On Monday my group and I visited Canstruction at Brookfield Place. Canstruction is an art installation done by many people. They use cans to create sculptures and then when the installation is removed all the cans are donated to City Harvest and then distributed to people suffering form hunger and food insecurity in NYC. Because these cans all are actually going to be used the artists are are only allowed to use tape and can not alter the cans in any way. When we decided that we were going to visit Canstruction I thought that there would be somewhere between 5 and 10 sculptures. I was totally surprised to see the 20+ sculptures each made of 1000’s of cans. I was also surprised to see that each sculpture didn’t stand alone. Every set set of artists had a mission statement. They all connected the image depicted in their structure to the fight to end hunger. While it wasn’t my favorite structure I was particularly struck by the mission statement that went with the sculpture of a Ghost, called Let’s Scare Hunger Away.

This is the mission statement that went along with this piece.

Ghoulish ghosts, villainous vampires, maniacal monsters… All of them scary, but also imaginary.

Hunger, on the other hand, is all too real – and it isn’t hiding under the bed or in the closet. It’s on display in homeless shelters, at soup kitchens, and even in the homes of our friends and neighbors.

This year lets join and give the children of New York City one less thing to fear – Let’s scare hunger away.

This statement along with others was a different look at the issue of Hunger. Not only was reading the mission statements that went along with these prices a valuable experience, but you were also able to read how many cans went into the structure and how many New Yorkers it will feed once donated. This ghost will feed 767 people and that is one of the smaller numbers. Other sculptures will feed thousands of people. I think that Canstruction is a really interesting way to both get people thinking about hunger and actually help people who otherwise struggle to get food.