Artist Yumeng (Yuki) He

Coil packaging paper as background and sculpture material

Yumeng He’s recent art installation at the Claremont Graduate University Peggy Phelps Gallery really hit the nerve of our times.

Like many businesses who import components, we were (and still are) impacted by endless delays in our congested ports.

Containers that used to take 4-6 weeks to arrive from Germany and The Netherlands, now take up to 3 months at triple the cost compared to earlier this year.

At the peak of port congestion there were over 90 container vessels waiting outside the Los Angeles/ Long Beach ports to be unloaded that’s easily 2 million TEU’s - a backlog volume that was not even conceivable before it actually happened.

The result of on-line shopping

We love how Yumeng He illustrated the increased shipping volume during our ongoing pandemic by collecting the shipping boxes from all the on-line orders in her dorm and piling them up into a tower - just think this is from just one dorm….

Where all this paper come from…. Upcycling and Recycling is NOT just an option

We either reuse the packaging material our pocketed coils come in for wrapping outgoing pallets or recycle the strong paper.

We were thrilled that this time some of it was not just recycled but UPCYCLED into a multidimensional artful story and message.