A message in recycled metal

Lake County artists’ globe will be part of environmental display in Chicago
By Madhu Krishnamurthy
From afar, it looks like a black-and-white-checkered NASCAR flag printed on a giant globe.


Step closer, and the pattern reveals a miniature Earth covered in more than 2,200 Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars in place of the oceans. The continents are fashioned out of recycled aluminum.
The piece, created by artists Mitch Levin of Kildeer and Baris Taser of Vernon Hills, is one of more than 120 environmentally themed globes that will be displayed this summer at prominent Chicago locations, such as the lakefront near the Field Museum, at Navy Pier and possibly along Michigan Avenue.
These works by Chicago and suburban artists are part of the “Cool Globes: Hot Ideas for a Cooler Planet” public art project, a brainchild of Highland Park environmental activist Wendy Abrams.
The project aims to use art to increase public awareness about global warming, and promote solutions.
Levin and Taser jokingly call their work, dubbed “Race to Save the Planet,” the largest traffic jam in the world.
Most of the miniature cars in the piece were collected or donated by area children, schools, libraries, friends and family. The rest were bought online on eBay and at area auctions and secondhand stores.
It took the duo a week to painstakingly glue the cars on the roughly 300-pound fiberglass globe provided to participating artists by Cool Globes. The entire piece took hundreds of hours of labor and was finished at 2 a.m. Tuesday.
“We can sleep now,” said Taser, a custom furniture designer. “I feel real good about it. We put a lot of time in it.”
The piece focuses on recycling because both artists are passionate about leaving a cleaner world for their children. The materials used in its production are environmentally friendly, they said.
“I use a lot of recycled elements when I can,” Levin said. “I think we are just muddying up the world with all the garbage we produce.”
The 150 hand-cut pieces of aluminum that form the land masses on the globe are polished and etched with facts about recycling. They were donated by scrap metal warehouses.
The engraving on the North American continent quotes a statistic bandied about by environmentalists everywhere: “The United States is the No. 1 trash-producing country in the world at 1,609 pounds per person, per year. This means that 5 percent of the world’s people, the U.S., generate 40 percent of the world’s waste.”
Taser said it sends a powerful message.
“Hopefully, people will interact with this piece and have a better understanding of what they should be doing as an individual,” he said.
The artists realize most people, especially children, may be tempted to grab the cars.
“We want it to be touched,” said Levin, who previously created artwork only for private collections, never for public display. “It is hard to let go. You’re giving it to the public now. There’s so many more people who are going to see it.”
The globe, which is 5 feet in diameter and in its finished state weighs roughly 700 pounds, was loaded onto a truck Tuesday morning headed for a Chicago warehouse. The artwork will be stored there until a public unveiling in June. The globes will be exhibited in Chicago through September.
After the exhibit, the globes will be auctioned off, and proceeds will fund research and education on global warming.