"What Goes Around Comes Around," a traveling art exhibition, manifested from three years of research on plastics in the marine environment. It serves as a visually expressive conclusion to Bonnie Monteleone's UNCW master's thesis, Plastic Ocean Project.

​

Plastic does not biodegrade like natural debris such as wood, metals, or plants. It photo-degrades meaning oxidation from the sun makes it weaker and more brittle causing it to breakdown into smaller pieces. Unlike natural debris, plastics do not go away renewing the soil. Instead it continues to leach out manmade chemical compounds. Because plastic debris is not compostable and has a projected lifecycle up to 1,000 years, and sadly, a portion of it ends up in our oceans.

​

The waves in Monteleone's work are based on Hokusai's "Great Wave off Kanagawa." Note the degradation of the ocean from one wav to the next–each one losing parts of the original Hokusai image until it looks nothing like the original. Monteleone's exhibit storyboard's a very different ocean than waht Hokusai saw less than 200 years ago...a time before plastic.

​