Road litter sculptures strike chord

Louise Walsh A Westmeath artist has used 11 bin bags of rubbish picked up along verges of main roads to create

A Westmeath artist has used 11 bin bags of rubbish picked up along verges of main roads to create musician sculptures in a Meath scenic spot.

Mishel Griffiths took six hours to drive the 90-minute distance between her home in Tang and the Columban Missionaries homestead outside Navan.

The Welsh native was invited by Columban Missionaries friends to create a sculpture after they saw her initial work on the side of the road near her home.

Now for the coming months, visitors to Dalgan Park can view her travelling Music Makers, litter sculptures complete with flute, cello, and ukulele players as well as their own luggage.

Each piece is made mostly from plastic bottles, tin cans, gloves, cigarette packets, and coffee cups discarded along the country’s main roads.

“It started in January when I picked up all the rubbish along the road near my home and decided to make a sculpture, which I called the Reclining Man because of a recliner I found in a ditch,” said Mishel.

“I then made The Hitchhikers, so called because of all the gloves I found along the verges.”

At the invitation of friends, Mishel drove to Dalgan Park where she created Music Makers to make people think about the amounts of rubbish littering our countryside.

“It’s normally a 90-minute journey to Dalgan but it took me six hours because I stopped off at various stretches of road, where it was safe to pull in, to pick up litter along the way. I started with empty bin bags and had 11 full receptacles in the boot filled mostly with tin cans, plastic bottles, crisp packets, cigarette butts and packets as well. I can’t understand who thinks it’s OK to throw things into our landscape and don’t even care if it’s cleaned up or not.

“I normally leave the sculptures up for a month or so before dismantling them and taking them to be recycled, but it’s long enough, I hope, to make people think of the volumes of rubbish that people — possibly us, our neighbours, relatives, and friends — are dumping or throwing from cars. It’s everyone’s responsibility. We need to ask ourselves questions, look at the world we create, the stuff we consume, and our relationship with the earth.”