December 2024 e-Newsletter for subscribers is here

Learning Curves, 2021, welded plastic debris (high density polyethylene), 7’6" x 8’2" x 10’7" feet/inches

Abundance and Destruction Find Cultural Impact: Aurora Robson’s Collaborative Approach to Intersecting the Plastic Waste Stream
By Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

Aurora Robson’s work acts as a meditative interception into the plastic waste stream, natural forms, and their relationships to her recurring childhood nightmares. Repurposing plastics from a wide range of sources, she tunes into an otherwise destructive, wasteful and abundant material resource. To build community and collective purpose, she founded Project Vortex in 2009. Project Vortex is an artist collective innovating with plastic debris, “as an effort to help broaden creative stewardship initiatives in art and academic settings” with artists, designers and architects internationally. Their collaborative exhibition, “Plasticulture: The Rise of Sustainable Practices with Polymers,” is on view at the School of Visual Arts in New York City through December 15, and presents a “rethinking and reinvention of plastic debris."

The Great Indoors, 2008, plastic debris, paint, solar powered LEDs and hardware, 44 x 44 x 18 feet

Aurora, you have described your work surrounding the intersection between your subconscious and environmental destruction as “about subjugating negativity and shifting trajectories.” Where does the personal and the political intersect for you and through your work?  

To me, the personal is political—there is no separation. As a woman, a mother and an artist, and especially in the political climate in the USA right now, every choice we make is not only vital but a gift.

Plastic pollution has an overwhelming, all encompassing, suffocating effect on all living organisms. My childhood nightmares shared these qualities.

We have been spilling a perfectly good art supply into places it has no business being. This is no different from many other self destructive products and personal choices humans have made throughout history (lead paint or cigarettes are other examples). Plastic is a petroleum-based material, a by-product of the fossil fuel industry. It is a laughable enterprise if you think about working with plastic debris for sculpture in terms of sequestering it to keep it from doing harm, but art does not need to have a literal or direct impact to be effective. Art is the basis for the development of cultural and societal norms, therefore its ultimate impact can not be measured by ordinary units of measure or on a finite timeline.

And to make this cultural impact, you have integrated junk mail, tubing, and a variety of plastic refuse to create “plastic waste interceptions.” What do your aesthetic choices intend to relay about intervening in the plastic waste stream?

Overall, I am working to reveal various false perceptions of value that have been wreaking havoc on all life forms. I like to think of my aesthetic choices as an exercise in anti-discrimination, with matter as a metaphor. There is an interplay between recognizing that matter matters, which it does to me in that I prefer to work with material that has been discarded, disregarded and discriminated against. I avoid virgin materials. In a sense, this approach makes the material immaterial. I am illustrating that it is about the “doing” and not so much the “thing,” or that value and scarcity don’t really have anything in common. 

Be Like Water, 2010, 80,000 plastic bottle caps and 9000 discarded plastic (PET) bottles collected by students at 7 public and private schools in Philadelphia, 25 x 120 x 14 feet. Funded by the City of Philadelphia Dept. of Cultural Affairs, Skybox, Curator Eileen Tognini and other private donors.

I imagine that this “doing” is also reflected in your gathering practices and process. What does this process look like?

The collecting of materials is the easiest part, it is increasingly everywhere and plastic objects are constantly morphing due to their “plasticity.”

I have many sources and approaches for collecting materials—and they are constantly proliferating. People want to sequester plastic debris because it is one of the most problematic wide spread toxic waste issues. People send me plastic debris from their homes, (bottle caps, bread tags, and all manner of objects). This really moves me as there is a thoughtful energy, which is very powerful because it transforms debris into a gift at the onset. I try to honor that act by perpetuating the motion. I also work with clean up organizations who conduct clean ups of rivers, shores, parks, road sides, etc… and use material they have collected. I have also partnered with schools, transfer stations, corporations, and recycling centers.

When possible, I love to work in urban environments with people who are collecting bottles out of the trash and gutters to take them to redemption centers for money. When I do, I facilitate a pay increase for them while making their journeys less arduous and lengthy by arranging pick up locations closer to them. 

Wow, you have such a range of sources and an (unfortunate) abundance! Do the collection sources and context affect your work process?

I always try to respond to the environment I am working in and honor it. I like to integrate local materials and ethos to add layers of relevance to the community that the work is intended to serve. Canada has very little pollution and litter compared to the US. It is always an interesting contrast to go between these countries—but often just because you can’t see the problem, doesn't mean it isn’t there. The majority of plastic, when submerged in water for any length of time, will sink. This is part of the issue that I think makes it most appropriate for artists. I think our job is to make something that is not visible, visible and to use our visionary skills to envision a sustainable and habitable world that supports life.

Through Project Vortex, you’ve extended this work process to create collective impact as well. What inspired you to begin this collective? And what has the collective work process allowed you to do?

Initially, I started Project Vortex because I was feeling increasingly hopeless about plastic pollution and about whether it would ever be utilized as an art material outside of my studio. I felt like I was alone, insane and quite small. I was worried that emotionally, I wouldn’t be able to sustain this “sustainable practice”. It was depressing to see more and more shifts towards plastic packaging and more and more artists buying new plastic objects to use in their work to talk about this, but so indirectly, with such lack of self reflection or accountability.

I needed to find other people who were working with this material without biases. People who were focused on it in order to add to the volume, richness, efficacy and diversity in the dialogue and action that all need amplification and expansion. I found that the more I looked for other artists the more I found them. It became more and more inspiring and valuable as a resource for me and for educators and the other members of the collective. Plus, through the development of this collective, more resources and opportunities could be shared and distributed within the collective, making us stronger as individuals and as a group. 

Poster for “Plasticulture: The Rise of Sustainable Practices With Polymers," through December 15, 2024, featuring Project Vortex Artists, includes works by ecoartspace members Ellen Driscoll, Natalya Khorover, Pam Longobardi and Bryan Northup).

With your current group exhibition, “Plasticulture: The Rise of Sustainable Practices with Polymers” at The School of Visual Arts Gallery in Manhattan, you showcase the fruits of this collective strength. What do you hope to inspire in both students and visitors alike in your approaches to sustainability and earth health?

Plasticulture highlights brilliant approaches to working with plastic debris with the goal being that students and visitors find inspiration, joy and hope, at a time when that is particularly important in a country with such a divided population. It is an invitation. My hope is that it is the first exhibition of its kind. It has a message that is clear, to the point, inclusive, and without a doubt, of service to life itself.

Each of the works featured embodies a different story or aspect to the plastic pollution issue that is relevant to every living creature on the planet, not just the 1% of us who enjoy the joke of a duct taped banana selling for $6.2 million. Though the exhibition only includes about a dozen of the amazing artists from Project Vortex, it is the antithesis to irreverent art that is merely about art. Despite the abysmal nature of the material that is at its focus it is powerful and uplifting. Plasticulture is about a burden that weighs on all life on earth right now. It is about what humans are doing to the ecosystem and what we can do about it. 

Thank you, Aurora, for reminding us of both our responsibility to the planet and each other through the impact of our work. 

World Map Series, 2019, Mixed media on canvas, dimensions variable

Vibrant Repercussions Resonate Around the World: Diane Burko Paints the Changing Environment in Brilliant Color from the Amazon and Beyond

Interview by Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

Diane Burko creates vibrant paintings and photographs that tell the harrowing story of our landscapes and people as the climate shifts and destructs. Based on maps, time lapse photographs, and on-site field work, she does her due-diligence to honor and truly understand the landscapes and people that are her subject. Though her focus is mainly in the Amazon, her message for collaborative activism, decolonialism, and environmental protection ring true for people throughout the world. Diane’s work truly exemplifies the intersection and power of art to speak to the spirit and foster attitudes toward change. She is currently exhibiting work in Madrid, Spain alongside other artists in the “The Greatest Emergency is the Absence of Emergency” show curated by Santiago Zabala until January 12, 2025.

Deforestation 1, 2021, mixed media on canvas, 42 x 42 inches

Diane, your work is location specific, but speaks to issues people are facing around the world. What is your approach on and off site? And how does it inform your artwork?

"Bearing witness” is an integral part of my practice - a totally crucial component. Physically experiencing & investigating a site of climate degradation, speaking with scientists and people who are from the land, experiencing these changes first-hand, is incredibly important to me. It is this practice that informs my work and provides it with authenticity & imbues it with a level of emotional intensity that I think can move people and allow them to connect with the factual as well as the aesthetic. I think this is what makes my work truly effective.

I visit places of climate degradation, take photos, notes, sketches, and most importantly, I take in the experience, really absorb it, and speak with people who study the landscape, conduct research, and live/work there. Then, I take those experiences home with me to my studio in Philadelphia, I let them marinate, and I make work. I paint, collage, manipulate organic material, and in that process, I let the canvas soak up everything I have absorbed.

Grinnell Mt. Gould #1, #2, #3, #4, 2009, oil on canvas, 88 x 200  inches overall, from Grinnell Mt. Gould series, painting of the glacier as it appeared four times in archival/USGS photographs from 1938 and 2006

Your description makes me think of the vibrancy and movement of your pre-and post-devastation landscapes, especially in your recent Amazon and Balbina series. How does time play out in your work?

I think that the motif of “pre-” and “post-” devastation in my work is a tool that brings a sober reality to many viewers. Some of these devastations happen so slowly that it is impossible to notice–summers get hotter, climate disasters more devastating, glaciers shrink–and it’s hard to grasp because we simply get used to it. I think that presenting these sites in both forms at one space and time can show viewers just what is happening, and how drastic the changes have been.

For example, I first worked within the tradition of “repeat photography” in the late 2000s, in a body of work that I showed in 2010 titled “Politics of Snow.” These works utilized glacial research and archival photographs. I focused on painting glaciers, and mountains as they’ve changed over time by contrasting them between the years. In those paintings, you see drastic changes–a disappearing landscape.

This kind of practice still informs my current work, but now I use more abstract representations of landscape and change–fields of color contrasted with borders, collaged headlines, articles, graphs, and images of devastation.

Amazon 25, 2024, mixed media on canvas, 20 x 20 inches

Your landscapes bridge multiple-dimensions and activism. Even using mapping to emphasize contrasts in the beauty and the destruction you describe. Do you consider mapping a political act? And how does it marry with art making?

Mapping is most certainly a political act! Maps play a crucial role in shaping the ways that we see the world - the colors, borders, symbols, what maps do and do not show – all that information is intentional. While they accurately display the world we live in, I want them to also imply the urgency of the climate crisis, the shrinking glaciers and rainforests, the disappearing reefs, as well as other issues. Their urgency, and their reality is important, and the use of maps in my work, especially in my World Map Series comes with the implication that we are all in this together.

Still from Diane Burko: World Map Series: From Glaciers to Reefs On Vimeo, 2019

That “we are all in this together” really resonates with the increasing call for art to be an activistic space integral to the effectiveness of climate policy and an informed public. Have you experienced public and policy shifts through art? And what seemed most effective in creating lasting change?

I certainly have, I think that, like I just mentioned, art has the capacity to empower the public, and I think many artists who are working now, and in the past have made it their goal to really reach out to the public and make empowering, informative work.

This makes me think about our efforts with FOCUS: featuring women artists in Philadelphia in 1974. And (re)FOCUS) this year, featuring black, brown, and indigenous women & gender non-conforming folks. Judy Brodsky and I, and many other talented individuals have been dedicated to these efforts, building these communities, and featuring stories that have been historically left out.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what is most effective, but it’s the sheer effort, the community building that I’ve seen and engaged in that has been most impactful in my experience. The networks of people working together, sharing their experiences with each other, and dedicating themselves to that practice of building and sharing and teaching each other is incredibly inspiring, and has compounded generationally.

Manaus/Meeting of the Waters, triptych, 2024, mixed media on canvas, 42 x 156 inches

What a fantastic reminder of how important community is while we navigate these times. And many of the conversations in these communities revolve around the repercussions of colonization and land exploitation that continue to today. What are your thoughts on the decolonial conversation in art?

Yes, my recent work is focused on the emergencies in the Amazon that have affected, and continue to affect, the landscape, and the indigenous populations of those regions, with widening ramifications for the whole planet.  The grid that is featured in this current group exhibition in Madrid deals with these issues of environmental degradation in the Amazon caused by the politics, greed, and extraction that are enacted world-wide. My goal is to continue the climate emergency conversation that impacts us all in the near future by featuring this work on an international level

These conversations about the dangers of deforestation and colonialism are at once local and global. So, traveling these works about the Amazon Rainforest to Spain (a former colonial power) is significant. It’s important that we look at these issues through multiple lenses. What happens in one space is a specific issue that has the capacity to affect the global climate. And it’s also part of a much larger pattern of colonialism and greed that affects us all, no matter where you are in the world. The destruction in the Amazon of both the landscape and the indigenous communities who steward the land represent this well. Chances are, something similar– some kind of local disruption to a natural landscape or indigenous population--is happening right under your nose.

Sharing these works and the decolonial conversation in art far and wide, is very important, especially in places that have complicated histories, and complex publics'.

Amazon Grid, Grid of 20 x 20 inch paintings on the Amazon; 2022-2024, mixed media on canvas, 60 x 120 inches

The exhibition you are referencing is in Spain and speaks of emergency prevention through artists who “rescue us in our greatest emergencies” before they become “emergencies”. What are your thoughts about your role as an artist in preventing these global climate-related emergencies?

I think that art has an incredible capacity to help “rescue us into our greatest emergencies” as Santiago Zabala has said in curating this exhibition. With all the media nowadays, it can feel impossible to keep up. Scientific data can become garbled, reports of non-stop disasters can be painful, and it can all become overwhelming to most. Many folks choose to look away in all of that overwhelm, and, well, it’s understandable.

I think art has a unique capacity to blend these emergencies with a more emotional experience, allowing viewers to open themselves to the emergency, really absorb that it is happening, and feel hope. I think that the beauty of art, its hopefulness is the perfect catalyst for change and empowerment, and empowerment is really what brings about change. The despair that I think most folks feel when watching a regular news report is not going to do that.

My work was actually featured in a research study that was then featured in this Hyperallergic article. My 2020 painting Summer Heat, was used in a study that demonstrated the way that the emotional components of art, the awe and the beauty, the visual communication can reach a broader public, and deepen their understanding of these issues in ways that classic avenues don’t.

Thank you, Diane, for your powerful work. The world needs these messages more than ever. 

November 2024 e-Newsletter for subscribers is here

Image: Bed of Nets Aviva Rahmani 1992

Metaphors and Murder

How Do We Come to a Dead Forest?

Aviva Rahmani, October 1, 2024 Substack

Ecocide is murder, whether you consider a forest sentient or calculate how many people die because their habitat is destroyed, it is a crime against humanity that ends in death. Halfway through the new aria to be performed by the soprano Alison Cheeseman at the Anita Rogers Gallery October 30, the wife of the fossil fuel executive accused of ecocide sings, "I was standing alone, naked in a dead forest." How did she end there? As she laments her cold marriage and the Earth her husband has scorched, her alter ego, played by the dancer Rishauna Zomberg, wrestles with a large blue-painted branch from the dead forest, the reality she had been oblivious to see.

I saw the wife's nakedness as a metaphor.  The metaphor tells a story about a psychological stripping down. All the wife's defenses against grief, facing just how destructive the man she loves has been, come down even as a part of her struggles with the barren real world his destructiveness has left her to inhabit alone. It is a turning point, a time to face reality. She is just one figure among many facing the realities of climate change. The whole world has clear choices now: face the effects of climate change created by fossil fuel use or live in a forest of death. Begin to hold people responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity or let them walk away with impunity.

Metaphor and storytelling narratives create worlds. The central metaphor in the entire Blued Trees project is blue on live and dead wood: a blue sine wave on designated sentinel trees in the forest, dead, broken blue painted branches in galleries: the threat of death and death itself made beautiful, even, as in The Blued Trees Symphony, threat and death was made into music. The world I am shaping now is the dystopic world we may leave ourselves if we cannot establish firm boundaries: naked in a dead forest. That will all take place in a gallery, the venue for an informal mock trial, in which all will be judged.

A color can be a metaphor. The blue I use evokes the calm pleasure of blue skies and waters. The blue on the trees and branches I use is Ultramarine, a non-toxic, now synthetic pigment, once ground from Lapiz Lazuli and very costly. It was reserved for special images, such as the Madonna's robes, surely something the real Madonna could never have aspired to wear. With a touch of black, it became Yves Klein’s color. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Klein_Blue#:~:text=International%20Klein%20Blue%20(IKB)%20is%20a%20deep%20blue%20hue%20first

Lakoff and Johnson explored the political implications of using metaphor to change a world. More systematic studies have since been conducted on the effects of metaphorical framing. Metaphors can embody the gist of a culture's values even if the world depicted is delusional, whether an image of an idealized blond Madonna, dressed in expensive garments cradling a precocious Jesus or a Richard Prince revision of the photograph that became the Marlboro man.

In the case of the Madonna, the cultural enshrinement of falsity is remarkable: a middle eastern blonde dressed like a European noblewoman exemplifying a putative relationship between religion and aristocrats to justify the oppressions of European monarchies. Prince did something, similar, reifying a mythical paradox: that a healthy outdoor life was compatible with smoking cigarettes but then he did something different, by then taking the low art of advertising into a high art venue. Prince was part of the appropriation movement of the seventies, which began dabbling in culture-jamming, turning tropes on their heads to make socio-political points, as in B Barbara Kruger's appropriation of advertising design to make challenging cultural statements. These artists and the works of others, whose appropriations tested the limits and boundaries of copyright law were challenging the notion of who owns what and why. Since then, copyright law is again being tested and is now, a hot legal topic in the promotion of AI.

It was in the seventies that I first became fascinated by copyright law and took my first law class. At the time, an idealistic goal of the appropriation movement was to make all cultural artifacts free to all, as a matter of common rights. Eventually, that morphed into a series systems to gain reasonable access but still protect intellectual property.

What initially drew me into studying copyright law was outrage over how the appropriation movement was used by some to excuse cultural theft from the less powerful: younger artists and researchers, Indigenous Peoples and partners, generally, wives and girlfriends at the time.  I became committed to the idea that appropriation without attribution was both outright theft and an historical impoverishment, rubbing us of an historical understanding of how ideas develop.

Since the seventies, a number of politicians and pundits have grasped the power of metaphor and noted the creation of mythical stories to promote policy, as Heather Cox Richardson has pointed out in how Ronald Reagan launched and leveraged the trope of the independent cowboy to promote ultra conservative values .

Reagan's campaign, like church's promotion of a wealthy, blond Madonna en familia, untethered metaphor and regulatory logic and yet it successfully sold a conservative agenda. Extractive policies were primarily sold by relentlessly leveraging the emotional triggering that evoked 1950's movies about a delusional world of valiant white cowboys, conquering malignant Indians on an open range.  In truth, the real cowboys were often people of color. The Indians were brutally persecuted in ignominious ways and the range was only open because of genocide and ecocide. As the costly blue of the blond Madonna's robes, this was the selling of a lie. It was the opposite of truth. And yet, these tropes were remarkably successful in trading on lies to effect oppression.

In an actual court of law, which might lead to actual policy with some idea of justice, any plaintiff’s pleas must be backed by standing. Standing is a plaintiff's right to be heard because there is an ownership relationship, recognized in the community. Theoretically, simple publishing creates copyright. In court, one way to establish standing for any ownership is evidence of community credibility. So, for example, the standing of Blued Trees in the 2018 Mock Trial was established on the basis of expert art testimony about its art historical significance.

I have always been mindful of the stories metaphors can tell and sought verisimilitude in the corollaries. In 1992, as I was beginning Ghost Nets (1990-2000), I assembled a number of drift nets I had collected at the local town dump, and placed them on an iron bed, that had been painted gloss white. I called it the, "Bed of Nets," and said it was a metaphor for all our familiar habits and routines that like the lost drift nets in the sea, become internal ghost nets, indiscriminately trapping and killing life, drifting indestructibly through the oceans of our lives for many, many years. Ghostnets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_net were a central metaphor for the entire project and have returned to my mind, almost twenty-five years later, in Blued Trees.

My idea in the Bed of Nets, was that we get in bed with what is familiar, literally and figuratively and it may kill us. It was such a powerful idea for me, that what drove the entire Ghost Nets project for me, was to experiment with doing what was unfamiliar for me towards restoring the former dump site into flourishing wetlands. That theme, of braving what was unfamiliar and scared me culminated fifteen years later with gaining my PhD with a hard science cross over for, "Trigger Point Theory as Aesthetic Activism."

Eventually, I took the experiment further,  doing what scared me, I began working on an opera based on the mock trial for The Blued Trees Symphony, and most recently, performed the wife's new aria a Capela for it

That aria will be the raw material for the event Oct. 30 at the Anita Rogers Gallery. The aria is about a relationship between a fossil fuel executive, his wife and the Earth he has despoiled but the deeper content for me is the question of what we get in bed with? What are the tolerances we accept as the Earth burns and drowns? What are the limits of our liabilities? Holding powerful people accountable for murder does not come easily for most of us.

Eventually, I took my experimentation into my personal life in a difficult relationship, I learned to let the concrete facade of my defenses fall off me as intimacy grew, exposing new raw skin to air and light, living what the wife in my aria clung to and knowing how finally, reality will tear away her last defenses. My personal courage translates back to greater boldness in my wor.

In the aria under production for October 30, the wife has been in bed with a world destroyer who is her love. She has not yet connected to the disconnect between her memories of love and the dead world he left her that she sees in her dreams and carries on her back. The context of the production will be an audience who will be tasked with judging accountability for each of them: the executive and the wife. Was her disconnect deliberate? Is her disconnect the same as denial and did her denial enable her husband to live long and flourish in his crimes against humanity with impunity?  Was she blinded by an idea of her husband, a narcisistic delusion? Will she be left with anything but the dead forest? Those are some of the questions I intend to find answers to from my audience October 30, in a chain of questions that lead to a dead forest, a dead planet.

Mineral Mountains & Azimuth. Cast pigmented jesmonite with gold, shungite and iron oxide on wooden plinths. The Mountains are inspired by geodata forms of Iron Mountain, with additional minerals imbued with healing pure pigments. Azimuth - gunter chain on pigmented wall.

Mining for Fossils and a Better Future: Kathryn Maguire’s Geological Sculptures Voice People and The Land
By: Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

Kathryn Maguire gives form to location-specific minerals and, by doing so, creates gentle conversations about environmental activism and difficult histories. Through a highly collaborative and research-based approach, her pieces speak both to stories and aesthetics embedded in materiality and the land. In her recent solo show, To the Mountain, and throughout her career, Kathryn solidifies connections between the experiential landscape and what lies beneath its surface.

To the Mountain,  2024. Leitrim Limestone carved with a trig point symbol by Seamus Dunbar.

Kathryn, I want to start with your current and first solo show, “To the Mountain.” What has this exhibition experience brought to your practice?

The gallery space is a test site and space for expanding and dreaming, it’s a great supported exhibition residency. I was fully immersed in the works and the space. I could spread my wings as it were. I could dream the space into being and be embedded in the work. Overall, the opportunity to create a solo show helped focus and define my practice and making. It allowed me to hone my ideas and complete conversations.  

Underground Potential, 2022/2024, sculpture made in Jesmonite and pigments inspired by the form of Mir Mine in Russia, the deepest mine in the world, the Treasure Leitrim used the Mir Mine as an image on their posters. 

Locality is deeply embedded in the spaces and conversations you integrate in your work. What do you hope artistic expression can uniquely achieve for your awareness work? 

The exhibition To the Mountain had real tools of measurement used in surveyance and mapping. I wanted to make this visible. The mapping of Ireland occurred in the 1800’s when Ireland was ruled by the British Empire. Ireland was the first country to be entirely mapped in the World. The technology involved was extraordinary.

The local history of Leitrim is in a critical position as there is a risk of Gold and Silver Mining. Regional organizations have worked tirelessly to object to the mining, as it will risk the landscape, water and people within a large area of Leitrim.

Many geologists have said we have extracted all the metals we need; all those metals need to be reused and recycled; this would involve the circular economy model. In Ireland, there is an incentive for everyone to recycle and repurpose and it’s advertised on the radio and TV. The vision for the Programme, which is led by the EPA, is an Ireland where the circular economy ensures that everyone uses less resources and prevents waste to achieve sustainable economic growth.

Brake Dust, 2020, Jesmonite casts explore the idea of what Air Pollution might look like if it were imagined as a sculptural object. This is the first in a series of works using crystallography to imagine the unimaginable and indecipherable. The individual casts are scaled-up models of the crystal magnetite, which is an iron ore.

This is such important information given the contentious history that played out not far from your show and residency location at Leitrim Sculpture Center. What considerations have come up while exploring the local landscape?

The border is no longer a charged political zone, although there are levies and taxes charged on goods since Brexit. As a result, it has become more expensive to make artwork in the South, due to shipping fees and VAT increases.

I was very conscious of the new extractive industries that have attempted to open up Gold mining in Leitrim, they have managed to secure prospecting licenses, but have not been able to mine due to the orders being blocked or delayed. The local Save Dough Mountain group, Stop Mining Leitrim and Treasure Leitrim groups have done incredibly extensive research on the devastating damage it will cause to wildlife, the local water and people and the mountains.

While on site, I was very aware of the groups and the tension in the area due to the threat. In 2023, the “Leitrim Under Attack,” a two-day event saw local environmental activists host “water protectors” involved in the Standing Rock protest against the Dakota Access oil pipeline in the United States. “We are here in solidarity and support of the folks in Leitrim who want to keep gold mining out of their county,” said Chas Jewett, a Lakota activist who was involved in the Standing Rock protest. “There are other ways for us to be living. We should be thinking about the seventh generation, seven generations from now and about their access to water rather than our access to gold.”

I feel the way I positioned the artworks in the gallery was a gentle conversation about over-mining and extraction. The Underground Potential artwork is a sculpture made in Jesmonite and pigments, in the form of the Mir Mine in Russia, the deepest mine in the world, the Treasure Leitrim used the Mir Mine as an image on their posters.   

Rock - A Library of Materials,  2022-ongoing, is an extensive examination of materials. An ancient piece of Quartz sourced from Ubley Waren, from the ‘rake’ of a Roman Lead Mine, was then moulded in silicon rubber. The mould became the form to test and cast multiple materials.

These gentle conversations play out in many of your works through material as well (like the Jesmonite and pigments).  What factors do you take into consideration when developing your work?

I would never prise a rock from its location, as that is wrong. As I am a member of many geological organizations (like the Irish Geological Association and the Geological Association in the UK), we go on field trips and share information. I have also extensively researched vast areas and analysed the materials that are often waste specimens left over after quarrying or earth movements.

For example, I collaborated with the wonderful Dr. Diana Clements, who wrote Geology of London. She brought me on many field visits and gifted me plenty of microfossils. Another time, I was loaned an iron nodule and a piece of another mountain from a local stone mason and hillwalker.

 In regards to the form, sometimes I will make a mould from the rock and then make multiple new rocks; like my Rock - A Library of Materials. The large work To the Mountain, was carved specifically to enhance the amazing fossils in the stone. That stone was waste surplus from a quarry used for road material.

The stones used in Mapping Mountains had to be from the specific mountains I was 3D printing. I felt it was really important for the stone to be from the exact location. Also, the weight of the stone was similar to the weight and density of the mountain. The limestone used in To the Mountain was from a local quarry and the rock we chose was full of fossils. It felt important to celebrate the fossils and make them visible in the materials.

The Possibility of an Impossibility, 2014. Solid Silver cast Plane seeds taken from Gezi Park in 2013 in Istanbul amid the Gezi Riots and protests. Black vinyl disc.

You've focused on location and history throughout your career from museums to environment and their relationships to political struggle. How has your practice developed over time to center around environmental topics?

My love of stone and mountains has always been there as a hobby that split over into my art practice. The work Brake Dust was the beginning of a conversation about how our environment is us, and how we are geological bodies. This is an ongoing exploration of air pollution and its causes.

In 2014, I visited Istanbul and listened to the stories of the Occupy Gezi movement and heard how Gezi Park was possibly going to be torn up for a shopping mall, and the Trees were going to be pulled down. I immediately felt a need to cast the seeds of the threatened Plane Tree seeds in silver and capture the Occupy Movement in a precious material titled The Possibility of an Impossibility. The work was inspired by David Graeber and his theory on Occupy Movements. In Istanbul, I sought information on building materials and where the rocks came from, and I was bowled over by the generosity and kinship in the geophilia and love of stone.    

Thank you, Kathryn! This is such an exciting and insightful body of work. 

October 2024 e-Newsletter for subscribers is here

TT Journal, ISSUE 7, September 2024

by Rosalyn Driscoll

Twenty artists set out to explore together the nature of water and rivers. They ended up also reflecting on the perennial metaphor of time as river. The artists are members of Think About Water, a collective of artists and activists who interpret, celebrate and protect water. They wanted to make something together but also to honor each artist’s distinctive vision. They chose the format of a game played by the Surrealists called exquisite corpse: one artist drew a head, then folded the paper so their drawing could not be seen, and handed it to another artist; that artist drew the next part of the body, folded the paper, and so on through several artists and foldings. The paper was then unfolded and the whole, surreal figure appeared.

In that spirit, the Think About Water artists created an exquisite corpse—not a human body, but the body of a river. Each artist made a section of river in their own studio in their own medium, style, vision and time, without seeing each other’s work. The artworks were then hung together in an art gallery. The assembled sequence of images snaked across the walls, suggesting a river of multiple forms and meanings.

The Exquisite River project also reveals several aspects of time. Each artist’s process of image-making took time. Each artist drew from their individual and cultural histories to create a unique image and tell a personal story. The artworks embody the depths of time and experience each artist has woven into them. In many of these artworks, time is integral to their reference to the disruptions and degradation humans have wrought on the Earth. We are now experiencing different kinds of time in our collective awareness. Gradual changes over the centuries are now accelerating very fast. Changes are visible within our lifetimes and even within seasons. Time in the urgent need to slow climate change as quickly as possible. Time in the projections by scientists of climate effects into the near and far future. Time in the time it takes to regenerate a natural domain devastated by human abuse.  We are being forced to grasp different kinds of time, accustomed as we have been to seeing, thinking and behaving in short-term ways, oblivious to the longer-term impacts of our actions. We are living in a time that makes us simultaneously aware of geological time, evolutionary time, biological time, oceanic time, the timing of seasons, the timing of a monsoon, and the impacts of humans in our time on Earth. Using the metaphor of exquisite corpse calls into question the finite life and even the mortality of our beloved rivers. Will we help them regenerate and renew or will they diminish and die, as some already have?

The first exhibition of Exquisite River took place at Ely Center for Contemporary Art in New Haven, Connecticut, USA, April 14 – June 2, 2024. The project is available to travel to other venues.In the gallery, the artworks were hung separately to create a flow. In the digital version they were linked into one long river. The following selection from among the twenty artworks provides different visions of rivers and of time.

Rosalyn Driscoll, Cinefoil, 2023, aluminum foil, 25 x 34 x 2 inches

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Portrait of Johannes Lehmann from “Research and Restore: How Cornell Scientists are Conserving Earth’s Resources” in Cornell University's Medium, image by  Jason Koski, UREL

Lasting Change Starts Just Below Our Feet: Johannes Lehmann offers rich soil to grow our planet’s thriving future through study, creativity, and implementation

By Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

Johannes Lehmann’s depth of research into soil’s unique contributions to climate change, and it's potentials for circular economy and sustainability expands from microbiology, to carbon sequestration, and, now, into collaborations with creative minds. He runs the Lehmann Lab at Cornell University, which specializes in implementations and applications related to soil health in both “managed and natural ecosystems” scenarios. Applying this work at the “Soil Factory” in Ithaca, NY, everyone from farmers to scientists to artists and entrepreneurs, are welcome to fertile ground for collaboration and novel solution building.

For those interested in getting involved, here 's the website:
https://www.thesoilfactory.org

The Soil Factory building at Cornell University via organization's website

Johannes, your research reveals how interwoven soil remediation and related climate policy are and how creativity can act as an avenue for scientific understanding. How do these topics interact most effectively?

Generating or creating questions is an extremely important step in science, and a tremendously understudied and undervalued aspect. We need to look at new policies supporting climate change mitigation and adaptation, with new questions. Soil remediation and climate change mitigation are obviously related, as more organic carbon resides in soils than in all global vegetation and the atmosphere combined.

It sounds like soil health has many implications for the future thriving of our planet! Your work as a soil scientist addresses some of this by expanding beyond microbial and geoecological analysis and entering the world of climate action plans and policy. What changes are necessary for the future of soil and ourselves?

Recognition of the potential role of soils in climate change mitigation have increased steadily since 2015. This is good news. The way forward now comes in forms of a healthy and honest carbon market that rewards practices that promote soil health, and technology and regulation that allow cost-effective and environmentally-friendly carbon and nutrient recycling. Soil as a public good has to be discussed.

 

Cover art for Johannes Lehmann’s et Al book on Biochar for Environmental Management, Science and Technology, And: Johannes Lehmann’s Interview with Diego Footer for the podcast “In Search of Soil” July, 2021

Recycling, environmentally-friendly, regulation, mitigation... Sounds like sustainable practices! How does your research inform your sustainability mission for overall planet health?

Yes, and any sustainability approach (shying away from the word ‘solution’) has to adopt a systems view,- recognizing tradeoffs and human decision making ; soil as a complex system means that non-linear responses have to be captured in our decision support systems. This also means that we have to co-create innovative soil practices and circular economy platforms at scale of implementation,- with farmers, with NGOs, with industry.

Event documentation from The Soil Factory's multi-disciplinary meeting on Pyrosis, August 2021

A collaborative approach! As a passionate circular economy advocate, myself, this is wonderful to hear. I would love to hear more about how a thriving future without waste may begin with our soils and soil practices.

Yes, I do think a circular economy view is key, what that means in detail is to be examined carefully, beyond a buzzword. Nature-based solutions have to play and can play a part, but not on their own. That does not mean we should not increase our efforts and examine its potential at scale of implementation.

Image from the Soil Factory website

And, the potential for that implementation is dependent on those policy shifts, right? As an international spokesperson previously based in Germany and now in the US, you have worked in two culturally opposed climate cultures: one where sustainability is a fully integrated and widespread national goal and another that is in many places still skeptical of climate change and sustainability. How has your experience been working in both cultural climates? What have been some challenges? Rewards?

Soil and any environmental health aspects have been supported to a greater extent by governments and by the broad public in Europe than in the US, for a variety of reasons. And yet, the entrepreneurial and innovative spirit of many farmers in the US are paving the way for sound soil management nonetheless.

Image from the Soil Factory website

That's great news and you are already contributing to this effort! You have founded a space for collaboration called “The Soil Factory” to incubate new solutions through art, science, and sustainability. What have been some highlights in this project and what do you hope for its future?

Always a work in process, and requiring the buy-in of everyone. In-person collaboration, joint ideation, and just trying things out together. Much of the experimentation was only possible after we left the university, with intriguing lessons to be learned about undisciplining the university.

Thank you so much for taking the time, Johannes! You have offered important insights and allowed new perspectives on this complex earth beneath our feet.