Spotlight Artist: Pam Longobardi

Swerve, 2019. Over 500 ocean plastic objects from Alaska, Greece, California, Hawaii, Gulf of Mexico, and Costa Rica.

Taking in the beauty of a pristine beach is one of life’s simple pleasures. Crystal clear blue waves crashing ashore, unique shells and stones scattered across stretches of sand, and…plastic? With its endless uses and unmatched versatility, it’s no wonder plastic has become such a prevalent part of our daily lives. However, the negative impacts of plastic are being seen more and more in places we love, like our oceans and beaches. As innovative alternatives become more readily available, people are reevaluating their plastic use and making changes for the better. One woman, Pam Longobardi, is using her love of art and science to help bring awareness to the issue. A passionate artist, author, and activist, Pam is on a mission to rid our beaches of plastic pollution through her inspiring artwork.

Pam working on a commissioned piece. Pam in Alaska. Pam installing piece on lift.

Pam has loved the ocean for as far back as she can remember. She spent childhood summers playing on the beaches of New Jersey, until she and her family moved to Atlanta, trading the Jersey shore for the Gulf Coast. “My father was an ocean lifeguard and my mother was the Delaware state diving champion, so we were water people,” she shares. Even as a child, she loved collecting objects from beaches and creating elaborate art installations in her room.

Bounty, Pilfered, 2015. Ocean plastic from Alaska, Greece, Hawaii, Costa Rica, and the Gulf of Mexico; steel armature; driftnets and floats from the N. Pacific Gyre. 

As she got older, Pam found that removing plastic from beaches could be just as satisfying as hunting for natural items. “There is the same visual stimulation as hunting for objects, but the act of removing vagrant plastic from beaches, streams, and sea caves is an act of care for the ocean,” she says. In college, she double majored in art and science, fascinated at the way the different studies both attempted to answer questions about how we inhabit our world. Pam then received her MFA and began her teaching career.

The Crime of Willful Neglect (for BP), 2014. 429 pieces of vagrant oceanic plastic from Greece, Hawaii, Costa Rica, and the Gulf of Mexico. A Distant Mirror, 2014. Oceanic and urban plastic.

In 2006, after seeing the immense amount of plastics washed up onto some of Hawaii’s most remote beaches, she officially made the switch from beachcomber to ocean activist and began incorporating plastic waste into her art pieces.

Pam working in her studio. Portrait of Pam at the Pacific Gyre Exhibit (Kip Evans).

Although she was trained as a painter and printmaker, Pam enjoys working with a variety of media, including photography and installations. Driven by her love of nature’s biodiversity and all creatures, she primarily works with scavenged plastics to create thought-provoking pieces. Pam’s method begins by heading out to beaches and inventorying collection sites through a process she calls “forensic aesthetics.” She looks for clues as to where an object was made, how far it has traveled, and how it is cohabitating with the plants and animals around it. “The collection sites I have worked on around the world reveal aspects of culture in each location,” she says. Back in her studio, she creates photographic portraits of individual pieces or integrates them into large-scale installations and sculptures, which often consist of hundreds to thousands of plastic objects.

Pam Longobardi amid a giant heap of fishing gear that she and volunteers from the Hawaii Wildlife Fund collected in 2008 (David Rothstein).

“The artworks communicate on several levels: at once, a totality that forms a metaphoric image, and upon a closer inspection, identities of individual objects that show us a mirror of ourselves and our fabricated world. I believe the ocean is communicating with us through this material of our own making—the plastic—because we understand it.”

“Ocean Gleaning” exhibition at Baker Museum in Naples, Florida.

Drifters Project by Pam Longobardi provides a visual statement about the engine of global consumption and the vast amounts of plastic objects impacting the world’s most remote places and its creatures. Learn more about Pam, her upcoming exhibitions, and her book Ocean Gleaning at driftersproject.net. Follow on Instagram @driftersproject and on Facebook @pamlongobardi, @driftersproject, and @oceanpeople.

 This article appeared inBeachcombing Volume 36: May/June 2023.