Trade Winds. Second Life – Maggy Johnston
Trade Winds. Second Life transforms discarded plastic into a crocheted vessel anchored to beach-found driftwood. Reused jute from a Brazilian “Café do Brasil” coffee sack functions as the binding, linking the soft waste textile to the hard shoreline timber in a quiet metamorphosis of materials.
Trade Winds Second Life transforms discarded plastic bags into a crocheted vessel anchored to beach-found driftwood. The work is built from systems that usually stay out of sight—packaging, shipping, and shoreline debris—re-staged as something slow, tactile, and deliberately present.
Plastic is cut into thin ribbons and crocheted into a flexible skin. The repetitive stitchwork isn’t decoration; it’s the mechanism of metamorphosis—turning disposable material into structure through time and labour. Driftwood, shaped by current and abrasion, becomes the armature and threshold: it holds the form open, giving the vessel both edge and weight. A small but essential connector completes the conversion—reused jute from a Brazilian sack printed “Café do Brasil,” used as binding to lash the soft crocheted body to the hard timber. It’s a functional hinge between two worlds, not the focal point.
This is metamorphosis without theatrics. The piece does not pretend these materials become “pure” again. Wear, fray, and fibre memory remain visible as evidence of prior lives and the work of remaking. “Second life” is treated as a practical strategy—reuse as design, repair as aesthetics, responsibility as art.
Trade winds once moved goods across oceans. Here, they move attention—from use to afterlife, and from convenience to consequence.