Anthology of the Anthropocene, Vol. 2: Rendezvous de la Mer
Mixed media, 2025
About this work
In the United States, less than a third of glass is recycled, and even that figure hides deeper inefficiencies. The infrastructure to sort, clean, and remelt glass is expensive and regionally limited. The various colors and formulas of glass are incompatible with each other, and single- stream recycling programs lead to contamination which renders much of it unrecyclable. The promise of glass as a “green” alternative has been a kind of collective greenwashing: a convenient narrative that soothes consumer guilt while leaving the systemic failures of waste management unexamined. What is revealed in this work is not an endless cycle, but a broken one—a fragile material burdened by our myths of sustainability.
Kris Pitzer
Sculpture, mixed media, fabrication, Philadelphia
I make art that speaks to contradiction—between beauty and waste, permanence and impermanence, reverence and ruin. My practice sits at the uncomfortable intersection of ecological anxiety, personal vulnerability, and the quiet rituals of making. Whether I’m working in glass, metal, or wood, my work is driven by an urgency to confront the systems we’re complicit in—and the ones we create inside ourselves.