This is an IHeart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is Alec Baldwin,

and you're listening to Here's the Thing from IHeart Radio.

If you've passed through Bradley International Airport recently,

you may have noticed a 60-foot-long, 20-foot-wide,

life-size portrait of a sperm whale made from

discarded plastic bags and shipping mailers.

The piece was created by my guest today as part of her ongoing entangled and ingested art series.

Kat Owens is not only an ambitious artist, she is also a plastic pollution researcher,

activist, and professor. Owens merges science, policy, and the arts to create life-size

portraits of the animals harmed by plastic pollution to raise environmental awareness.

Kat Owens is also a national geographic explorer,

Fulbright Nehru Fellow,

and a professor at the University of Hartford in Connecticut.

Owens seamlessly blends her visual art with her day-to-day work.

I wanted to know if she first considered herself to be an artist or an environmentalist.

That's a good question. I would say an artist first, definitely. From a young age, I was very

interested in drawing and making things and fortunately was able to get some art lessons and things before I got to school age where it was available through schools.

And then I went to college, the college of Charleston and South Carolina.

And I was in studio art major there and got exposed to all kinds of amazing things, painting, printmaking, a little bit of sculpture, drawing.

But when I was at college, the subject matter for all of my work was insects.

...