T: is for juxtaposing color with form

With the movie Inconvenient Truth and knowing that it's time to take care of Mother Earth, British lighting designer Stuart Haygarth has taken recycling to new heights. Haygarth came to attention at the designers block show in London in 2005, when he showed his Tide Chandelier, made of hundreds of items of plastic debris."I have been collecting man-made debris from the Dungeness coastline in Kent over many years. I am sorting and categorizing the mass of objects and from each grouping creating a piece of work. Tide Mark is a collection of primarily plastic objects categorized by colour. Starting with white objects and ending with black, a kind of tide mark through the colour spectrum is produced." I love the scientific aesthetic of this piece which reveals the beauty of each object and color in spite of the fact that it's all basically garbage. And that underlying story of pollution adds tension to the visual aspect of the piece.
When you first feast your eyes on one of Stuart Haygarth’s quirky designs, the first thing that becomes immediately ingrained in your memory is his apparent talent for juxtaposing color with form. In 2006 MAKE-UP ART COSMETICS otherwise known as MAC commissioned him to produce two identical chandeliers for display in their New York and Los Angeles flagship stores. The work had to promote the new vibrant colour range of cosmetics called the ‘Culture Bloom’ collection. They wanted to illustrate an explosion or blooming of colour. His interpretation was a kind of molecular or planetary explosion called ‘Cosmic Burst’­­. He also designs for Porsche.

His recent design, the Disposable Chandelier, is humorously crafted out of 416 disposable plastic wine glasses, the chandelier is lit with a pink fluorescent light source. Incidentally, a smaller version made with 280 glasses is also available. While the atmosphere created by this piece is elegant enough for any posh dinner party, its unusual construction also provides ample material for after-dinner conversation! There is something hypnotic about Stuart Haygarth's aesthetic sense. He loves to collect and categorize everyday objects. His work is concerned with giving order to the banal and overlooked trivia of life. That artist shows recycling can be an artistic F.A.C.T.