Look at all those toys!

…oops – Look at all that PLASTIC!

Marco Island artist Karen Swanker has such a playful imagination. As an established artist on the island, Karen is known for her skilled assemblage work with found objects. In this case, as Karen’s husband Jim walks the Marco Island Beach every morning, he finds and collects abandoned children’s toys littering the beach – lots of them. Karen turns her hand to creating these colourful and often humorous creations.

Inspired by the work of Picasso years ago, Karen has adapted her mission help save the planet by assembling these toys into a riot of colour and imagination.  Her skilled use of colour interpretation makes these delightful objects a thing of beauty. 

Karen’s work may be found installed at the Marco Island Library aptly in the Children’s library and at the Marco Island Center for the Arts.

These unique creations are for sale and are worth every penny as Karen spends hours at her dining room table assembling and gluing just the right combination of items together to make something truly one of a kind.

Thank you, Karen, for helping to save our planet one collected toy at a time.

We all understand plastic will remain on our beaches forever…….

YOU are doing something about it!