Plastic Reimagined: Stone Lace and Imprint

 As an art teacher, Tsarimira often receives bouquets of flowers from her students as a token of gratitude during holidays. These bouquets are typically wrapped in plastic mesh, cellophane, or nylon. While the flowers wither after a couple of weeks, the packaging materials remain. Instead of discarding them, she carefully examines these materials with imagination and seeks to give them new life in her personal artwork or when working with children and adults. She incorporates these materials into her paintings in two distinct ways, and the results are always unexpected and exciting for her. 

In the technique she calls “stone lace,” she uses laminated canvas, plastic quartz, or a white paste resembling plaster to “petrify” pieces of plastic lace, cellophane, or nylon. Depending on the theme and idea of the artwork, she arranges the elements into a composition on the canvas. Using sponges and paintbrushes, she applies multiple layers of the white paste until the elements achieve the desired relief and become one with the base. After drying, she coats the surface with varnish and builds up the colors with patina. A final coat of varnish, applied the next day, completes the eco-artwork in which plastic, cellophane, and nylon are transformed into art. 

In the second approach, she uses the same materials to create various unexpected imprints on laminated canvas with acrylic inks. Water, acrylic inks, laminated canvas, and brushes come into play to create what she calls a base layer. The paint requires time to dry under the crumpled materials on the canvas. Once the plastic, nylon, or cellophane is peeled away, a colorful foundation emerges, from which she extracts images based on her concept and theme. She stores and reuses these packaging materials multiple times for future paintings.