Illustration

When presented with this location for Rust Magic I knew immediately that I wanted to use a can motif—reflecting not only the business in the building (City Cellars), but also as a nod to the nearby “Brewery District” and the decommissioned Molson factory one block over. Most importantly, I wanted to use cans to demonstrate the wonder of aluminum recycling. Aluminum recycling is one of the only aspects of modern recycling that actually *works*—it’s a process that’s over 95% efficient (!!!), can be repeated indefinitely with no loss in quality, and about 75% of all aluminum produced worldwide since 1881 is STILL IN PRODUCTION TODAY. That is wild! It means that a tallboy or club soda you buy at the store today may have aluminum molecules from a can produced in the Molson factory next door, or from any other time and place. I’ve described this concept by creating a gradient of cans, where each can borrows a bit of colour from each of the ones beside it, suggesting a pattern of shared aluminum molecules stretching from the past into the future. On the second wall, two giant cans hold glimpses of our future: a “ship in a bottle” (though here it’s a can), a metaphor for an uncertain destination at the mercy of climate change’s hostile tides; and a bright green can hosting a thorny, scrappy plant, suggesting a tentative hope. So much of our current relationship with the environment is increasingly unstable, and even our best “green” intentions serve as a bandaid solution at best. However! Aluminum recycling is a tiny beacon in a largely broken industry. So, keep recycling those cans!