67 www.ReadMPM.com | www.MountPleasantMagazine.com | www.MountPleasantPodcast.com Picking trash up on the beach can start small and snowball. You start out thinking you’ll find a few pieces here and there. Then you keep walking. Another bottle cap. A plastic cup. A broken toy. By the end, you’ve filled a bag and somehow the beach still doesn’t look completely clean. For most people, that trash gets discarded in a dumpster. For Briar Bowman, it ended up in an art show. The 15-year-old Isle of Palms resident recently earned second place at the North Charleston Arts Fest’s Tri-County High School Sculpture Competition & Exhibition for “Conchiglia,” a sculpture she created using repurposed materials collected during years of beach cleanups. The piece is shaped like a whelk shell; a common beach find you may recognize if you are familiar with South Carolina’s seashore. Bowman said she has always loved art. She started taking lessons in third grade. The idea for “Conchiglia” didn’t come from an art class assignment or a school project, but rather frustration. “The amount of trash on the island has always bothered me,” she said. No life-changing moment. No grand speech. Just someone who loves where she lives who grew tired of seeing litter wash up or get left behind. A trip to Atlanta a few years ago helped connect the dots. While there, she saw artwork made from repurposed materials displayed along a walking trail. The idea stayed with her. Back home, the trash she was collecting started to look different. Not prettier. Not less annoying. Just useful. So she began saving it. Her family has been picking up litter for years as they walk the beach. Bowman would sort the litter when they got home. For this project, she focused on plastics such as cups, bottles, toys, bottle caps, six-pack rings and other miscellaneous items. Finding the materials wasn’t difficult, but creating the shell presented a challenge. She spent countless hours fashioning the wire frame underneath, trying to get the shape just right before she could even start attaching the collected pieces. Anyone who has ever attempted a creative project knows that part. It’s the stage where you’re convinced the thing you envisioned may never actually look the way you imagined it. When Bowman learned she had won second place, she was excited. Her parents were proud too. They seemed impressed by both the process and the result, having watched their daughter spend months collecting, sorting, planning, experimenting and rebuilding. That’s not something a ribbon can measure. Bowman’s sculpture offers a beautiful reminder of how we can take care of the world no matter our age. A shell made from trash shouldn’t work. Yet somehow it does. Maybe because it tells a story that’s easy to understand. The same beach that gives us pretty shells also collects the items we leave behind. Bowman simply found a way to represent both realities in the same piece of art. Judging by the bins of materials already waiting for her next project, she’s not finished telling that story. More Than a Seashell IOP teen’s repurposed sculpture recognized at Arts Fest BY CARI LAWSON the islands
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