Fascinating Art Inspired by the 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch'

Man-made debris floating through the oceans is ugly. So are its deadly effects on marine animals, strangled by nets and packing bands or starved after eating a buffet of plastic. But take this peacock-colored, oddly shaped garbage into a gallery setting, and you got yourself an exhibit that's as fascinating as it is alarming.

"Gyre: The Plastic Ocean," which opened recently at the Anchorage Museum, presents the surreal creations of artists who find their material washed up in waterways and on coastlines. The works are both impressive in their implications of all the cruddy litter in the oceans – a gyre of refuse that's garnered the misnomer "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" – and also in the amount of labor that went into building them. This 9-by-4-foot photo by John Dahlsen, for instance, includes more than 1,000 sandals; the photographer gathered them himself mostly from the beaches of Australia: