Beautiful Waste Series
artwork by Charnier Corey
"In Beautiful Waste, I am looking at the amount of personal waste I produce thru my various daily activities rituals and vices. Since 2004 I have been collecting my personal waste in the form of candy wrappers, food/drink packaging, blunt wrappers and various packages of consumable products. I have not saved every item I have used and some items have been discarded because they were mistaken for trash. The items that remain I have used to create a conversation about the way we view waste and the things we regard as perishable items. It is also a dialogue about how perception is changed when common items usually regarded as having no value after their initial purpose has been exhausted can be reused to create objects of beauty.  I have included magazines, newspaper and books as well, as these items seems to be discarded or put away after they have been consumed. 
I have reused the various items to create pics of Nike Air Force 1 model sneakers. These are highly coveted shoes that a niche group of individuals spend as much as $800 to customize and more than that for exclusive releases of the shoe. The customization process my shoes have under gone is one that repurposes "trash" and fashions it as "sneaker treasure"."
-Charnier Corey