It's 'Etsy,' Kenyan Style: Making Art Out Of Flip-Flops And Bottle Tops
Sure, it's tough to earn a living as an artist. But it helps if you don't have to pay for your materials. At the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, several of the Kenyan craftspeople work wonders with discarded beer bottles and flip-flops.
Jonathan Lento: He Fashions Flip-Flops Into Funky Fauna
Jonathan Lento grips a slender knife in one hand and a colorful block made of glued together flip-flops in the other.
He carves away at the block, unearthing the wild beast within. He chips a few more bits and sands the rough spots to reveal a blue gorilla, which he places next to a hippo, a dolphin and a rhino, all carved from flip-flops.
The sculptures aren't just a fun project. They're part of the artist's marine conservation efforts. Ocean trash is a threat to sea turtles, he explains. They might try to eat a floating flip-flop, choke and die.
Lento's organization, Ocean Sole, partners with the Kenya Lamu Marine Conservation Trust to collect flip-flops from Kenya's Indian Ocean coast. The goal is to gather 400,000 a year. Community members find the flip-flops; Ocean Sole buys them, cleans them, then crafts them into sculptures to sell.
Lento says his favorite is a seven-foot tall giraffe, which was on display at the Folklife Festival. Its Styrofoam skeleton is covered with flip-flop pieces of pink and yellow and red and green.
"This is one way of cleaning our environments, that's why we make these sculptures," he says. Visitors to the festival "oohed" and "aahed" at the giraffe — and got a lesson from Lento in the plight of the sea turtle.
-Nicholas St. Fleur
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