On the beach

I didn't expect to feel serene in an exhibit about beach trash. But when you've picked up nearly two tons of discarded plastic at your favorite oceanside spot over the last decade, you might as well do something pleasant with it.

Artists Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang, who spend a lot of time at Kehoe Beach, have brought the fruits of their labor to Stanford in a pocket-sized exhibition called "Disposable Truths." Small plastic objects are the focus. They're glued on a chair, table and lamp like rainbow chicken pox. On the floor, white pieces of plastic trash -- forks, caps, general detritus -- make a clumpy shag carpet.

On the walls are photos of tidy groupings of plastic. One photo is all of toy soldiers; another is of lemon-juice containers. There are also combs, lighters, whistle mouthpieces. You'd never imagine that girls' barrettes came in so many shapes: bows, dragonflies, school buses; even a pig with the word "MONDAY." Red spreaders for snack cheese are bleached by the sun, or have coral patterns on them, or look completely unchanged by their time in the ocean floating who-knows-where.

"We have been sold the myth of disposable plastic," the authors write. "We throw it away but it stays with us for centuries and may ultimately irreparably alter the planet."

Gloomy sentiments, and certainly true, but I enjoyed the beauty and symmetry that the artists created in their patterns of objects. They took trash and created order. It reminded me of being a child and happily sorting buttons from my mother's button jar: by color, size, number of holes, levels of shininess...

Photos by Rebecca Wallace. In my top photo, you can see the neatly lined-up cheese spreaders.