At a relentless pace 5 trillion plastic bags per year—1 million every hour—these whisper-thin conveniences accumulate into an unbearable burden. Seemingly weightless in our hands, these plastic bags amass an estimated 27.5 million metric tons of waste annually—a crushing force and a mere statistic in the ever-growing impact of consumerism on our environment.

Kelsey Merreck Wagner’s trash weavings transform this staggering weight into something tangible, something undeniable. The discarded plastics are not just refuse but artifacts of our collective impact. Each warp and weft is a memory we can not discard, intertwining individual moments of consumption into artworks that are both physically heavy and emotionally inescapable—beautiful and repulsive in equal measure.

But the weight of these weaving—and the weight of plastic pollution—is more than a statistic. Weight is a reckoning. It is the mental toll of witnessing environmental degradation, the anxiety of knowing our convenience gambles against our future. Kelsey Merreck Wagner’s work invites us to feel this weight, to carry it, and perhaps, to rethink the burdens we leave behind.

​(text by samantha oleschuk)