This mural, picturing a Red-Eyed Tree Frog in its native rainforest setting, was created with 48 pizza boxes (if you look, you can see the white edges above.)  Each pizza box contains a 9x9 grid of 81 toilet roll tubes, for a total of 3,888 holes (or giant "pixels").  It is approx. 8' high and 10' wide.

Every hole was filled with coloured recycled materials, from candy wrappers and chip bags, to weekly grocery flyers and bits of vinyl table cloths.  These were collected and sorted by colour by the kids from St. John Bosco School's environmental club.  I provided a colour grid for each pizza box, and the kids filled them in on their lunch hours over a period of about two months.  When it was put together, I mixed-and-swapped similar colours between boxes to even out the colour variations.  The pizza boxes are glued together in sections of 3x4 boxes that allow me to disassemble the mural into four quadrants of 12.  The top and bottom sections are hinged in the middle so they fold face-to-face for transport.  One-inch bird netting covers the entire mural to keep the pieces in, but allows viewers to explore and touch the materials in the tubes.  This project travelled to Unionville in July 2009 and was on display in the atrium of the F.H. Varley Gallery for two weeks, greeting visitors and students taking workshops at the gallery (where this photo was taken). An original educational project, this was one of my favourites.