Parsnips, Carrots, and Beans, by Erin Currier

Traveler, trash collector, and artist Erin Currier seeks out “places the mainstream sightseer pays money to avoid: barrios, ghettos, slums, worker compounds.” In explaining her artistic process, she writes, “I collected post-consumer waste in every country I visited and embarked upon a Robin Hood form of recycling, in which the proceeds of my work sold in the ‘first world’ were utilized in travel to the ‘third world,’ where I’d gather more trash, mail it to my studio, parlay it into art, and essentially resell the trash in the form of fine art for funds with which to travel again.” Her work borrows aspects from iconography, social realism, and Eastern religion. Parsnips, Carrots, and Beans is from her series The Orchard Keepers.