Ilene Sunshine is a sculptor who works with everyday ephemera and discarded, recycled and natural materials (such as twigs, leaves, etc) t0 to create wall-drawings and fragile sculptural installations, indoors and out. In subtle ways her work references contemporary concerns for the environment, and the movements towards recycling more of society's waste, and reducing consumption. She has written of her work that; "Beyond being an urban dweller's skewed conversation with nature, using such detritus gives me a scavenger's pleasure of making something out of 'nothing'. In formal terms 'negative' space is a primary concern - not the tree limb or the leaf, but the air that is carved into shapes by them. My sculptures and drawings are, in essence, compositions of palpable voids."

This collage comes from the series "New Vein" in which she takes a leaf, sews it to the paper, paints it with pigment and gesso, and adds a piece cut from a plastic carrier bag. In this example, an English oak leaf is combined with a fragment of printed plastic in red, white and blue (from Walgreen's drugstore, before they redesigned their graphics). The colours echo the Union Jack, and thus the piece has a particular resonance in a UK collection. In its multi-layered references to nature and landscape, to the 'nature versus culture' divide, and to contemporary concerns with environmentalism, this is a fascinating piece with significant relevance to the V&A's collections. In its use of plastic ephemera it also makes a neat connection with the collections of commercial graphics and packaging, which include plastic carrier bags.