What Is It? What Does It Mean?

Artist Statement: Running the Numbers
An American Self-Portrait

"Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone.

"This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society... I hope to raise some questions about the roles and responsibilities we each play as individuals in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming."      
~chris jordan, Seattle, 2008

Running the Numbers

Visit Chris Jordan's latest Works and click on "Running the Numbers" for more examples. GreenPlate is honored to highlight Jordan's Art here. We will be changing the art out periodically.

Plastic Cups, 2008

60x90"
Depicts one million plastic cups, the number used on airline flights in the US every six hours.

Packing Peanuts, 2009

60x80"
"Packing Peanuts" depicts 166,000 packing peanuts, equal to the number of overnight packages shipped by air in the U.S. every hour.