[MUSIC PLAYING] If you are placing something in the street where everybody is going to see it, you better have something to say.

If you are just making something beautiful, you are losing a good opportunity to talk about things that matter.

I hope that people look at themselves and understand that everybody is part of something, will always have a little impact.

If you are painting in a place where no one is going to see it, I don't know, I think it's a waste of time.

I remember drawing, sketching and painting since almost ever.

I did graffiti for a long time.

I always like to share ideas, to have something to communicate.

With the graffiti, you communicate with the other writers, with the other graffiti guys.

But then I grew up and I found, well, I will need to do something for my life, which wouldn't be just writing my name everywhere.

(electronic whirring) The first contact with Bordalo was in 2017, and that's been a journey to get him here, that it's almost surreal that he is here.

I was in Miami, and I saw a piece he did at Wynwood Walls.

It was fascinating to me, and I just remember sitting, staring at an old airplane with a cougar, and it was giant, and it was trash, and it was alive.

And I was like, oh my God, that's a porta potty.

Here in Asbury Park, our only industry is consumption.

Consumption of food, consumption of the beach, consumption of drinks, and that's great and all, but as we've seen in our history, it does not make for a sustainable and healthy community.

Arts and culture is the only commodity that we have.

We have a public arts commission set up 20 years ago before we even had a mural to approve or disapprove murals.

But we've never turned down a mural, so.

It first started with five murals.

The next year was five more murals.

And then every year after that, about five more murals.

And so now in the last 10 years, we've done about 62 murals.

[MUSIC PLAYING] We give artists full creative license to do what they want as a response to being an Asbury.

But what that takes is having the time to get to know Asbury, get to know our community, get to see some of the things in our community.

And so I started delving into what should our public art look like?

If it's a reflection of the people, what should it look like?

People leave so much garbage on our beach and it takes so many people to clean it all the time.

I mean, we thought, well, what if we put trash on a wall and talk about the environmental effects of this garbage you're leaving behind?

[music] [metal clanking] I don't think the plastic is evil.

Plastic is a material that's very useful for a lot of things.

The problem is the way that we use discarded plastic.

We use a lot of plastic in things we don't need, and it probably end up in the ocean.

And also because some of those discarded plastics are not even recyclable.

[footsteps] This is part of a series of works that we call "The Big Trash Animals," where we create portraits of animals with trash, with the contamination, with the waste, and the idea is to use the materials that are destroying the fauna or destroying their habitats to create images of the victims.

You could ask me, "Why do you just make animals?"

I think the human part is already present there because all these objects, all these materials that we are using came out from humans.

What is destroying the planet will also destroy ourselves.

I think the only thing that doesn't contribute is doing nothing.

I was in Porto and Lisbon and I saw his work and I teach a public arts class in Ocean County and my students have been studying him so they're gonna come visit and it's amazing to see it here in Asbury Park.

Unbelievable!

This is so exciting!

He's an activist first and foremost and this is his weapon.

I'm better to communicate with art pieces than with words.

All the big companies want to put all the pressure on consumers, on us.

It's like, it's your fault.

You have to recycle and put things in the right place, which is a little bit true, but everybody has some responsibility.

You can't always be just pointing to others.

It's one thing to be an activist and use words.

It's a whole other thing to use objects and aesthetics.

With Bordallo's process, you source all the plastic that he has asked for.

They literally give you a manifest of plastic to find, and they do that to encourage you to have a responsibility.

We know things that we're going to use.

Car bumpers, trash bins, bicycle tires, fruit boxes, garden hoses, toys, helmets to make the ice.

He saved tons and tons of trash by his process.

Our fire marshal and our fire chief helped us clean the garbage, which was pretty amazing.

We have the Asbury Park Green Team, which is here to work on environmental issues that our city's facing.

Getting everybody together to do this project just creates this sort of like, we have a barn and let's put on a play and you're gonna do this and you're gonna do that.

And that feels really cool in a small community because then everybody has sort of responsibility and stewardship.

- These look so heavy and they're not.

- The city is a playground.

Everything is possible.

To talk, to share ideas, to criticize something, to be provocative, to get to the point, to make the people think about it.

And even with the stuff that I'm doing, even if you think it's beautiful sometimes, the idea is definitely not to make something beautiful out of trash.

When you stop and look, you see the big portrait, but if you get closer, you lose the sense of the image and you get the close of all the textures.

So why is that waste on the wall?

Cut and assemble in a way to make this portrait.

I want people to look at it and understand what we are talking about.

To stop, look and think.

Around here, even in the beach and behind the buildings, there are some families of foxes that came out early in the morning to check the garbage cans, to go hunting.

It is difficult for them to live among us.

It reminds me of when I used to watch the foxes in 2019.

Hundreds of people would be there, like watching them grow up on the boardwalk.

It's beautiful.

It's amazing.

Very cool, very different, and I love it that it's recycled materials.

And it pays tribute to the fox.

Yeah, our little tribute to our foxes.

I too am a trash artist.

I work on a much smaller scale, but I'm happy to see that trash is a component of this, and all of Bordalo's work has an environmental theme to it, and I just think it's very important to bring that to the public consciousness through art.

I really haven't seen murals like this in Asbury.

I think it's so cool that they're bringing something that was just going to be thrown away back to life.

It's definitely going to be inspiring for a lot of people.

Public art can mean a whole host of things.

It has its own relationship with the viewer.

Art shouldn't just be pretty.

It can have a message and it can teach, and I think it's very important for us to have teaching moments.

I think it's really much more democratic when you work in the street because you are definitely doing it for everybody.

Most of the people that are going to see your artworks in the street, they might not even go to the museums.

In our town, 36% of the population lives under the poverty level, unfortunately, and they'll never get to a museum.

The same people that would never walk into a gallery might have a very fun time with a mural where they're like picking their favorite mural, and then they're going up to the mural, and they're posing in front of the mural, and then they're taking a picture, and then they're sharing it with friends.

Public art is so important.

It's an experience that doesn't cost anything.

In a town that's losing space rapidly because of gentrification, it's a very important thing to preserve space and experience that is free.

I think that public art is democratic, is the most democratic art, because it's there for everybody.

You don't need a ticket, you don't need to pay.

Everybody can go there anytime, there is no hour, there is no time to be closed or open.

That's also why I think public art has a big responsibility.

Some young artist is going to see Bordalo do that and think, "I can do that."

I think it's like a magical thing to see art.

It's hard to articulate because it's just a feeling, right?

Why is music important?

Why is a good meal important?

It's this idea that for even one millisecond, you leave your head, you're in that moment with this thing that someone created.

There is one of this in the world ever in existence.

It really matters.

I think if you influence the people, people have to influence policy because people vote, so they can talk to each other.

I want to open the conversation.

I think that this is the beginning.

[MUSIC PLAYING] [DING]