Seattle artist Chris Jordan eloquently depicts the statistics of American life in an unusual series of paintings.

If you live in NYC, go see his show being exhibited at the Von Lintel Gallery in New York from June 14th to the end of July, and encourage your friends to do the same. If you don’t, view it here and imagine the impact of the images full size.

This one, "Toothpicks, 2007" is 60×99" and illustrates 8 million toothpicks, equal to the number of trees harvested in
the US every month to make the paper for mail order catalogs: