Maika'i Tubbs
Stepping Stones
From the Water Line series: Maika'i Tubbs uses found detritus to create sculptures and installations exploring themes of obsolescence, consumption, and ecology. He regards discarded objects as untapped resources and transforms them to reveal a hidden world of limitless potential. His process-oriented work reflects his observation of familiar objects and is influenced by the blurring of boundaries between organic and artificial objects. Tubbs’ recent work draws upon the geological discovery of plastiglomerate, a fusion of microplastic, rock, sand, basalt, coral, and wood. The abundance of this man-made hybrid substance along the coastline of Hawai’i Island reflects humankind’s impact of the environment as well as a shift in the concept of nature itself. Tubbs creates his own version of these stones from the detritus of urban city life and slices them open to expose the intricate layers of cardboard, paper, plastic containers, shopping bags, and other fragments within them. They represent traces of the waste material landscape that helped forge them and also future fossil records.