Jessica Trainor

“Drunken Despair”

Medium:

• Bottles
• duct tape
• yarn
• glow sticks
• glue
• tissue paper
• cardboard
• red paint
• and a tree

Year: 2012

Project Description:

This is a project to bring awareness of the severity of drunk driving. I hung up 96 beer and wine bottles to represent the 96 people who die everyday because of drunk driving. On some of the bottles I put the faces of victims so that people who come up close and touch the bottles can see that these victims are not unknown. They are children, parents, and grandparents.This is a very important topic to me because I have been affected by the tragic loss that can be the result of drinking and driving. A drunk driver struck and killed one of my best friends, Nick Haverland, on May 11, 2011 who was riding his bike on his way to his final at Ventura College. The man driving his hummer hit a mother and daughter on their bikes and then rear-ended a truck stopped at a red light before hitting Nick. He then proceeded to drive all the way to his house before police caught him. His alcohol level was .39 percent. The legal limit is .08 percent. That is almost 5x the legal limit. No one should drink and drive because it just takes one time to destroy the lives of others. My goal is to show people that they could add to the number of people who die a day by making bad decisions, or could be the victim themselves. It took me 4 hours just to hang the bottles, so there were a few people who would ask me what I was doing and I would talk with them about the effects of drunk driving. Some just walked by and looked, others would read the sign out loud and then talk about it with friends as they walked past. I think this could be very interactive piece if people decide to walk up to it. They can touch the bottles making them sway and clink together. They can also look at all the different faces on the bottles.