Conversation with Meredith Andrews

Please enjoy my conversation with Meredith Andrews aka Plastic Mermade.

 Contemporary portrait, travel and lifestyle photographer Meredith Andrews has shot for editorial, advertising and private clients all over the world. Based on the sub tropical island of Bermuda, where she finds much of her inspiration. 

Her work can be seen in almost every medium including dozens of international exhibitions such as the 2009 and 2019 Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize at National Portrait Gallery in London, UK, Portrait of Humanity 2020, OpenWalls Arles 2020, the Copenhagen Photo Festival, a solo show at the Bermuda National Gallery in 2021, a silver winner of the Association of Photographers awards, the BJP International Photography Award, the Royal Photographic Society International exhibition and the PHOTO IS:REAL Festival all in 2022. 

Most recently Meredith’s work was exhibited at the Women Street Photographers exhibition in NYC, Miami Art Week and Apollo’s Decathlon, Paris 2024 Cultural Olympiad at Château de Montsoreau in France.

https://meredithandrewsphotography.com/ 

https://www.instagram.com/meredithphoto 

https://www.instagram.com/plastic_mermade 

https://www.gold.ac.uk/

https://www.uwcatlantic.org/

https://www.mcgill.ca/

https://www.marimekko.com/us_en

Bermuda National Gallery https://bng.bm/  https://bng.bm/a-collector-at-heart/ 

Documentary about Meredith https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aktHI8iZiA0&t=387s

Keep Bermuda Beautiful https://www.kbb.bm/

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, author All We Can Save and What If We Get It Right? https://www.ayanaelizabeth.com/ 

Sam Bentley Good News https://www.youtube.com/@itsSamBentley

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/whimsical-legos-are-still-washing-ashore-decades-after-they-were-lost-at-sea-180979580/ 

This podcast was created by Natalya Khorover. It was produced and recorded by Natalya, as well as researched and edited by her. SALVAGE is a product of ECOLOOP.ART.

If you enjoy this show, please rate and review us wherever you’re listening—and be sure to come back for another conversation with a repurposed media artist.

Music theme by RC Guida

Visit Natalya’s website at www.artbynatalya.com

Visit Natalya’s community at www.repurposercollective.com

Visit Natalya’s workshops at https://www.ecoloop.art/

Transcript

Welcome to Salvage, a podcast for conversations with artists about the repurposed materials they use in their art practice.

Please enjoy my conversation with Meredith Andrews, aka Plastic Mermade. Meredith is a contemporary portrait, travel and lifestyle photographer who has shot for editorial, advertising and private private clients all over the world. She is based on the tropical island of Bermuda, where she finds much of her inspiration. Her work can be seen in almost every medium, including dozens of international exhibitions such as the 2009 and 2019 Taylor Lessing portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in London, UK.

Portrait of humanity 2020 Open Walls, Arles 2020, the Copenhagen Photo Festival and the solo show at the Bermuda National Gallery in 2021. I am delighted that Meredith is here to talk to her, to us about her life as the plastic mermaid.

Well, thank you so much, Meredith, for joining me here. I am. I'm delighted that you agreed to do this. Of course. So I first, I think I first discovered you under the plastic mermade Instagram account.

I had no idea that you were a photographer as well. And I think. Yeah, it was just all your assemblages from this found plastic. And then I finally went to your website, and I was like, oh, my God, she is an accomplished photographer with all these other things. And so I am very interested in how it all came to be.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So I am a professional photographer and I have been I finished my masters in 2000, so I guess I've been working since then. I worked as an assistant to begin with, so I did my master's degree in London at Goldsmiths College. Oh, okay. And, And then I assisted in London for a few years.

And then I kind of was doing small jobs here and there, but, a friend of mine saw, a newspaper ad for a job at the newspaper back here in Bermuda, where I'm from. Oh, so you're originally from Bermuda? Yes. Yeah, my family's from here. So. Yeah. As a child, I bounced around a little bit.

So I sound quite American because I lived in California when I was younger. My mother is English and my father's from Bermuda, and so we sort of moved around, and then, Yeah, when I was, 14, they moved back here full time, and then when I was 17, I went to sixth form College in Wales at a really amazing school called Atlantic College.

Oh, it's part of the United World College movement. And, long story short, 400 students from 75 countries. At that time, 90% were on scholarship. So had that amazing experience. And then, I took a gap year and then I went, did my undergraduate degree in Montreal at McGill University, and then I did my master's degree in photography at Goldsmiths College in London.

Yeah. So then, so I, when I was studying photography, I was sort of not sure what I wanted to do, but I was thinking that I would go into photojournalism.

And so, right after Goldsmiths, I needed to start working, and, so, and this is at the time where it was still film. So I worked at a couple labs, and then I did a work experience at the independent newspaper, which was really incredible because it's like a hub for fantastic photojournalism. But then they couldn't hire me full time and I needed to eat.

So I started assisting. And then I kind of got in the world of commercial photography, but specifically portrait photography, working. Stunning. Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, so that's I really think of myself as a portrait photographer because so it sort of came from that. And then after a few years of doing that in London was pretty exhausted by London.

So, friend of mine saw an ad for a photojournalist for the local paper, and I should give a little context here. So Bermuda is, 26mi². It's the second most isolated place on Earth, and we have a population of about 65,000. Wow. So you know it when I say I came home to work at the paper, it's because there's only one paper.

So, Yeah. So anyhow, came home and did that. And then after about a year and a half there, which was a great experience, I went freelance and kind of haven't looked back. And a few years after that, my then boyfriend, now husband, we sort of looked at each other. We turned 30, basically, and we realized we were going to blink and be 40.

So we decided to go for it, and we backpacked around the world for a year, and then, and then we relocated to Sweden. And I lived there for six years. And in that six years I had my kids, and then ten years ago, we came back to Bermuda. Oh, wow. And it was at that time, so ten years ago, about when I sort of, things kind of convened and this plastic part of my work was born, I guess you could say.

So. Did you? Well, I assume if you if you live on an in a place like Bermuda, you have to be a beach person. Yes. I mean, we're the the island is only, a mile wide. Wide? Yeah. So you're never more than half a mile from the shore of the beach, right? So our wilderness is the ocean.

Yeah. Like that's our great outdoors. And so growing up, you know, people here learn to swim very young. And, you know, it's it's sort of our wilderness.

So did you, happen to notice some plastic on the beach? Is that how everything started? Sort of. Was a bunch of different things coming together. So when I was a kid in Bermuda, the main thing was tar on the beaches. So, Yeah, because I come from from oil spills and, you know, jettison oil and things.

And so there were this chart. So as a kid and a teenager and a young person, that's what I remember really distinctly. You'd walk along the beach and there'd be tar. So you always had like less oil or something in your car to get it off. Then when I came back this time, it was like a marked difference, the amount of plastic on the beaches.

So just before I left Sweden, like I said, I'm a portrait photographer. Right. And I love it. But then, you know, like most people, my life changed dramatically when I had children and sort of, yeah, things just changed. And I realized there's a level of like, control or time that you, you need for portraits. Like, I really want to know my subject.

I want to spend time with them. And also they should be them. And I'm trying to capture that. So I really don't have control over it. So when my kids were little, I started just doing these botanical arrangements with flowers and, and, you know, things from trees and stuff. So I sort of. And I became interested in pattern making, so I just sort of playing around with that.

Then I moved back to Bermuda. I'm going for walks on the beach all the time, and one. And I was struck immediately by how much more plastic there was on the beach, or that I just hadn't registered for the ten years before. Right. Well, it may not have been there. It may not have been there. It was like we hit some sort of, you know, peak and it just started.

And obviously it's not stopping. Right. And so, yeah. And one of those, so I just started picking up the, the trash and throwing and disposing of it properly. And then one day I found this little toy soldier. And that was kind of the thing that changed everything. Like, I'm very much a lover of secondhand old things.

I mean, you might be able to tell from all the junk in my house here, but, like, I love things that have this kind of story from before or whatever it be. And so this little soldier had this, what I call an ocean patina on it. And he was. But stuff. Yeah. I just thought it was the most beautiful thing in a way, and that there was just this, like, kind of whole world in this story, in this small little object.

But then at the same time, it was this kind of like, horrific artifact of waste and the situation. So, yeah. So then I started very regularly, going to the beach and picking up. But what I would do is I would come home and I would sift through it all, and that's basically what I still do. And then taking that kind of like botanical arranging, still life projects that I had been doing, I applied it to the plastics.

Yeah, yeah. And so everything that I mean, you have a a gazillion photos on your website and I'm sure there's probably more than just on your website. So is all of that everything that you find. Yeah. So everything has been done. So I do a combination of things. I'll do arrangements, I call them I mean you call them mosaics or pieces whatever.

And then I photograph those and then those objects kind of go back into my collection. Okay. So there's never a patch together. Nothing permanent. Sometimes not. But then other times I like this one behind me here, like very much inspired, by Marimekko, which, the Finnish, pattern makers who I'm big fans of, that is affixed to the, to the board.

So it's sort of a mixture of photographs and sculptures and. Yeah. And then one other kind of thing that has kept me going with this a little bit is that, I guess in 2014, 2015, something like that I started doing with a friend of mine in the UK, what we called an advent gram. And so for the month of December, we would count down the days, he tended to do it with numbers that he found, like, you know, someone's door number one, whereas I was like, okay, this is really a good challenge, creative challenge for me.

So every day in December up to Christmas, I was challenging myself to like, make or find the number. So, you know, in my garden, I would arrange a number one in the post office, I would arrange a number, you know, sort of make these scenes. And after a couple of years of doing this, at the same time I was doing more with the plastic, I was like, why don't I put these things together?

And so then I began doing the advent count ocean plastic advent calendar. And so, yeah, I've been doing that for I think seven years now, eight years now. So do you make a new one every year? I do, yeah. Oh, wow. I mean, I have to be honest, this year I go so every year I'm like okay, by November 1st I will have them all done.

And every year on December 1st I'm like, oh my God, I got to do them. So there were a couple days this year where I had to use old ones, but generally I try and do a new one every day. And, and then depending what the object is, I write a little blurb about an alternative to that thing, or, you know, an organization that people should be following or a different artist who's doing really great work.

Wow, that's so cool. I just it's clear that you are very attuned to color and all these images. I mean, the color gradations and, just the, the, the collage of all the transparencies and translucency and the shapes are just phenomenal. Oh, thank you very much. Yeah. I have certain things that I'm quite drawn to. So I would say like actually a really important part of the work is, I guess I actually it occurs in my portrait work too.

I think I'm a collector. And, and then I just want to arrange these things. I feel like as a collector, let's say, of portraits, whether it be security guards or single mothers or people waking up first thing in the morning, I like to collect a series of portraits because I feel like it has more power then because it's sort of like it's not just a portrait of one person, but it's sort of a portrait of a concept.

And, I'm applying that now with the plastics. I think I kind of fine tuned that a bit with the advent. Graham. And then in 2019, I did a show at the Bermuda National Gallery, called Flotsam and Jetsam, and I did nine works which were then blown up to be huge photographs. And each piece is a different object, whether it be ballpoint pens or lighters or toothbrushes.

And I think when I was creating those a I wanted to make them beautiful. I want this, I want this absolutely disgusting thing to become beautiful. But then also I liked the like I said, having a, the power of the collective, but even more so I wanted to do objects that everyone recognized. So, you know, we all we've all used the plastic pen, we've all used a plastic lighter.

We've, you know, yeah, it's impossible to get away from plastic pens and really, it's any other kind of pen these days. Yeah. It's very hard. So yeah. So I that's kind of I would say that's sort of a fundamental within it that I want the viewer, even if they didn't, they didn't create this trash themselves or they can kind of put themselves in the picture.

Right. In terms of being like, oh, I use that or I use that, maybe there's an alternative. Yeah. Yeah. That that's so fascinate. And so I assume that you keep just about everything that you find these days. I would say I probably keep about 5%. Oh, maybe. Maybe less. Yeah. So, so for the month of January, I've sent myself a new challenge because December with the advent calendar isn't challenging enough.

So I'm trying to do a beach cleanup every day this month. Okay. And so actually, that's kind of a good metric to figure out really how much I'm keeping. But I would say it's about 5%. There is just a lot of it's just waste. It's plastic. It's you know, I tend I'll pick up very big pieces that are fully grown over and they have all sorts of things on them.

And I'm not going to use those like barnacles and things like that. Yeah. And then just, just bits. Oh, plastic is, you know. Yeah. There's so much. Yeah. Is there a risk a good recycling system in the Bermuda? Sadly not. I mean, we're a really small community, right. But we have a lot of people who are trying very hard.

So our main waste disposal on the island is a waste to energy facility and incinerator. Oh, right. Okay, then. You know, Bermuda being this incredibly remote, small place, our main power source from the, electricity company, they burn, gas and diesel. So if there's things that have already been shipped, the I, let's say plastic bags. So a friend of mine who used to run Keep Bermuda Beautiful, which is one of Bermuda's oldest environmental organizations, she and I would always have this discussion about, you know, if you don't have your reusable bag, what's better, paper or plastic?

And her argument was that actually plastic is better because the paper bags are heavy. So the amount of diesel being burnt to bring those to the island is considerable. And then, the plastic bags, especially the blue ones, which we can use. So we can recycle tin, aluminum and glass here. Oh. That's it. And it's actually not recycled here.

It's taken off island and recycled. Okay, so but if your rubbish is in a plastic bag, if you're putting your rubbish in that and then it's taken to the facility and burnt there, they make energy from that. So it's, it's definitely not a closed loop. And it's, it's not a sustainable one and it's problematic. But, you know, we do not have landfill here anymore.

We have no land for landfill. We have no landfill. Landfill? In fact, off our airport, for 50 years, they have the building more land with the landfill. So, you know, refrigerators, appliances, cars, chat. So they, you know, they remove all the nasties and then they use it as sort of building blocks. Oh, wow. Yeah.

So it's Bermuda is a very kind of strange, special little case. And, I mean, which island is it? Is it, I'm forgetting the name of it, but there's an, Danish island off of Sweden, and I've been there, and I can't believe I'm forgetting the name right now, but they have managed to generate all their energy on island, on the island.

But they, of course, are attached to Denmark and a much bigger country with a much bigger infrastructure for doing all those things. And, so I do have to give a shout out to the waste facility people, the, waste management and the, works in engineering staff in Bermuda. I think they are as frustrated as all the residents are with the amount of plastic, and that we can't really do anything with it here.

Wood burning plastic releases so many chemicals, you know, thousands of chemicals. And and many of them are unregulated and God knows how they've changed from being in the ocean and everything. Wow. Yeah. No. So it's bad and it but I mean, this is the thing when we look at plastic, we need to look at it that we're looking at oil.

Yeah. And and and so I guess they're doing the best they can with it. So it is quite frustrating here, especially after having lived in a country like Sweden where they are very progressive with their recycling and, waste management. You know, there even when I had very young children, my weekly bin waste was one small carrier bag, if that, because everything would be sorted from our food scraps to our cardboard to our hard plastic, you know, glass.

Every now. So that's amazing. Yeah. Well, I can't say things are much better here in the United States. Well, you do have the facility though to side cycle upcycle reuse. Yeah. But really I and I think this is a worldwide well definitely the U.S number. I think it's only 5% of all plastic actually gets recycled. Yeah. And the only plastics that are likely to get like recycled here are the number one and two plastics.

Yeah. All the other plastics are highly, even less likely to be recycled. And I live actually in the county that I live in. There's. Well, maybe there are some older landfills that are no longer functioning, but all the trash here gets also burned to the incinerator. Which is really, really old. Yeah, yeah. And that's the thing is, it's like the, the, the need to keep up with it is it's just that it's such a problem everywhere.

And, but yeah. So of what if let's, let's say on an average beach cleanup probably go for half hour, 45 minutes and I tend to pick up like the larger items I will sort of pool. So on my way back, I'll pick them up. But as I go, I, you know, we'll have some sort of bag with me and I tend to not I don't pick up the nurdles and the teeny tiny stuff.

I feel like that's almost like a specialist thing. Very hard to spot, right? Well, yeah. I mean, here we have, especially this time of year, we have the sargassum seaweed. And so it's within the seaweed. If you basically just lift that seaweed up off the beach along the tidal line, you just it's just littered with the little tiny pixels of plastic, basically.

But I will pick everything up and then, bring it home and just sort of dump everything out and go through and sort out what I want to keep and what I want to dispose of. And yeah, I probably keep about 5%, I would say, of what I am picking up. And this isn't necessarily what I keep.

I would say easily 30 to 40% is from the fishing industry. Oh, really? So like the fishing nets and things like that nets, hooks, lobster pots, the fish pots, I have probably 500 of these objects I can send you an image of them. And they're like, almost like a little plastic tent peg stake type thing.

So, I didn't know what they were. But a friend of mine who works for fisheries, he was like, oh, those are what they call spacers. So on the bigger fishing boats, they have the plastic boxes, which I find a lot of too, or bits of those. Oh, wow. And then they pack the fish in those, and then they pack ice on that, and then so that they don't sit on top of each other, they put these little plastic things that space them.

The boxes between the I probably have 4 or 500 of them. Oh my God. And I didn't know what it was. And boys, there's just, two I have hundreds of these orange tags that I guess fishermen either put on those boxes or some sort of receptacle that when they get to shore and they, you know, drop the fish off, they can be like, oh, this is from a mom's boat.

So I was going to ask what kind of things you do keep. And you seem to keep a lot of those tags and those sticks. Yes. Yeah. So from the fisheries I keep, any buoys I keep, I actually have a collection. I of rope as well that I keep. Oh not, not probably 1% of what I pick up.

In terms of the rope I keep. But like, if it's an interesting color or an interesting knot or if I could reuse it. So, yeah, I mean, my, my garage is, is where I keep. We can't fit our car in there. So, Yeah. So but but my favorite, because I'm a weirdo, I guess. You know, if if I find, you know, a toy or something very recognizable or that has some sort of, like, kind of immediate story to it.

So, like, even my collection of lighters, I've taken out all the lighters that say Bermuda on them. I have ten of them or something. Yeah. So I, I need to start limiting my collection a little bit more, I think. Yeah. So do you clean the the beach plastic that you find in any way? Yeah. So the stuff that I keep, I soak in water and simple green, which is a nontoxic, you know, cleaning product.

You know, I don't get I don't scrub it or anything. I can get all the bit, but, you know, I want it to have that patina. Yeah. But sometimes there's just some something living in, whatever it be. And maybe I have to just let it go. I actually lost my sense of smell when I was studying photography.

Oh. Well, then, doing a lot of color printing and not realizing that it was a very poor ventilation, but. So I have no sense of smell. And so sometimes I'll pick up my kids from school or whatever, and, and I've been to the beach and they're like, mom, oh my God, it stinks that I don't even realize there's some creature, dead creature living in the,

Yeah. So I go through it all. Your garage smells probably. Yeah. So I do wash. I rinse it and clean it with that, and then I dry it out in the sun, and then I sort of put it in its different receptacles. So some stuff I do just by color, and then other, it's the object or the material, like I have a big box that's just sort of foam parts.

Oh okay. Then like on my I mean, it's all over our house too. So on my back, patio, I've made sort of, giant beaded curtain out of all the boys, you know, the, the net boys that I found and right now in my front yard, all the big boys that I found, I put in, Oleander tree.

No frangipani tree. And it's like my Christmas tree because they look like Christmas ornaments. So. Yeah, it's it's everywhere. Wow. Now, do you find that it disintegrates more as it hangs outside? No, I think that's part of the problem. Right? It's super indestructible. Yeah. I find the smaller pieces, like. Well, the soft plastic definitely disintegrates. So you find a lot of the soft, like, plastic bags and things like that.

You find a lot of that? I do. Not as much. I mean, it's definitely more hard plastics and I only keep, soft plastics that maybe they have something interesting printed on them. So I can see that this has come from Colombia or West Africa, or it's Korean writing, you know, and I'm kind of wondering how this actually, the other day I found a two liter water bottle, and I'm not sure if it's Mandarin or Korean.

Oh, I think it's Mandarin, but because it's like a funky font. Not that I would necessarily recognize it right away, but anyhow, I need to find that out to figure out, like, how did this get here? Yeah. Like, you know, there'd be one thing finding that in the Pacific, but finding it in the Atlantic, it's obviously been jettisoned off a fishing boat, so.

But soft plastic wise. Yeah. If it if it has some sort of redeeming quality like that or, the balloons, the, you know, the shiny. I keep finding a lot of those lately and I do my foraging in the woods, not on a beach. And I've been finding a lot of balloons lately that have been. And not like, every now and then I'll find a new balloon.

But most of them have clearly been wilding for quite a while. But balloons are just like, really? It's a bit like fireworks. Do we really? Is it worth it? Like, do we really need all this? Like, oh, awful. And, yeah. And it's a real problem here because also we so we have Portuguese men, war jellyfish in our waters.

And you know, they have like a balloon that's like their ballast. And then the tentacles come down from them and the turtles eat them, various different animals eat them. And I tell you, a plastic, kind of slightly deflated balloon and a jellyfish look exactly the same. And I've actually done little videos and photos been like, would you know the difference?

You know? Wow. So yeah, it's just like these, I think we're just or another one that I find that I'm just like, we really are the plastic philosophers. Yes. And like, really, people like, how do they get lost? I find them in the woods and, like, what are people, like, walking around and flossing as they're walking in the woods and just throwing them?

I don't understand, I mean, you see people do it on the New York City subway, so I guess so real. Like, although you see everything on the subway. Yeah. So it just it for me, it's just like this is astonishment or straws, like. So a friend of mine who had had a sandwich shop and it's like he been running it for ever, you know, 30 years or something.

And I went there one time and got a sandwich and, you know, no bag. Thanks. No. I'm good. I'm literally going to go eat my sandwich or whatever. And the lady at the till, who I, you know, I've been saying hello to for 25 years or whatever. She, they have a box of plastic straws out, and I just said to her I was like, would you do an experiment where you just took it off the counter?

And of course, I understand some people need a straw. Maybe they've suffered a stroke or they've had dental work or they're two or whatever. It be like, you know, I understand as a business you want to have that for your clients. But I think if you have it right out there, people just almost instinctively take one when they don't need one.

Yeah. And so it's like if you have it under the counter, would you do me a favor and just put it under the counter for a week and maybe just have a piece of paper, and every time somebody asks you for a straw, just put a line down. And then at the end of the week, it'd be really interesting to see how many you.

And so he refused to do it. So it never happened. But to me it was like this huge lesson that, you know, if it's there, we kind of just, you know, we've all been trained a little bit to say it's to start saying no to single use plastics. Yeah. But if the option of the disposable cutlery wasn't even there, then the norm would be that everyone would have some in their car and their office or whatever.

Be. Absolutely. And as far as straws, I mean, they do have metal straws these days, or even the the hard plastic reusable straws. They're actually I mean, I understand the glass straws are a little bit, you know, if they break that's, that's a little that's kind of messy. So I understand that. But you know, we have a drawer full in our house of various reusable straws, from silicone to plastic to metal.

Yeah. Yeah. So and I think most people do and you know, with the bags, the grocery shopping bags, it's actually been kind of interesting to see the evolution. Oh yeah. Here with it. Having been in Sweden, so in Sweden for probably 30 years, you've had to pay for your plastic bags. When you get to the till, they have them there.

And what they generally do, is the supermarket partners with a local sport team and they, it's like a sponsorship of that sports team because they make the profit from people buying those bags. So it's sort of like a kind of feedback thing. But sort of that's the norm there. So everybody has been using canvas bags or, you know, for quite a while there.

And then here it kind of has caught and on and it's, it's so there was an insurance company here that, licensed this image of mine and they put it on a, the one up there, and they put it on a shopping bag here and distributed that to all of the stores. But then it was at a canvas bag.

It was kind of a it was a reusable plastic bag. Yeah. So they kind of, it was a bit of a I mean, it was better, but it wasn't great. Yeah. But they least they tried something, so but instead of just going to one store, they went to all the stores and said, like, look, we'll produce these.

If your customers, you decide what the parameters are. And I think they decided that, like if you spent more than $50, you got a bag, which in Bermuda is not hard when a bell pepper is $5. So, yeah. So, that is that has started to happen. And then then all the stores started producing their own reusable bags, but they still all have paper and plastic.

But even just that psychology, when they give you a discount, if you have your bags and all these things that have been introduced here, which are now like the norm, we just need to be doing that with more and more things, whether it be holiday gift wrap or, you know, I think the water bottles and, straws and reusable bags, we're all thinking a little differently these days, which is good, but there's so much we're trying.

It's so much harder. So here in New York, I think it's now been close to five years that they said they outlawed the plastic bags, but they still come up because there's all sorts of loopholes, like if you order takeout, the takeout will frequently come in a plastic bag because they're allowed to send it in a plastic bag.

I think the pandemic also screwed things up quite a bit in that, yeah. But now what I have found, at least around where I live, is they started producing these bags that look like cloth, but they're really not cloth. They're plastic. They just, you know, they're not that clear. And, you know, sheer and shiny. They're like this matte cloth, like finish, but they're but there's no weft and weave.

It's not cloth. It's plastic. They just look like fabric. And I, I've I'm seeing a lot of that. And also every. Oh I know the ones you mean the Whole Foods has them. Yes. Those are plastic. Yeah. So I if I'm in the States I'll go. I always go to Whole Foods because it's like a tourist attraction for us because we have no franchise in Bermuda.

Oh wow. So we have no McDonald's. No. You know, wholesale. It's nothing like that. So, yeah, it's like a tourist attraction for us. And I'll buy the bags and, you know, use them as my shopping bags here, right there. And then when they've gotten to a place where they're just too old. Those are the ones I used to collect the plastic.

The trash. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But here now I even I have a whole selection of them. They sell these woven plastic bags so they're woven and they're sturdy plastic bags. And they sell them for like 5 or $10 in every store. But now there's like but they're now being used almost as single use plastic bags because there's just so many of them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's we're it's out of control. Yeah. It really is like there seems to be every time you think you're like going to limit the plastic bag, a new version of it comes out that is, you know, doesn't fit into the, you know, has a loophole for being used. We're just also spoiled by the convenience. And I am totally guilty of this, you know.

Oh, yeah. I plastic in my shoes right now. Like in this room. The amount of plastic is, you know, crazy. So it's it. We're all we all need to change. Yeah. And I actually try quite carefully in my work because I'm not a scientist. I am not, you know, some sort of huge. I'm not making huge sacrifices in my life with all of this.

So I really want to be very careful with my work. Ocean plastic work. Not to be holier than thou about it. I mean, and Bermuda is a small community, so, like, I know I cannot walk down the street with a water plastic water bottle, I know that I want to, you know, sometimes when I've had to produce photo shoots, especially during the pandemic when, you know, there was all that so much plastic was being used, like you said.

But even just, like having drinks on set, I tried to do this whole thing where I bottle these glass bottles and I had pens and people could put their name on there, and it just was it was really challenging. So I reverted back to using plastic water bottles and feeling awful about it. But, you know, I want to try and do what I can, but I don't know what someone else's story is, you know?

And I'm not going to. Yeah. So like that guy with the sandwich shop, he's like, no, I'm not going to do that. And I'm not going to buy the paper straws because they don't work and they're more expensive. So who am I to come and tell him? Well, you have to do that. You have to that it's like almost like we all have to get there on our own.

And I, you know, we need reminding and that's the idea with my work and a lot of your work and a lot of the people you're talking to is like, let's just kind of remind everybody that, you know, 15 years ago, the idea of bringing your own back to the supermarket was or ten years ago with people would be like, whatever, hippie.

Whereas now it's like, yeah, yeah, that's the right thing to do. Yeah, yeah. No, I think we all need reminders. We all need encouragement. And one thing I try to say is that, every little thing that you can do counts. Yeah. Those if 100 of us stop using plastic water bottles that counts I'm sorry. That counts.

Yeah it does count. And but also at the same time with the plastic I'm picking up and what I'm seeing, like I said you know a lot of it here. Mermaid is coming from the fishing industry. That industry needs to be more responsible for that. You know, the, you know, the bottle caps, the fact that they've made this change in the EU now that the bottle cap is attached to the bottle, not that, I think could help, but at the same time it's like, yeah, it's just Coca-Cola is now stopping any sort of change that, you know, it's sort of like these big industries and governments, these are the places where real

change can happen. That's not to say we as individuals should not do our little part because like you said, like even if it's a Bermuda, if in Bermuda, no visitor or islander ever used another plastic water bottle again. That's millions, you know. And so it does make a difference. Yeah. But if we can hold, you know, the big corporations accountable.

Yeah. There there need to be laws in place. And maybe they could be federal laws or maybe they can be worldwide laws. I mean they keep trying, but it doesn't seem to happen. I am hopeful that one day it will happen, that these big corporations that produce the plastic would actually be the ones responsible for it. That's that's what is really going to make a difference.

Yeah. That's really the only. Yeah. So let's hope so. I mean I, I, I have had some support from companies here in Bermuda. And then and then some overseas support from companies working in this space. So I think there is a lot of really amazing, committed people to make these changes, just whether it's too late. You know, I sort of reflect on when I was younger and like I said, when I was a kid, I lived in California for a bit.

And, you know, the sort of, you know, my mum was a member of Greenpeace and it was all about save the whales and the ozone layer and it being like, we're going to have a problem. And I have this realization, I don't know, a couple of years ago where I was like, we're too late. Like we're in the problem.

I'm not saying give up. Oh yeah, but that kind of childhood echoes in my mind. Like, we have to change or we're going to have some serious issues. Yeah, we're we have not changed enough. We are in the problem now. But we can mitigate the problem. Yes, we can slow down climate change and there, there there are options.

I don't know if you know, there is a scientist called Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and she wrote she I think well, I'm, I there's two books of hers that I know about. She might have written more. One of them is I think it's called All We Can Save and it's essays from different people talking about what their how they can help find a solution to climate change.

And what there's going on in the community is that was very inspiring. But now she just wrote a new book and it's called.

What if we could do it or something like that? I have to look it up. Okay. Kids can't say the right word. I think I think that's I think it's doable. And, yeah, you can get overwhelmed by the doom and gloom. Actually. My son. Oh, my goodness. Oh, there it is. The book is called What If We Get It right?

That's great. I like that title. And it's really like she it's a very uplifting book, even though she lists all the horrible things that are going on here. Like there are there are solutions to everything. We just have to get it right. Exactly, exactly. But I do like her sort of optimism. Like, yeah, I mean, essentially by just even opening that book, you're being like, I'm optimistic we can change this.

We can do what if we get it right? Like, that's pretty great, because you can get overwhelmed by the doom and gloom of it. A friend of mine, son, a few years ago was he was in a depression because he was so worried about the planet. Yeah. Which is maybe more of us should be like that, but maybe not a child.

You know? Right? Yeah. Not a child. No, it's. It's easy to get overwhelmed. I mean, I belong to a whole bunch of organizations, and you follow them on Instagram and they're posting all of these horrible five, you know, horrible facts. And it's like, for instance, right now as we're recording this, they're Los Angeles is essentially burning down in a horrible fire, which is the result of climate change.

So if you just stick to the negative stuff, it can get really depressing and really, really fast. And you can be like, well, I just, you know, throw my hands up in the air. There's nothing anybody can do. But luckily that's not true. And a book like, like Doctor Johnson's book, it's, you know, has interviews in it with professionals in various fields and scientists who say, yes, you can still do something.

We're not going to stop it completely at this point, but we can slow it down and we can make life better on this planet. And I think there's so many great people out there kind of having that positive message, you know? Sam Bentley, he's a British guy now. And, I think his handle is Sam Bentley, but every week he does.

Here's some good news. Yeah. And it is. You know, the Azores has created the largest marine sanctuary in the world, and there'll be various, you know, and he does a year round up and it's just sort of very positive that, you know, so I really like having that or a few others like that too. I follow them on Instagram.

Yeah. And that's, I think that's important. So but also in the same way with our work, you know, it is just an immediately positive thing. I, I do have some people, particularly when I'm picking up the plastic, who have come to me and been like, you know, that's not making any difference. And that's fine. They feel like they need to say that and like, and I'd be like, I absolutely know that this is not even a drop in the drop, in the drop, in the drop of the bucket.

But what I do think is that if someone sees my work, the finished results, you know, I don't know, maybe it'll just trigger something in them. That's what I'm hoping I yeah, maybe I don't need to buy a new this or that. Maybe I can use the one I already have or like, oh wait, doesn't my mum have that?

You know. Yeah. No, it's true. It's like if they see our art, maybe, maybe they'll be inspired to pick up a piece of trash and put it in the proper receptacle. Or maybe they'll just be inspired to not get that next water bottle. Whatever it is, it's a little thing. It's the accounts or have to not be inspired to, you know, support a, you know, a state senator that supports the, you know, the reduced plastic pool of plastic, the what's it called, the Plastic Packaging Reduction Act or something like that.

Yeah, yeah. So we it's that that and that's the thing like saying no to plastic, single use plastics is one way we can all make a change right away. But like you said, like making sure that our lawmakers and decision makers and those higher ups within the kind of multinational corporations. Yeah, you know, that's that's when it's exciting when something like that happens, you know, because it is a big shift.

It can be a big shift. Yeah, it can be. And I, I choose to believe that it's still possible. Yeah, I think so. I'm not that cynical yet. Yeah. I actually have a bit of a dilemma right now with something that I'm working on. So I'm working on a series of, well, I'm trying to work on a series of NFTs.

Oh, yeah. And I, you know, there will be utility within the NFTs that would be giving back a commitment to either picking up a certain weight of plastic or, the funds would go to organizations doing that, or, you know, I have to figure that out. Oh, my lemma is that the energy used, you know, to to the processing energy, is pretty toxic.

And so I'm like, do I want to do this or do I now, you know, so I mean, and I feel that way with, you know, when I'm doing prints and if I have to ship a print. And so it's funny because there's always this sort of because I'm in this space, I really feel like I have to be considered about what I'm doing.

And sometimes that can be a bit incongruous with either progress or profit. Right? So yeah, no, it's it's hard to keep track of all of those things. But yeah, you got to do your best. I mean, I suppose, you make all your own prints you don't like if if I order a print from you, could it be printed in the United States?

Yeah. So I have a printer in the US. I have a printer in the UK, a printer here. So that one's actually not too bad. Okay, well that's good. But yeah, I mean, then this is the thing. I think everybody has this in their everyday lives. Yeah. You know how how how can I deal with this? Yeah.

No. It's true. It's like, it's like, do I really need to have this thing tomorrow? Do I really need to order it from Amazon? Or could I wait a few days and get it locally, or maybe even go to the store by myself? Yeah, yeah, that novel idea. Yeah. Right. I think who does that anymore? What it is, I have to say, you know, working in this space or creating work in this space, it's it's a very welcoming, you know, group, basically, like you said on Instagram, you know, I just feel like every day I'm seeing someone else doing something.

I mean, you know, whether it's making leather from mangoes or, you know, bricks from plastic trash or whatever it be, just like all the novel ways people are facing this challenge. And then also, creatively, the beautiful, thought provoking work that's being created is, is pretty exciting. Yeah. No, it really is. I think, I think you're right.

Like, every day I discover someone new doing something amazing with what others would consider trash. Yeah. And I think that is hugely inspiring. Yes, it absolutely is, because it is the sort of we are in the plastic era, you know, it was the Iron Age, the crustacean, whatever age is now, it's the Anthropocene. Yep. Yeah. So it's

Yeah. And and also just the people with what I do. Yes. People like my work. One interesting question that I have a lot that I'm kind of baffled by is people often ask me, particularly with the pieces that are like the rainbow gradients or a gradient of color. They ask me if I've painted the plastic. I get that, I don't know.

Yeah, I just like, no, this is what I found. I'm like, yep, it's really I think it's like they're kind of shocked by how vibrant it is, maybe as a material. So they think maybe I've done that to make it be what I want it to be when I'm like, no, it's sort of I think I had a shift like 3 or 4 years ago where I was almost like trying to collect and covet and then, you know, put the things together.

Whereas now I'm sort of letting the material lead me. So even stuff that's not as recognizable, like old hairbrushes with just the holes, like the texture groups and, that to me, I'm really fascinated by at the moment. Yes. I saw a whole bunch of hairbrushes. Hairbrush, collage. Yes. Yeah. No, I think they're I think any objects and the way you juxtapose them, it's just it's it's art.

It's beautiful art. Yeah. You know. Thanks. Yeah. No, it's really wonderful. So, yeah, I get that question about, the color all the time as well. And occasionally I will use acrylic paint, which is essentially plastic to add some texture to things. But yeah, it really happens rarely. Actually, what I wind up using a lot is I have painter friends who will use plastic to add texture to their painting, and they say that plastic with paint stains, but for me, and then I'll use that in my art.

So like, oh wow, that's so cool. Oh, it's like, no, that's not my paint. But yes, it is paint. But you know, that's a separate body of work. But the body like what you see behind me, those bright colors, the flowers and all the nature inspired work that I do, that's the plastic color that's there. Yeah. And but to me, it's like that paint.

Nope. I'm very shocked by how often I'm asked that. And like, yeah, it's sort of a curious one. And but then also people are very fascinated with the process. Like, yes, the end pieces are interesting to see, but the collection itself, the process and yeah, whether I wash it. Yeah. And I'm really that's why I'm here asking you all these questions.

I know it's great, but and so I'm sort of realizing more and more particularly with Instagram and you know, my kids are like, mom, you should be on TikTok. You should have a TikTok showing you collecting this stuff. I mean, I have never I really don't put myself in my work like a lot of people don't know what I look like.

But when my children were younger, I would photograph them quite often so they would see me in in town or whatever on the island with my kids, and they're like, are you Meredith? Are you Meredith? Photo? I'm like, yes, I yeah, so I don't really put myself in it. And so, yeah, I guess I, I'm continuing with that.

But, sorry, I lost my train of thought, but, okay. Yeah, it's sort of. No, it's a really great community and it's it's really exciting. Like. So, I'm off. Yeah. People want to see the process and they're like, you, mommy, you should show everybody. Well, you don't have to go to the TikToks. You can just do reels for Instagram of you picking up trash.

You can. And yeah, I think I'll stick to that. Take some videos of you. Yeah, I'm like, I can't learn another no, I'm not too old for it, but I just don't want to fill any more of my brain space. Exactly. Yeah, I did make a TikTok account at one point,

and I think I was on it for like two days, and I was like, you know what?

I just can't process this. This is too much. So yeah. And now they're going to they may be banning it. So that's right. So you know what? It's okay I think between Instagram and Facebook. But people are very excited by the collection. They love coming over and seeing it. So when I did that show at the National Gallery, I'll send you all the information about that and and stuff.

Oh, yeah. No, I'd love to actually made a small film about it. And my process. Oh, cool. And so he, he sort of and the filmmaker, he was definitely most interested in the collection. And, you know, me opening these drawers and there being all these kind of dismembered anthropomorphic toys and combs and printer cartridges and oh my gosh, yeah, I can't wait to see this film.

Yeah, yeah, I'll for that to you. And yeah. And if you needed any images I could even do like a quick video of my space or. Oh thank you. Yeah, that would be great. If I could, you know, put that on a link to it in YouTube. Something like that. Yeah. But when you had that exhibit, what is it at the Bermuda Art center, what did you call it?

The Bermuda National Gallery, National Gallery. So did you, aside from your prints, did you actually have any physical work with plastic or, or your materials laid out somewhere? So for that show, I didn't, it's sort of a small space in the gallery, and it was quite exciting because it was the first selling show that the gallery had done.

Oh, because as the National Gallery, it's sort of, you know, the receptacle of all our contemporary art. But yeah, so they had this smaller gallery and they decided to have this as a showing, selling show may have actually been the second selling show, but we were quite successful. So I basically did these large limited edition prints, and they were also, I want to say 30 by 40 something around that.

They were pretty big, large scale, about the size of this poster behind me. And then I did, 16, editions of 2016 by 20. Posters. And the profits from that were shared equally between myself, the National Gallery and Keep Bermuda Beautiful. Oh. So at the end of the day, I think I the initial donation.

Well, to this point, I've donated about $20,000 to keep her made a beautiful from that. But yeah. No, but I have had other shows where I have. I have shown the physical work shown and sold the physical work. And I have had commissions from Solar power company. There's a new restaurant that's opening and they've commissioned me to do a piece of their logo.

I did a large, very large scale piece. It was nine foot by four foot, wooden panel that I did for the Bermuda Tourism Authority. Oh, wow. And that was sort of a triangle or three triangles, you know, the Bermuda Triangle thing. We got to lay on that, of, of a rainbow gradient. Going in that direction.

I have to ask a technical question. When you make the physical work and how do you attach the plastic to the board? So this is something I've struggled with a little bit because initially, the first piece where I was really affixing it to it was this large scale piece for the BTA or the Tourism Authority. And I started with a, glue gun and I probably got 20% in.

And then I realized it was just not going to hold. Yeah. So I realized I needed to use super glue, and I was using a space in my house because it was just massive, kind of a closed space. I didn't really, so I switched over to very strong super glue, Gorilla Glue, which is pretty toxic. Yeah. And like I said, I had no sense of smell.

So like an hour into that, my husband came down. He's like, babe, open a window. Yeah. So I now use a very well ventilated space and super glue and super glue. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Because I know some artists use, rivets and screws, guns and screws and things like that. I was interested to see because I didn't see any attachments in your photos.

So that explains it. Yeah. So I use the glue which you know, can be prominent. So I have a few pieces here that were like early days pieces. And you know, some of the plastics have come off. But as a small enough place, I've gone over to the collector's house and fixed it for them. I mean, it's not ideal.

I don't think I would prefer to have another method, but I think because the scale which I'm using, if I and the material being so brittle, I think if I was to drill through it or hammer through it, somehow, it would shatter. Yeah. So I think you're right. I think with plastic that has been exposed to the elements, they it would definitely shatter from trying to.

Yeah. On a drill, a hole through it, probably even. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, I can grab this one and show you

You know, it's funny because when you're close up to it, it doesn't look like anything, right? Right, right. Because it just looks like a bunch of bottle caps and pieces of plastic, but not far away. It's a huge gorgeous. I mean, I instantly recognize it as Marimekko. Yeah, that's so great. But yeah. So you have to. Yeah. Trial and error, I think, with the affixing to it.

Yeah.

I have, I have experimented as well recently with trying to encase it in a very thin layer of resin. Again, plastic though. Exactly. Yes. I've been working with resin myself and, you know, sort of kicking myself for working with resin because here I am creating more plastic. Yeah, yeah. So I sort of justified it that I was like, well, it was already existing in the box at the art store that was closing down, so.

But still. Yeah, it's, it's, it feels like we can't escape it now and then. Also another thing about this whole community is, I forgotten her name, but the British woman, who wrote Lego Lost at Sea. I want to know the book. Okay, so there was a in the I want to say the early 90s, maybe late 80s, there was a container that fell off a ship in the, either in the North Sea or the English Channel, basically.

And it was a container full of Lego from, oh my gosh. Yeah. So yeah, late, late 80s, early 90s, I want to say like 93 or something. And to this day, Lego is still washing up, particularly on the Cornish coast of the UK. Oh my gosh. And so this lady's written a book called, Legos Lost Sea. Ironic really.

One of the figurines that was on the in the container was the scuba diver. So there's like little, little tanks and little fins, but it was also the which, a knight, a dragon. And so it's this like thing that, you know, people are going out on the Cornish coast, and if they find a dragon, they get in touch with her.

And she has documented that very well. Oh, my. And then and then, it was probably like a couple years into me doing this, I noticed that I was finding a lot of the same, HP printer cartridges. So I did a little research and again, there was a container that went overboard and HP actually created a, you can log it.

You can you can finding them when you find them. And I believe there's a, there's a professor at the University of Plymouth in the UK who's done a lot of work because then they can track the gyre stripe, how it travels. Yeah. And there are so toxic. They're so nasty. Yeah. But so that's quite interesting. Is that community, whether it be locally, like my friend I was telling you about earlier who works for fisheries.

So he's out on a boat all the time and he's for for 20 years he's been picking things up. I mean, he actually even found part of a SpaceX rocket. Oh my gosh. Yeah. But he's been finding things, so he's the one who knows what stuff is. But the stuff he finds is just crazy. And so he told me about a container of Nike trainers sneakers.

Oh. Went overboard. And so, like, that's something I could do is like, the probably couple thousand shoes that are in my basement because they. Oh, my gosh, if I was to go through those, I'd be like, okay, these are all clearly they were new Nike's. Let me get. So I think that there's this kind of it's an it's a space where there's this really interesting intersection of science, data collection and creativity.

Yeah. No, really is that's fascinating. I, now I'm going to have to look into that Lego thing that. Yeah, that's fascinating, but it's true. I mean, the ocean storms, you know, accidents happen. So. Yeah. And accidents, unfortunately pollute the planet. But, Wow, that that's that's really interesting. Wow. So what do you have ahead for yourself for 2025?

Yeah. So for 2020, in this space, I am doing cleanup every day in January. So this afternoon I've got to go off and do that. It's a bit blustery here today, but it's nowhere near as cold as it is in New York. So, yeah. So, this month I'm going to continue to do that. I am going to really try and get my not I'm not going to try I'm going to get my NFT project off the ground so I can send you more information about that as I do that, because I'd like to partner with, you know, make it this worth someone's while.

Be on mine, you know. Yeah, I know that sounds interesting to me. I know nothing about NFTs. Yeah, I know nothing about them, so I have no idea how that works. So I would be curious to find out how you make it work. Yes. So, I'm looking forward to doing that. And kind of just dabbling in that space and seeing what it's like.

I would very much like to do another show exclusively around this. And I have a few projects that are slightly different. Than what I've been doing previously. So, so I guess I would describe it more as sculptural work, kind of working more in the 3D with, with these materials, and really letting them speak to me because I think I'm, I'm going to continue with creating the collections or the patterns or mosaics, whatever they should be called.

But I, I am really interested in not only like what I could do in terms of creating 3D pieces, but also maybe using things like, light and projection. So I'm very interested in the idea of creating silhouettes from, say, piles of very deliberately placed piles of plastic. Oh, cool. Yeah. So just to be honest, playing a little bit more with it.

So I feel like January is going to be collection and February and March will be execute and and create a whole lot of new work, trying to think what else I have going. So I just have a bunch of my ocean plastic work on show at the Indian Photo Festival, but that in Hyderabad in India. But and it was up for two months.

So that I think that came down yesterday or day before. So that was really amazing because the potential for my work to be seen by lots of people, and I had a really good response to it, so that was great. That's why, and then personally, kind of a change. So we are relocating to Sweden in July.

Yeah. So, but a lot of my work is here, so I will. So I've got to figure out what I'm going to do with my collection. Yes. Are you keeping your home or is that a this is a permanent home. So we rent our home. So, but, I feel that I think there's going to be stuff that I'm not ready to let go of, but I don't think it will make sense to take with me.

So I'm thinking I may just put it in storage here and then do continue to do works here. And then the other thing that I'm probably I've been trying to do is kind of leads back to one of your earlier questions. Last year, I did a entrepreneur workshop incubator project here, this nine month long, thing.

Okay. And, I actually pitched to them the idea I have, which and I just called it Plastic Mermaid because it's sort of under that umbrella. And Bermuda's a small place. So I'm known as the Plastic Lady. Right. And like I was saying, the frustration that there is here that you can't really do anything with your plastic, and we also it's a Bermuda for such a small place.

It's very cosmopolitan. You have people coming from all over the world to work here. And, you know, maybe they're coming from Norway or Japan, Korea, Australia, Canada, whatever. And they, they were like, oh, in my home, this is how we deal with it. And then they get here and yes, it's this beautiful place, but they're just like, oh my God.

And so you're I feel you're much more aware of your waste here. So I think there's a demand for something to be done with it. So anyhow, this, this, entrepreneur incubator, I pitched the idea of. And he didn't want to call it recycling, but creating a side cycling project with appropriate plastics. And, in the progress, the process of doing that, I discovered it's a big question of scale.

So, the idea was that I would I'm not an engineer, but, you know, there's all these amazing open sourced machines that you can build now to chip up plastic and reformulate it, then to product a new products. And so I came up with the idea of just doing maybe planter pots and just do one item do it's small.

But then as I dug deeper into that, because I'm thinking, you know, I'm collecting enough plastic. And then friends of mine and, and community groups are also doing cleanups all the time. And, I mean, I have people who they'll call me up and say like, hey, do you want some toothbrushes? You know? But they are also picking up a lot of this plastic that is just then going to the incinerator.

And so I thought, well, you know, I could use their plastic too. But then I was like, there are all these people who want to do something with their tide laundry detergent bottle when it's done, you know? And so then I thought, well, the scale is the problem. I think I should go bigger, and this should be something that we could integrate.

The government could take over. They have the engineers, they have the experts, they have the space to have a facility. And instead of making plant pots, we can make bins, we can make park benches, we can make chairs for prisons. So I am kind of quietly in the background, talking with the, you know, the government ministers and saying, have we could get if we're going to do it, let's go big.

You know, and that's so exciting. Yeah. So that could be so I have no idea when that would be complete, if it would be complete, because I have to get a buy in from a lot of partners. But I think there's definitely demand. I don't think people are okay with the situation here, but that if through my little bitty art, there could be some sort of lasting program like that, I would feel really, really proud of that would be incredible.

Yeah, and I guess you just have to fly back from Sweden to facilitate all this. Yeah. And I'm sort of planning on doing that. You know, my mum and dad are here. My sisters here, and I do have work here. So I think I'll probably be coming back to Bermuda pretty regularly. And when I'm here, definitely be doing a lot of work in this space.

Yeah. Oh. Very exciting. Wow. Well, I can't wait for it all to come to fruition. Thank you. And it's been so nice to meet you. And I really appreciate what you're doing with this podcast, because I watched a few of the other ones, and it's just some really inspiration channel people there. And, you know, the work is one thing, like the work on its own.

But then I feel like this messaging behind it is absolutely, so important. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's really it's it's wonderful to speak to kindred souls and then find the kindred souls listening to this and, you know, enjoying it as well. So that's really wonderful. Yeah. Well thank you. Thank you.

That was such a fascinating conversation. I am in awe of everything that Meredith has been doing. And, I am so glad that she has hope for this planet, our humanity, just like I do. I think we can all do better,

This podcast was created, produced and edited by me, Natalya Khorover. Theme music by RC Guida. Find out more about me at Artbynatalya.com. Find out about my community at RepurposerCollective.com

Thank you for listening.