I found all the pieces of plastic in this picture on various beaches in Greece and Dublin. 

I am fascinated by the objects of our everyday lives that find themselves at sea and washed up on our shores. Over the last eight years I have beachcombed plastic and other manmade objects, using my ‘treasures’ to turn into jewellery and now art pieces. 

Having always loved secondhand things and growing up in a home where many of the contents were scoured from antique shops or the dump, I suppose my joy for giving discarded objects a new lease of life derives from this. I have turned the cellar of our home into my studio. It is my haven, overflowing boxes filled with the treasures I have found, old toothbrushes, razors, combs, toys, pens and so much more. Needless to say it takes a patient person to share my living place! My children are now so accustomed to me collecting rubbish that they will often pick up at a piece of litter off the pavement and present it to me like a trophy saying, “Your work mummy!” 

My passion for finding things on beaches is matched by an anxiety I know so many people share - the pollution we are causing. Walking on the beaches of Dublin over Christmas I was astonished by how many man made items were being washed up daily. After only a few days beachcombing I had collected bags full.

It was this experience that provided the inspiration for Tidal Tapestry. Each piece of plastic with its own story to tell had made its own unique journey to a beach it now shared with thousands of other completely unconnected pieces. And yet somehow the tide had 'woven' all of these random bits of plastic into a bigger picture telling its own powerful story - simultaneously beautiful and tragic. Tidal Tapestry is an attempt to capture this duality and the message that nature is sending us.