Cody Norman Featured in 15 West for Chicago Exhibition and Community Plastic Initiative
Cody Norman, Plasticus canistraria
, 2023. Photo by NaBeela Washington for 15 West.
Cody Norman’s (MFA 3D Design 2020) work and community practice are the subject of a new feature in 15 West, focusing on his recent exhibition Becoming: Where Plastic Meets Nature at the Garfield Park Conservatory and the community initiative at its core.
Rather than treating plastic as waste, Norman treats it as a medium, shredding, melting, and reshaping discarded toys, detergent bottles, and flower pots into large-scale sculptures inspired by coral reefs and mangrove ecosystems. The works, installed among the conservatory’s living plant collections, ask a pointed question: if plastic has become a permanent feature of modern life, how do people, communities, and public spaces adapt to it? For Norman, the answer draws on biomimicry, looking to the way coral fans and ventilates, the way mangrove roots filter waterways, to find forms that feel both synthetic and organic, familiar and strange.
That inquiry extends beyond the studio. Norman is co-founder of Redemptive Plastics, a community initiative based at Alt Space in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood that works with households and local partners to collect and rework discarded plastic into public seating, furniture, and educational projects. As his collaborator Jordan Campbell describes it, the project adds a fourth “R” to the familiar environmental framework: “We wanted to add the fourth R, which was to redeem.” For Norman and Campbell, redemption means restoring value to what has been discarded — whether a piece of plastic, a public space, or a community member seeking new opportunities.
The 15 West feature draws on an Earth Day artist talk Norman gave at the conservatory on April 22, capturing both the philosophy and playfulness of his approach. On his improvisational process, building with a custom tool mounted on a robot arm, he describes the work like a live performance: “It’s always gonna be different. It’ll be like if you go see the same band two nights in a row, it’s gonna be close, but always a little different.” On the large, touchable coral-like structures he invites visitors to engage with physically: “Go give it a hug. It’s meant to be touched.”
Becoming: Where Plastic Meets Nature has now closed, but Norman’s work and Redemptive Plastics continue.
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