Artist transforms McDonalds bags into stunning paper trees

August 25, 2009 by green team
Filed under Design

Yuken Teruya creates ethereal paper forests out of throwaway objects like fast food bags.

Yuken Teruya

Who says garbage can’t be art? If you’ve ever eaten at McDonalds, you will have experienced the amount garbage generated from a single meal–paper wrappers, paper bags, plastic cups, straws, ketchup packets, paper napkins and more! Japanese artist Yuken Teruya has transformed such mundane “garbage” into stunning works of art emulating nature. These are imaginative minatures of ironic beauty.

green team

Artist transforms McDonalds bags into stunning paper trees
Mother Nature Network
by Stephanie Rogers

Yuken Teruya creates ethereal paper forests out of throwaway objects like fast food bags.

Garish, disposable fast food bags aren’t exactly an obvious art medium, but once artist Yuken Teruya works his magic on them, they’re transformed into stunning, delicate paper forests that capture the vitality of live trees in a series entitledNotice-Forest.

Teruya cuts one side of the disposable paper bags and then uses tiny scissors to shape the cut-out part into a tree, folding it down so that, when you look inside the bag, it creates a diorama. The colors on the exterior of the bag pop against the blank interior, and the light that shines inside allows the paper tree to cast the same sort of dappled shadows that a real tree would.

The artist says that he sees the inside of the bag as a perfect place to resurrect the original qualities and spirit of an authentic tree, making it appear as if the tree is situated in the middle of a vivid forest.

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