Recycled GroundScore
Original Acrylic on Canvas • 24” × 36”
Started beneath the electric skies of EDC Las Vegas, carried through ILLfest and Bonnaroo, then slowly unraveled and rebuilt in the studio over the following weeks, Recycled GroundScore is less of a painting and more of an archaeological dig through modern festival culture.
Every inch is packed with the tiny relics we leave behind for one another—kandi bracelets, hat clips, trinkets, sprouts, toys, ducks, mushrooms, aliens, googly eyes, traffic cones, lucky charms, and all the wonderfully ridiculous little treasures that somehow become priceless for five minutes and unforgettable for a lifetime.
Or maybe they’re just plastic.
Is this a portrait of generosity… or consumption?
A celebration of human connection… or a landfill with better lighting?
A tiny flower clipped to your hat says, “Nature is beautiful.”
Ironically, it’s molded from petroleum and will probably outlive the forest it represents.
Then again… that flower might become the reason two strangers meet, laugh, hug, and remember each other for the rest of their lives.
So what’s more permanent—the plastic, or the memory?
Every object in this painting was once handed from one person to another with no expectation of getting anything back. Thousands of tiny acts of kindness disguised as dollar-store toys. Tiny pieces of joy manufactured by the millions. Waste transformed into meaning. Meaning transformed back into waste.
The title itself is a contradiction.
A ground score is something forgotten that suddenly becomes valuable because someone else found it. Recycled suggests renewal. But was anything actually recycled? Or did we just recycle the feeling?
I’m not interested in answering the question.
I’m interested in watching your brain try.
This is the first piece in an ongoing series exploring the beautiful, hilarious, contradictory ecosystem we’ve built inside the festival world—a place where generosity and excess somehow dance together under the same lasers.
Maybe it’s a warning.
Maybe it’s a love letter.
Maybe it’s both.