For years, Douglas Bailey and his family have regularly jumped in their car with a trash bag and made the three-minute trip from their home in North East to the shore of Lake Erie. There, they pick up litter they find washed ashore at a beloved place where Bailey has found peace and inspiration for much of his life.
Amid those pieces of trash are items Bailey, an artist who works in North East School District’s technology department, doesn’t want to throw away and ends up keeping in a jar in his home — things like golf balls and beach glass. He loves creating backstories for them, about how they ended up where he’s standing, about the people who previously knew them.
It can be poignant, he explained, thinking about these pieces’ journeys, while other items make him laugh. One of Bailey’s favorites was a huge comb in the shape of a foot emblazoned with the word “Bigfoot.”
“It’s just crazy. You never know what the lake’s going to give you,” Bailey, who for most of his life has resided in North East, a borough about 15 minutes from the city of Erie, said in an interview with the Pennsylvania Independent.
Much of what he finds, however, isn’t unique treasures he wants to take home with him but trash. The amount of plastic pollution has over the past decade soared in Lake Erie, which provides drinking water for about 11 million people. Researcher Sherrie Mason of Gannon University in Erie documented plastic particle counts near the lake’s Pennsylvania coast surging from 19,000 per square kilometer in 2014 to more than 700,000 in 2024, according to reporting from cleveland.com.
Bailey is determined to raise awareness about the pollution in this lake, a place where he goes almost daily during the summer with his wife, Amy, and his children Dorian and Ava, and where for decades he’s gone to skip rocks after a bad day or watch a sunset he calls “one of the most beautiful things you can ever see.”
For the last couple of months of 2025, Bailey worked on a piece of art that’s titled “Lake Erie Leftovers” and is made up of items he found on the shore. That work will be available for the public to view beginning Feb. 1 at the Center for Lake Erie Education and Research at Blasco Library in Erie. Following that exhibit, which is expected to run through June, the piece will be available to see at the Lake Erie Maritime Museum.
Douglas Bailey holds his piece “Lake Erie Leftovers” on the shore of the lake. (Photo provided by the artist.)
“My intention is it will never be for sale,” Bailey said. “It’s going to be something that’s just constantly lent out to be displayed and just encourage and promote that there is an issue with trash in our freshwater lakes, and that people are just mindful of collecting, not littering. You see something on the shoreline — just pick it up and throw it away.”
Bailey’s not sure how many items of Lake Erie debris are in his piece, but there are several that especially stand out on the 22-inch-by-37-inch work that’s covered in blue spray paint and surrounded by a $1 plastic frame the artist picked up at a local thrift store, he said.
“The golf club head, or maybe the octopus — it’s definitely the main focal point,” he wrote to the Pennsylvania Independent. “But that toy engine? It’s not something you see every day, either.”
“Lake Erie Leftovers” follows other works by Bailey, a self-taught artist who said he’s especially inspired by nature, street art and skateboarding. His evolution as an artist has been from designing band flyers and logos when he was younger to tattoo designs as he got older. He then moved into helping companies with branding and logo design, illustrations and other commercial work. These days, in addition to doing his mixed-media artwork, Bailey has been pursuing more photography.
“I’ve never had any formal training beyond what I had in high school, really, so it’s just kind of one of those things that I’ve tried to be a sponge with anything that I find interest in,” Bailey said. “I just try to deep-dive on it and consume as much as I can and then just try to implement that in what I’m doing.”
He loves finding the pieces of life others have left behind and incorporating those in his work — the Lake Erie debris, of course, but also items like stickers scattered throughout city landscapes. Last year, Bailey completed a piece titled “Broke in the 814,” which featured five different broken skateboards from local skaters. Erie’s area code is 814. That work was displayed at a local gallery alongside the text, “The skateboards used in this piece were all broken locally in Erie Pa by 814 skaters. Don’t be sad for the people who broke these boards, celebrate them. They are making progress. They will continue to push their boards and their limits.”
Bailey said he’s especially proud of the “Broke in the 814” piece, which is inspired by his decades-long love for skateboarding.
“I still cruise around on a board from time to time,” Bailey wrote to the Pennsylvania Independent. “Skateboarding was a huge part of my youth, from the graphics on the boards to the music to the lifelong friendships I established. When you have that skateboarding mindset, you look at things differently; you’re always looking for the next line through a group of obstacles. You look at how things are created and built. I’ve taken that approach with everything I do now.”
With “Lake Erie Leftovers” completed and being shown to the public, Bailey is turning his focus to new projects, including creating a “larger-than-life postcard” against which North East beachgoers will be able to pose and branding work for local businesses.
Then, of course, there’s the ongoing work of cleaning up the Lake Erie shoreline, something he does at least several times a week when the weather turns a bit warmer. He’ll keep doing that until it’s no longer needed for the body of water that he explained has given him so much throughout his life, from a chance to decompress to moments of beauty.
“Sunsets around here are just absolutely amazing because the water will be completely still,” Bailey said. “You actually have trouble seeing where the horizon and the skyline meet each other because it just all kind of disappears, and then the sun just sinks into the lake. And it’s one of the most beautiful things you can ever see. Honestly. It’s gorgeous.”