companies are using to sell more products. I don't know, that's a bit paranoid. But anyway, so I thought, I feel guilty creating all this
garbage eating chips as a snack. I love tinsel. I don't want to just go spend a bunch of money on tinsels, so wow, maybe I can start trying to use chip bags for an art material and then figuring out how to do that.
And then it kind of led to just looking at packaging in general in a different way. And there isn't really consumers without packaging. So that's kind of my biggest angle on it, is just the material aspect of consumerism. And then it gets into waste and garbage and that whole system, which is, it's endless. We could talk about that forever.
(08:41):
Well, yeah, we could talk a bit about that. So on the waste side of things, that's also part of your practice. So yeah, tell me more about why that's important to you.
(08:49):
Well, it's really kind of a self-serving project in a way, because it helps me to feel better, my own consumption and my own kind of footprint, really, really hard to not generate packaging garbage. It takes a really certain lifestyle that isn't really available to all people. It's almost like a full-time job trying to do zero waste everything. And it costs a bunch of money potentially to buy certain products that you can refill. If you go to a health food store, which I love to do, and buy some organic dish soap and use it, and then you can bring it back and refill that container. But it requires going to this whole other spot which needs more time. It's more expensive, you need more money. So it's, it becomes an exclusive zone in some ways. So most of us are forced to just be complicit in the consumerism cycle.
(09:43):
Even if we identify problems with it, don't like it, we're kind of trapped in it. So for me, finding a way to use that material and use the waste that I'm generating has helped me feel better and has been an outlet for me to not have as much anxiety about knowing about all these things that are going on in the world and not having any control over it. And I can't stop it. Not that me doing anything is helping or changing anything in my opinion. I question that often, but it makes me feel better, which is net positive.
(10:16):
And then even one of your pieces was just a year's worth of trash in a cube. And so it seems like that still can inspire people to think about that sort of thing, right?
(10:28):
Totally. I want people to be inspired and think about their own waste in their own life and ways they could maybe use it, or just seeing the sheer volume of, it's overwhelming to be like, wow, this is someone
who's trying to be really eco, and this is how much plastic they've generated. It gives you something to think about.
(10:49):
Yeah, I know. And I think, if I remember correctly, part of your work, even thinking about how when we have waste, it just goes away. We don't see it anymore. So now you're making it more present
(10:59):
And making it really loud and in your face with colors and patterns and dazzling sparkles. And that's part of my strategy to trick people into thinking about garbage and waste and these heavy consumerism and
the impact on the environment, all of that. It's really heavy and dark, and it doesn't make you feel good. So if you can invite people into this gallery with fun colors, exciting patterns, it's playful. And then you kind of get closer and you're like, oh wait, it's made of garbage. Why is that? Maybe it can lead people down a trail to thinking about it without having to feel super bad, not very generative. If you're feeling bad and defeated and helpless, you're not going to feel empowered to do anything about it.
(11:44):
Absolutely. Yeah. You might feel in over your head.
(11:46):
Exactly. Yeah.
(11:48):
And talking about that some of your work is performative and you are with people. Yeah. Is there a sense that they feel the same way about the plastic problem or waste problem? They feel overwhelmed. Do you
get that sense?
(12:02):
For sure. With most people, it's very infrequent that I talk to somebody that's like, oh, no, I don't think about that. It's very infrequent. Pretty much everyone is like, yeah, I am worried about how much garbage
I create. It bothers me, but what can I do? And then I like to ask people, what do you do? Do you do any upcycling? Do you do anything like that? And often everybody I've talked to has some sort of practice of even washing out their Ziploc bags and reusing them. So it's nice to just chat with people about that and just, I don't know, get the vibe of how people feel about waste and garbage in my own weird little micro
way.
(12:41):
And also your style of performance. It's very flashy. It's very kind of, it's striking, right. I'm just wondering if you have any sort of reactions from people, just from the style of performance that you have? Has that, again, the glittery things kind of attracted people?
(13:00):
Yeah, I've been thinking about that persona almost more as a clown character in some ways. It kind of invites people in. So strange when you just see someone wearing a gold head-to-toe gold jumpsuit with a
clipboard, you're like, what's going on there? That's not something you see. So I hope piques someone's curiosity and then they can come talk to me and I can talk to them about garbage.
(13:23):
And you've done various performances all around Canada, right?
(13:27):
A little bit, yeah.
(13:28):
Tell me about some of those experiences.
(13:30):
Well, one I've done a few times is called Garbage Party, where I built this garbage can that's 10 feet long, and it's like garbage can height four feet, and it's all hand-woven. It's like a really beautiful piece of hobby craft infrastructure, which is a silly thing. So there's nine receptacles, nine holes in the garbage can. And I've kind of got them all separated into different categories. So I've played around with that a lot. There's
plastic bottles, like cigarette materials, all kinds of different categories. And then the back is all clear, so you can see how full each bag is, which is kind of like a little visual pull. So this garbage will be installed. It's been up for a week in a spot. It's been up for a month in a spot. And then I'll go and do some performances where I go and kind of collect trash and document everything I've picked up just to see what's out there in whatever spot I'm in.
(14:31):
And also conducting these interviews with people and talking to them about their trash habits and their thoughts on trash. That's been a fun activity to go do. And just see how different parks are different, how
different, no one ever has ruined it or anything. It's just been a good time. One of my other side projects is taking pictures of garbage infrastructure kind of everywhere I go. And that's really fun to see how different it is in different spots or just the sheer variety of garbage cans in this world. It's really, that's a total segue into nonsense, but it feels related in that way. It's kind of just a way of looking at garbage and thinking about it and making it really visible so people can talk about it.
(15:16):
Yeah, and that was a big part of your book Garbage Party. It was many, many images of different receptacles. What made you want to take photos of these garbage cans? What first kind of made you think, oh, I should be photographing these?
(15:30):
Well, just thinking about the waste management infrastructure, I did a lot of research into that during my master's degree, just looking at when was garbage collection starting to happen? Where did it start happening? How has it progressed? All of that I find really interesting because kind of like the structure behind consumerism that keeps it going, that we're able to buy stuff, we have to be able to get rid of stuff. And the idea that it goes away, I think that's really important to keeping everything going in that way. It's not my problem anymore. Goodbye. So a huge part of that is garbage cans. You have to have places to put the garbage so it can go away. It becomes this magical receptacle that takes away our problems in a way. So I just started really thinking about garbage cans and what they look like. Why are they designed, and how they're designed.
(16:26):
People are trying to stimulate engagement with them. So certain receptacles have different holes to accept different things and to cue people in that direction in a non-sign-based way. So there's a huge variety of strategies that people have tried. And I dunno, sometimes they're made to look really blending in so that we don't see them. They're so important and we need them to be there, and they need to be visible, but they also want to blend in unsavory and disgusting. It's like the dark side of consumerism, the garbage generated by it. So just seeing how many are out there, I just thought I wanted to make a typography and
just see how many different ones I could accumulate.
(17:10):
I guess one thing that stood out for me, Arianna, from your work, so you perform under the pseudonym, The Hobbyist. Tell me a little about that.
(17:19):
Yeah, that's something I developed a really long time ago, kind of just with this desire to build a persona that kind of wasn't me, but was me. And I felt it would kind of give me freedom to just within my art practice, specifically the freedom or the permission for myself to just try anything. If I don't know how to do a process, I can just try and figure it out, try and get a new hobby out of it and see what I can accomplish without limitations of, well, I don't know how to do that, so I can't do that. It's like, well, I can try see what happens. Maybe there's a lot of value in that, and just that I just have a do-it-yourself ethos in that way. As I became interested in talking to people about garbage, I guess that's the impetus for doing performances in a way, is just this way to interface with people more.
(18:13):
Because showing art, being an artist, there's really a disconnect with the audience when you make an object and people see it. And if it's in a gallery, I don't know who sees it. I don't talk to those people unless they specifically reach out, which happens occasionally, but it just kind of exists out there. So I was like, well, how can I explore these ideas that I'm thinking about with people and try and check their vibe on it? Performance art? I'll try that. So then the hobbyist kind of became this easy title for my performance persona, and that's kind of how I've been now. Now I'm kind of like a hobbyist data collector with my surveys. I'll try and parse all the information I've collected and make these little charts and try to make sense of the experience in a hobby statistics, sort of fake social science or something.
(19:04):
I wouldn't say maybe not fake social science, but even citizen science, right?
(19:09):
Yeah, exactly. That's a good phrase for it, citizen science, which is totally valid and important that we're all out there doing stuff like that.
(19:15):
No, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. We need that information as well. And I guess the one thing that stands out for me about what you talked about was that accessibility piece where perhaps fine art, let's say, isn't
always accessible to everyone. So it seems like part of your work is also making that accessible as the hobbyist.
(19:35):
Yeah, totally. I didn't grow up going to art galleries and kind of living in that world. That wasn't part of my life until I went to art school and was like, wow, there's this whole thing out there that's really cool. So it is really exclusive, and it's not very many people feel comfortable going to an art gallery or regularly go to an art gallery. So to put the art out in the street and meet people where they became important to me in
that way. I want to talk to all kinds of people. I don't want to just talk to art, school-educated, art-aware people. Then I am in this little bubble. I want to give it to everyone. Everyone deserves the joy. Everyone
can understand my art. I think I don't ever want it to be exclusive, and you have to have this whole history of theory in your brain to understand what I'm trying to get at. It's like if I want to talk about ideas of change and environmental awareness or something like that, if there's that piece in my art, it's like why would I not want to spread that to as wide of an audience as possible? So part of that is getting outside of the gallery, and that's been fun. I still like galleries. I still pursue that, but it's just a different thing.
(20:53):
Absolutely. Yeah. No, no, I definitely see value in that for sure. Yeah. The one other thing about The Hobbyist, which really stuck out for me, even just back to that consumer culture, when I was reading your thesis, it talked about how hobbies as they were created was kind of tied into consumer culture. Can you tell me a bit about that?
(21:10):
Yeah, that's really fascinating. Just during the Great Depression, from what I understand, this really great book by Susan Strasser called Waste and Want, I dunno if you're familiar with it, but it's an epic tale of
waste history socially or whatever. It's really great. So she talks in there about how in the depression, hobby craft kind of emerged like this idea of a purchasable kit to do a craft or something at home. At that time, it was the depression, it was economically depressed. So people I think had more time. So it was a way to keep people busy in a way, and then also opened up a whole new market of stuff you could sell to people, especially with the aspirational quality of it. Well, yeah, I'd love to knit. I'd love to be able to knit. I'd love to learn that skill. So you buy the kit, you try it, maybe you lose interest, maybe it's not for you, and maybe by then you've bought a few. It turns into a way to sell things to people. And I found that really interesting. It is such a great thing, making with your hands. It feels good, and we're drawn to it as humans. I think it's important for us to make things and build whatever it is, whether it's cooking, or whatever.
(22:29):
It was kind of also furthering that consumerism too, writing kind of like it's work. So you're kind of doing this thing, right?
(22:36):
Yeah. It still feels productive, which is an important moral quality of the time to be a productive member of society.
(22:44):
And even that idea of idle hands make for revolutionary work controlling the masses too. Right?
Totally. And I can get paranoid very quickly thinking about just how consumerism controls us and how insidious that is and how undetectable it is. It's just so ingrained in our way of life that you don't even realize you're being manipulated into buying stuff you don't need. Because if you just had time to get together and talk about things with people, and maybe you could affect a bit more change than the big
corporations would want you to. But I try not to get too paranoid because I have a tendency to do that, and then it's just like, ah, got to keep it in check.
(23:26):
Fair enough. Something that really interests me and things I've talked about with past guests, the good life. What is the good life? And that really interests me as far as, yeah, is it stuff or is it time with people
and conversations and being present and stuff. So it seems like with your work, you're kind of questioning that consumer side of things
(23:46):
While still recognizing my own complicity in it. I would love to live this idyllic life without any of these problems, but I don't think I can get there. I just don't see that path. So I'm on the path I'm on, so I'm just
trying my best, which is all we can do. That's all anyone's trying to do, right?
(24:05):
Absolutely. Yeah. And like you said earlier too, even living that zero-waste life or something, it's not always realistic for the average person. You have your job and your kids and other responsibilities, and you don't have time or energy or you just can't physically do that. So yeah, I appreciate that. You're also honest about that too. That's not this purity test. As I've heard in the past.
(24:29):
I really don't like purity culture because it's just not realistic. It's like, yeah, I'd love to only wear linen and bamboo and organic cotton, but I can't afford that. So I have to go buy whatever polyester clothes I can
buy and wear those, and I don't want to feel like a terrible person for that. There's got to be some middle ground of like, well, yeah, I do try and get everything I can from the thrift store, from what I know, that's always better to get something used if you can, but just because it's not well, and it's not usually covered in packaging, which is cool, and it's already been made and it's there waiting to be used. But I think the thrift store is such a great place to, well, this is going to get a little woo woo, but thinking about things and their ability to, if they have the ability or not to affect their surroundings and influence us in inanimate objects, there's a whole philosophical avenue talking about that sort of thing, which I find
interesting.
(25:27):
So then the thrift store becomes this place where you can really access material histories through objects. And if you think of, wow, I could ramble on about that forever, something I love to think about, but just thinking about the history contained in objects, manufactured goods, everything is contained in there. If you think of it on this level of it was oil in the ground, well, what was that? That was dinosaurs and flora and fauna from long, long ago. It becomes oil, it gets extracted. All that process is contained in that material potentially. Then it gets manufactured in a factory. It gets shipped, it gets bought, it gets used, it gets discarded, it gets bought again. I think there's just this endless cycle that's really interesting if you want to think about the psychic space of all of that. But the thrift store is a great place to gather those histories or kind of tap into that in a way.
(26:26):
And it even makes me think about thrift stores aside, but even maybe your own things. I think about repairing things versus throwing them away, and the idea of the stories behind your things. And so many
times I've repaired a certain item and I like it that much more, and I feel like I'm that much more attached to it because now it has this story where it broke and I fixed it and I was able to give it a second life. So that just makes me think of that. It seems like a good thing.
(26:56):
It is a good thing. And that's part of that hobbyist ethos that I have built into my practice is like, well, yeah, my vacuum cleaner's broken. Well, I can try and fix it. Go on. YouTube's so much stuff on there to help with fixing anything. And then you are more invested in it and it gives you a little confidence boost. It's a good thing for us to build and fix.
(27:21):
And Arianna, I was curious going back to that packaging side of things. Yeah, it's just something we don't always think about. So did you have any other ideas or other thoughts on packaging?
(27:31):
Yeah, I think the aesthetics of packaging are really underappreciated, and part of my desire to collect and use them is to hopefully elevate that side or make people look at it and think of it in a different way, the throwaway part, but someone spent time designing it and thinking about the aesthetics of it and the practicality. There's kind of an interesting meshing there of aesthetics and practicality, which I don't think we appreciate because it's just made to be thrown away, so we forget that it was made. And so I think that for me is a huge attractive quality for packaging. If you think of all the plastic clamshell sort of things that you'll buy, like baked goods in, for instance, often they're ornate and have these funny, almost decorative, well definitely decorative elements. It's like, why did they do that? If they know it's just going to be thrown away?
(28:31):
I don't know. It's someone put time into doing it. And so I just want to honor that or appreciate that in a way. It also kind of ties into the marketing aspect. For instance, when I use chip bags in my art, I wash
them and dry them out, but I'll often shred it into a confetti. And the fragments are less than a centimeter squared, but you can still tell what flavor and brand of chip it is just from that tiny little piece that color.
It's like those color signals and all of that really speak to how ingrained all of that marketing and consumerism is in our brains. And people comment on it all the time. They're looking at it. And when I see people looking at it, they're like, oh, that's zesty Doritos. I know that piece. And it's just a tiny little flake of garbage.
And I just find that really interesting, just telling I guess, of how immersed in it we are all the time. And packaging is a necessity. It gets goods to consumers, which is a necessity of life. We need things, we need
food, but it's also unnecessary. So again, it's like this weird, the amount that there is is unnecessary, and just the sheer amount that we throw away is shocking. So there's again, just that ambivalence. I'm always
looking for these points of the conflicting feelings or truths, like I'm horrified by the amount of packaging that I generate, but I also really love the packaging that I collect from that consumption, and I feel excited
to use it. So it's like, how can I feel these two totally conflicting things and just, I think we all have that about so many things. So it's just a huge source of work for me.
(30:18):
And I guess so if people are feeling that way, if they feel like, boy, what can I do if I'm feeling conflicted? I dunno. Do you have any advice that you give people to try to do something or at least feel better about
the things we've been talking about?
(30:31):
I think doing anything feels better. So even if it feels small, even if it feels completely absurd, it might help. It might help you feel better. It might help someone realize their impact and change their habits too. So it's like we don't know what is going to change everything around us, and we feel small and tiny because we are, we're all just a bunch of people on this earth. But I think little changes can have big impacts, even if only in your own mind, even if it's only in your own psychological space. I think there's a lot of value in that. If you feel better, you'll be able to do better. So if we reusing your chip bags to make whatever you want to make with it makes you feel good, then I say do it. Don't care what anyone says. Just do what makes you feel good.
(31:20):
Well Arianna, this has been a lovely conversation. Thank you so much for chatting with me.
(31:24):
Yes, thank you. It's time well spent.