A site-specific installation at I-Park, CT by Anya Klepikov, 2023.

Uncarved styrofoam from appliance packaging, garden netting, steel staples, wooden skewers, fishline, and water bottles.

54" x 54" x 54"

I had ended up with a lot of packing styrofoam that my kitchen appliances arrived in and couldn’t bear to throw it away since it’s both beautiful and doesn’t recycle well. I-Park, CT gave permission for a temporary installation, and I used garden netting (the kind intended to protect blueberry bushes from birds) to achieve ice-like translucency and to also protect the surrounding environment from any bits of crumbling styrofoam. The piece is dedicated to designer-organizer Sophie Weston Chien, my cohort-mate at I-Park, who insisted that the sculpture should float in the nearby pond to help connect the thematic dots between global shipping routes, packaging materials and impact on the climate. Weary of getting any styrofoam into the water, I ended up using giant water bottles available from I-Park’s art material junk pile as a stand-in for water.