In Frank's video, Vapors, 2017 (above) performers wear woolly rhinoceros and woolly mammoth masks appearing in the forests, former mining caves, and ruins of our contemporary landscape, carrying out a philosophical dialogue that connects the figure of the ruin to environmental issues and, more broadly, man’s relationship with nature. The woolly mammoth and woolly rhinoceros are two animals from the last wave of extinctions of Megafauna at the end of the Ice Age, who serve both as mirrors into the past and reminders of the crisis facing related species today. Through a split-screen, the creatures uncannily mirror each other in out of synch movements, sharing both their displacement from their proper epoch and their isolation as the last of their kind.

For two weeks in June and July of 2016, Frank was artist-in-the wilderness at The Innoko National Wildlife Refuge in Western Alaska. The Alaska Park Service offers unique stewardship-based artist residencies that work with parks and wildlife refuges and grant access to remote and protected areas, which most people do not get to see firsthand. The Refuge was significant to her projects with Rewilding because of the 2015 reintroduction of a population of Wood Bison into the Innoko region, which marked the first time in over a century this species has lived in the United States.

Sentinel Offering Kernos: Woodcock, Oysters, Lichen, 2021 (above) is a large-scale ceramic interpretation of an ancient Greek ringed offering vessel, whose cups held offerings of grain. In Frank's interpretation, the kernos’ cups are envisioned in the forms of three local indicator species, whose health or absence offer early signals of environmental change. When filled with grain or water, birds and insects can find nourishment here. The kernos offers a haven, encouraging new ceremonies of ritual and community, inclusive of the local Greek community in Astoria, whose ancestors originated the kernos form.

Sentinel Lekythos: Ibis (Unraveling Installation), 2023 (below) is also an offering vessel, a ceramic interpretation of the lekythos, which is a narrow ancient Eurasian vessel associated with funeral rites and loss. This piece considers several sentinel or indicator species, whose health or absence offer an early indication of environmental changes to an ecosystem such as pollution or climate change. Ibis migrate annually through New York City. As a sentinel species, they are susceptible to climate changes to their habitats and the accumulation of pollutants due to their feeding habits in coastal sediments. Straddling both the land and the sea, mangroves protect against erosion and storm surges while providing a protective ecosystem for fish and crustaceans. Ceramic oyster shells sculpted to resemble talismans of climate protection are included in this piece. Oyster beds which are actively being rebuilt in NYC are an important filter species which clean water and can protect coastlines during extreme weather events. Surrounding the offering vessel are hand-designed and printed fabric, hand-cast glass and bronze depicting parts of birds, plants, and cast body parts.

Rachel Frank's practice combines sculpture, video, and performance to explore our relationships and shifting perspectives towards non-human life forms, investigating how past species, rituals, and objects can shape our environmental future. Her current work explores liminality in nature: air and land, ocean and shoreline, the migratory movements of tidal and pelagic species. The transformative malleability of materials such as bronze, glass, and clay, all of which undergo a process of heating, melting, and liquefying before reaching their final states, serve to reinforce in the viewer the changes in nature and state. Through use of these mediums, her practice explores the radical restoration of species and landscapes through “Rewilding” and more broadly, both the resiliency of ecosystems and their fragility. Frank lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She is the recipient of grants from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, The Puffin Foundation, and Franklin Furnace Archive. Her performance pieces have been shown at HERE, Socrates Sculpture Park, The Select Fair, and The Bushwick Starr in NYC, The Marran Theater at Lesley University, Franconia Sculpture Park (MN), and at The Watermill Center in collaboration with Robert Wilson. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include MOCA Tucson (AZ), the SPRING/BREAK Art Show (NYC), Thomas Hunter Projects at Hunter College (NYC), Standard Space (Sharon, CT), and Geary Contemporary (NYC). She works as a licensed wildlife rehabilitator at the Wild Bird Fund in Manhattan. https://rachelfrank.com

Featured images (top to bottom):  © Rachel Frank, Sleep of Reason, 2010 2011, 2015, Performances, Written and Directed by Rachel Frank, Sets and Costumes by Rachel Frank;Vapors, 2017, Single-channel HD video, 8 minutes, 27 seconds, Written and Directed by Rachel Frank, Performed by Rachel Frank, Ben Lee, and Stephen Tateishi; Rewilding Residency, Innoko National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska; Sentinel Offering Kernos: Woodcock, Oysters, Lichen, 2021, stoneware ceramic, glazes, steel, epoxy, and spray paint with native plant species, 50 x 43 x 44 inches, Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY, October 2, 2021 – March 20, 2022;Sentinel Lekythos: Ibis (Unraveling Installation), 2023, stoneware ceramic and glazes, fabric, rope, zip-ties, acrylic rod, bronze, and glass, size variable, approximately 27 x 48 x 32 inches; portrait of the artist.

April 2024 e-Newsletter for subscribers is here

Breathing Air that Breathes Back: Visiting Lucia Monge’s “Mientras Una Hoja Respira/ While a Leaf Breathes”
at Hampshire College, Amherst, MA

Review by Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

Exiting the city to arrive on a peaceful green campus, scattered with students, feels like an entrance into a completely different world. Having been used to stimulation on every corner, I suddenly experienced my body quieting and listening more deeply. It is as if I am tuning into the whispers of leaves fluttering above and the grass pushed towards the earth by my feet. I land in brief conversations with students asking about Lucia Monge’s exhibition on campus. My walk to the gallery is much like a trickling stream finding its way through a rock-studded decline in search of a body of water to join.

And when I do arrive in this brutalist building and make my way down the stairs, I am struck by the contrast in the linear concrete framing of the gallery compared to the soft, natural structures of Lucia’s sculptures and their accompanying palm trees. Unlike the concrete that surrounds the work, Lucia has created a completely decomposing set of material reflections on stomata. On the wall in writing, the deep relationship between Lucia’s multi-national life as a Peruvian-U.S. American is paired with reflections on vulnerability and the interrelatedness of all beings. This concrete enclosure begins to feel more like a cocoon or the outer walls of a plant cell that protects the complex and delicate structures beneath it. On the wall, it reads:

“Stomata- the pores through which the plants breathe – exchange air with their environment…The plant risks losing life-giving water when opening … for me, stomata have become portals between life and death.” – Lucia Monge

Before me, an egg-like structure built with macramé, natural twine, rice paper dyed with turmeric, and straw reeds sits expectantly. Behind a family of palm trees, I am almost voyeuristic in my expedition into the gallery rooms, where I am confronted with larger-than-life representations of a proportionately microscopic subject. The feathery leaves hug my vantage point as the light streams from above. I venture toward the structure, sitting on the ground. Realizing only after changing my perspective that it is both I and the eye that awaits me that are observers of each other. Sands at its base disperse my thoughts as the textured living core lined with turkeytail mushrooms observes my presence as I do this object. I am reminded of my daily exchanges and the vulnerability that Lucia describes: how, when entering the world each day, I also enter into an exchange of give and take, a bartering of water for carbon, that is essential to both living and community. The eye acts as a quiet reminder that what I think I know is only a perspective.

Turning around, I encounter a dancing river of figures made from bioplastics, turmeric, and logwood-dyed cotton, and recycled paper flying over a delicate island of what I believe is white limestone. They sway in conversation, revealing soft and structured textures based on Lucia’s careful observations of plant cell patterns. Shimmering and welcoming me into the remaining space, I dance around the work, mimicking how the objects dance around each other, revealing new relationships between them. Colors and forms balance and glide as if these static forms were moving. I am met with a calm and playful tone and am surprised to discover an object hidden at the end of this twirling iridescent river.  

As if exiting a forest enclosure, a family of palm trees shelters a plush object laying on the ground before it. A closed stomata is guarded, yet perhaps the most vulnerable object portrayed. Surrounding the piece are macramé  dream-weavers capturing my thoughts and impressions. I stop short and allow an aching in my heart to reveal itself, knowing the irony of a soft outer shell that acts as limited armor in guarded times. It is feminine and kind, although closed and protective, so different from the first object, which was open, guarded, but “vulnerable” in a literal sense. Peaceful, like a corpse laid to rest, I remember that all of its materials will reintegrate into the earth and replenish the life-giving soils that nourish us in return. 

Exiting this meditation on co-existence, I reenter the chilly landscape sprinkled with the beginnings of spring. I am greeted on my way back by a large sign on the wall of a neighboring building that echoes Lucia’s mystical portrayal of the invisible: “To Know is Not Enough.” Sent into the remaining day, I think about the stomata that lives within each of us and the importance of breathing through it all.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

March 4, 2024

This week we recognize    Madelaine Corbin, and a decade of her  multi-disciplinary works in drawing, fiber arts, installation, sculpture, and writing/prose.

Artist statement:

"A fleck of ash, drop of blue, grain of salt, speck of dust, and particle of soil—a constellation of meaning is composed from these elements. My practice earnestly endeavors to listen to, translate, and contextualize the conversation between the vibrancy of matter sensed by our fingertips and the expansive questions cultivated by the equally vast universe around. Spaces that invite wonder and interdisciplinary research coalesce to question the quotidian materials accepted as normal, when few things are actually so. Dirt, salt, and dust are not so simple. Interminable investigations into subterranean histories, values, politics, sciences, fictions, and natural phenomena re-evaluate the inherent meanings embedded in matter[1]. Using my own relationship to ecology[2] rooted in a valley town in Oregon as a starting point, I articulate the complexity and range of relationships to the land beneath our feet, that which once was, and that which will never be." 

 click images for more info

"My practice is an archaeological[3] journey to unearth, question, and mend the space between home and land, human and non-human, “wild” and “managed” landscapes, and the connection to one another through geographic distance. In a recent series, text, soil, and weeds[4] re-contextualize and de-/re-construct the context of natural materials to better understand notions of home, land, and belonging through the lenses of native, invasive, poisonous, and medicinal characterizations of plants. Metaphors transmit meaning between humans and plants through the il/legality of growing here versus there, there versus here. Text is reversed to decentralize a singular vantage point into many and for many. The desire for a fixed object to exist in perpetuity is both accomplished and evaded as the work realigns with geologic, cyclical, and seasonal time and asks to be tended and maintained while it learns to exist in its own rhythms. The work evolves. The work requires care. At once, the work is both ephemeral and a window into a possible forever."

"With eco-tragedies already defining the 21st century—the swelling seas losing their blue to acidification, the tone-deaf colonization of terrain beyond repair, the decapitation of mountains for minerals and other resources[5]—how can we rehabilitate communal imagination with urgency? With the information embedded in matter and history, can we speculate about possible futures? If dirt is the common denominator of our shared experience[6], how can it be made not only audible but made mentor[7]? These questions, and the pursuit of their answers, define the trajectory of my practice. It is my sincere hope that together we can learn to read the earth, establish a nonviolent ecological order, and share a vision of the future."

Notes

[1] When listened to, substance dictates significance.

[2] The etymological root of “ecology” combines house, dwelling, or habitation with the study of (and, specifically, the study of the relationship between living things and their environments). It is through the graying of this space between home and environment that my practice is catalyzed.

[3] Archaeology in the sense that it is the opposite of industrial construction—as time read backwards. This is a concept articulated best by JB Jackson, writer and sketch artist in landscape design. Lucy Lippard adds contextual notes on this in her book, Undermining: A Wild Ride through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West.

[4] At least, plants currently considered “weeds” until they prove useful to humans or are reclassified as endangered.

[5] Lucy Lippard writes of these eco-tragedies in Undermining: A Wild Ride through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West.

[6] As it has been since long before we listened to it. Rebecca Solnit explains dirt in this way in her collection of essays, As Eve Said to the Serpent.

[7] “The microcosm as mentor to the macrocosm” is a concept written about by Wendell Berry.

"The phenomena of everyday magic—things that seem simple—are anything but. Dirt, salt, dust, and blue are immensely complex worlds. My work unfolds these complexities, examines them, and then conceptually stitches them back together. My work exists at the interstice of science, fiber craft, and writing. My goal is to gently mend empathic relationships between the climate crisis and ourselves. Instead of alarmism, softness. Instead of disembodied statistics about the rise of seas and temperature, embodied understanding—putting hands in soil, watching color change in the sun, listening to a cave’s echo. The approach is urgent. It reinstates sensitivity over numbness, listening over being told, hope over apathy."

Madelaine Corbin        is a multidisciplinary artist based primarily in Oregon in the United States. Corbin received an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Fiber and BFA from Oregon State University. Her research-based practice moves fluidly between drawing, writing, sculpture, textiles, and natural dyeing. Corbin’s work is informed by her participation in the New York Arts Practicum, immersive study in Greece, and as an artist-in-residence and research assistant in a chemistry lab where she helped to synthesize and characterize a new blue. Corbin recently authored The Stuff of Everyday Magic, a book about her research adventures into the color blue. Her work has been supported in the form of residencies at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, The Bloedel Reserve Creative Residency in Research, Prairie Ronde Artist Residency, Pine Meadow Artist Residency, and The League of Stars. Corbin’s work has been recognized by awards including a fellowship to attend Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in 2019, the 2020 Mercedes-Benz Emerging Artist Award bestowed by Cranbrook Academy of Art, Honorable Mention for the 2020 Dorothy Waxman International Textile Design Award, and the 2020 Redmond Design Prize. In 2022-2023, Corbin was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to pursue a research and arts project about textile traditions and contemporary craft in Greece.     www.madelainecorbin.com

Featured images (top to bottom): ©Madelaine Corbin, Colony Collapse Disorder, 2014-2015; Mobile Color Laboratory, 2016-2017; From Above, For Below (we share a center), 2018; Did They Not Tell You That You Are A Protector, 2019; A Moon In A Meadow, In A Moon, 2023; portrait of the artist.

March 2024 e-Newsletter for subscribers is here

Krista Leigh Steinke, Still-frame (00:01:26) from Sun Notations, 2018 (excerpt),10 min. theatre version | 16 min. installation loop

Bright Horizons from Celestial Views

Krista Leigh Steinke and Erika Blumenfeld on the upcoming Transmissions event in Austin Texas and the eclipse on April 8th

interviews by Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

Krista Leigh Steinke and Erika Blumenfeld elaborate on their individual relationships as artists to the sun and the moon, the cosmos. Whether the sun itself becomes the manifestation of time and spatial dimensions as it does in Krista’s work, or a larger expression of deep inquiry and interrelatedness across the atmospheric expanse as in Erika’s work, both artists share an intricate understanding of the “somatic point of departure” that the events will capture. Both working with photographic imaging and documentation, their reflections interplay the illuminating shared space that the events will foster with deep contemplation.

Krista and Erika were invited by ecoartspace to review artworks submitted by Texas artists and other members coming to Texas for the eclipse, for inclusion in Transmissions. Their own work will also be on display. 

Transmissions is a one-day event that will take place on Saturday, April 6th from 11am to 8pm, at Canopy Austin, at 916 Springdale Road, in Austin, Texas.

For more information GO HERE

Krista Leigh Steinke, Sunspots and Slides, 2017-ongoing, archival pigment prints or sub-dye aluminum prints, sizes vary

What are you most looking forward to during the upcoming Transmissions events?

Krista: It will be interesting to observe the nuanced interplay among the diverse artworks showcased in the Transmissions exhibition, which will definitely inspire various conversations throughout the day. Mostly, I’m excited to be part of a community of artists, academics, enthusiasts, and the general Texas audience, all united in their shared interest in engaging in a meaningful dialogue centered around the sun and solar/lunar phenomena.

Erika: What I’m most looking forward to is seeing all the selected artworks together and in communication with each other in the Transmissions exhibition, especially as a meditation on and celebration of the total solar eclipse that will occur over Austin skies two days after the ecoartspace pop-up event.

The artworks, in a way, share individual methods of having received a transmission. In thinking of light transmission specifically, and the conveyance of how light acts during an eclipse event, we, in essence, become the medium through which the light passes. In this way, the artworks together also become a conceptual act of transmitting a response back to the sun.

Krista Leigh Steinke, from: Time Scraps From the Universe, 2020 - in-progress

Quite a transmission in itself! Krista, your pinhole photographs also reflect on being a transmissions medium between our planet and the sun. For example, in your work Sun Notations and Sun Mapping you track the movements of the planet around the sun to reveal interconnectedness across space. How do you relate to this moment of transition at the eclipse?

Krista: The mystery of light and the passage of time is a thread that runs through much of my work. My video “Sun Notations” for example, that will be featured in the exhibition, took over five years to create. The experimental video animates over 50 pinhole solar-graphs that capture the pathway of the sun rising and setting over time, with exposures that lasted one hour up to an entire year. My homemade cameras, which sometimes contain multiple pinholes, are rotated throughout the exposure, so the rhythm of the sun’s movement becomes like a mark-making system, similar to the routine of crossing days off a calendar. Some of the exposures were taken in Texas and some in New York State. So, in this work, temporal and spatial dimensions literally expand, merge, and overlap. Incidentally, one of the animations in this piece was created during the 2017 eclipse.

Undoubtedly, the 2024 eclipse symbolizes a unique juncture in the continuum of time. In April, the actual eclipse of the sun will unfold over just a few minutes and these few minutes will not occur again for another twenty years here in North America. I love thinking about how on this day, people will be pausing from their daily routine to focus on the sun. The event, for me, is a gentle reminder that we all share the same star at the center of our solar system. The sun is a thread that ties our past to our present and an important reminder that we are part of something much larger.

Erika Blumenfeld, Light Leaks Variation No. 13 (meditation on evolution), 1999, 56 4×5-inch Type 59 Polaroid film, 72 clear pushpins, 31.25″ x 34.25″, Installation view: Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, Oregon, Solo Exhibition, 2001, Collection: The Polaroid Collection

That is beautiful. In fact, this common thread is a theme in both of your work, though your documentation approaches differ. Erika, you take a research-based documentary approach to examining natural phenomena such as this eclipse. What natural spaces are you taking inspiration from at this time? And how are you approaching them?

Erika: Our ability to empathize with our ecological spaces is only as deep as we are willing to be fully present within them. To listen, to feel, and to sense them. While the idea of ecological archiving may at first sound like a scientific pursuit, humans physiologically evolved in relationship to these natural ecologies, and our interrelatedness is activated through our senses and embodied experiences. For me, this connectedness has material, experiential, and spiritual grounding. Archiving the ecological requires that one is part of that ecology with all our senses as witness.

My work draws inspiration from the endless variations of natural phenomena that we can encounter in our natural world, and this curiosity and wonder extends first to our Earth and then to everything our planet is connected to across the cosmos.

Erika Blumenfeld, Detail of Plate No. A12855 (Large Magellanic Cloud), From the portfolio Tracing Luminaries, 2022, Paper: 14 3/4 x 17 inches, Plate: 11 ¼ x 9 inches, Edition of 8

My current projects are investigating these topics in multiple ways and through diverse mediums. My primary focus currently is with my Earthlight project, in which I am building a custom imaging system to send to the International Space Station to image the light of Earth from space and create a holistic portrait of Earth as light. With the Earthlight project, my goal is to tell a story of our world written in the language of light. Every planet has its own light signature, called albedo.

Albedo is the direct relationship between the planet’s material composition and its home star. Earth’s luminosity holds the literal and poetic imprint of everything our Sun’s incoming rays have interacted with—everything that makes up our dynamic, interconnected biosphere that we are a part of. The project is an art, science, technology, and space activities collaboration that will produce albedo image data to benefit climate science and to create visualization artworks for the public. I am also working on new Light Recordings works documenting the upcoming total solar eclipse as well as the aurora borealis in the Arctic. Finally, I’ve been supporting NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Sample Return Mission by leading the high-resolution archival documentation imaging of the remarkable rocks from the asteroid Bennu that have recently been returned to Earth.

Erika Blumenfeld, Astromaterials 3D project, a virtual library for exploration and research of NASA’s space rock collections (Credit: NASA/Astromaterials 3D)

Wow, I had no idea about this! That is very exciting.  It also includes topics of both light and time that play important roles in your practice as well, Krista. How will you interpret the events?

Krista: This relates closely to my choice to work in lens- based media. The word “Photography” means to draw with light, a recurring concept in my work. I am interested in how the sun and photo media are both conduits for light and time. Still photography can capture a single moment while moving images have the ability to document or record an experience. As mentioned above with “Sun Notations”, I feel like exciting results can happen when these qualities merge.

On the day of the eclipse, I am planning on setting up 4-5 cameras that will be tasked to take timelapse videos, pinhole exposures, and sequenced still images of the eclipse. Most likely, the results will end up somehow combined into one project. Looking forward to seeing all the magnificent images from around the globe that will be captured that day.

Thank you both for a mind-expanding interview! I look forward to following the upcoming event and different interpretations that are inspired by them. 

River Vernacular, 2003-04 (above) was a collaboration with Rosenthal and Steffi Domike. Inspired by the Hudson River Museum’s historic postcard collection, each of eight oversized postcards interpreted the social and natural histories of Yonkers, NY in relation to the Saw Mill and Hudson Rivers. The artists soaked cotton cloth in the river adjacent to where each photograph was taken, mapping the health of the Saw Mill as it flows from its source, through Yonkers, and into the Hudson. This work was included in the exhibition Imaging the River, curated by Amy Lipton for the Hudson River Museum.

LUNA (Learning Urban Nature through Art), 2016-2023 (above) was an ecoliteracy and visual arts program initiated and directed by Ann Rosenthal. It was designed to foster an appreciation for urban nature through hands-on art making for children, youth, adults, and families. LUNA was an outgrowth of a partnership Rosenthal developed with the Steel Valley Trail Council (SVTC), to educate youth about their riverfronts and trails, resulting in hand-painted banners that went up along the SVT. In 2016, she launched LUNA and developed an after-school program with the Kingsley Association, based on the earlier SVTC program. LUNA continued as an on-demand program, partnering with environmental and community organizations.  In 2022, Rosenthal and collaborator JoAnn Moran were commissioned by the Bloomfield Development Corporation to design and execute two asphalt art murals, reflecting the natural features of the adjacent Friendship Park in Rosenthal’s neighborhood of Bloomfield in Pittsburgh, PA. Similar to prior LUNA programs, ecoliteracy was a centerpiece of the project, which included bird and tree walks to engage residents with the flora and fauna in their backyards. The community was invited to submit drawings that the artists incorporated into the final mural designs. Over 70 people of all ages helped paint the murals over two weekends.

The Disparaged Sublime: Salt Marsh Nova Scotia #2, 2022 (below) is a work which represents Rosenthal's recent return to her creative roots in painting and printmaking, celebrating her love of color, gesture, and form in nature and art. She is particularly drawn to places where water and land meet——fragile ecosystems that we endanger through ignorance, desire, and greed. Rosenthal strives to make such places visible and valued for their beauty, complexity, and evolutionary brilliance.

Ann Rosenthal  is an artist, educator, and writer, who has interrogated the intersections of nature and culture through a range of environmental issues for over four decades. Her recent creative and professional accomplishments include: Artist-in-Residence, HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, Oregon (2018); Co-Curator for “Crafting Conversations: A Call and Response to Our Changing Climate,” Contemporary Craft BNY Mellon Gallery (2019); awarded “Woman of Environmental Art” from PennFuture (2020); one of four editors for Ecoart in Action: Activities, Case Studies, and Provocations for Classrooms and Communities (New Village Press, 2022); selected to design and execute two asphalt art murals with collaborator JoAnn Moran for Friendship Park in Pittsburgh (2022-23). Rosenthal received her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 1999. She teaches classes and workshops through Osher Lifelong Learning/University of Pittsburgh and Winslow Art Center. locusartstudio.org

Featured images (top to bottom): ©Ann Rosenthal, 2001: PLUTONIUM, MARCH 28, 1941, collaboration with Stephen Moore comprised of digital posters marking nuclear anniversaries in 2001 and distributed via email; River Vernacular, 2003-04 (installation View), collaboration with Steffi Domike including digital prints, stained muslin, and acrylic paint; Moving Targets: An Exhibition of Extinction and Survival, 2013-15 (installation view), collaboration with Steffi Domike including mixed media on cradled wood panels, MDO map sections, wood panels range from 6 x 6 to 9 x 12 inches and maps maximum 48 inches in height; LUNA: Asphalt Art Murals, 2022-23, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; The Disparaged Sublime: Salt Marsh Nova Scotia #2, 2022, golden open acrylics on cradled wood panel, 8 x 10 inches; portrait of the artist by Michele McFadden.

Unintended Consequences (above) was a series of photographs presented at the U.S. Art in Embassies, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, September 2010 - June 2012, organized by the US Art in Embassies program and was a collaboration between Ambassador John Bass and Assistant Curator Claire D'Alba.

Ride-On, 2024 (above) featuring all-black plastic and a toy ATV, was exhibited recently in the exhibition “Far away is NOW” at 120710 gallery in Berkeley. "It is a complex reminder of our actions and their consequences on our environment,” says Francis Baker, the exhibit’s curator. “Another revelation occurs when one realizes that this is just the all-black plastic. The artists are using this to symbolize oil. It also amazes me to think about how much plastic there is that washes up, that they collect, for them to have a pile this big of fully black pieces. This makes me realize what we as a society are doing to our environment.”

all of it (well, alot of it anyway), 2023 (below) was presented by FOR-SITE’s The Guardhouse project at Fort Mason, San Francisco, California, summer 2023. After nearly a quarter century of collaboration the Lang's excavated their two-ton collection of beach-found plastic objects to showcase a sampling of “all of it” so they might see our consumer choices reflected in their materials. This assorted thermoplastic junk-treasure dating back to as early as 1948 washed in from the Pacific Ocean onto one beach, a .6-mile stretch of the Point Reyes National Seashore, 50 miles north of San Francisco. The installation confronted the artists with evidence of this material continuing to amass not just in coastal deposits, but inside our bodies, and in the geological record of our time on planet earth. "all of it" was presented in partnership with Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture.

Judith Selby Lang, along with her partner Richard Lang, have rambled 1000 meters of tide line on Kehoe Beach, Point Reyes National Seashore in Northern California, to gather plastic debris washing out of the Pacific Ocean and have collected over two tons of material. Their artwork has been featured in over seventy exhibitions in galleries and museums; educational and science centers including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Artist Windows, the United Nations World Environment Day, the Cummings Gallery at Stanford University, and the University of San Francisco. Exhibition venues include the California Academy of Sciences, Sausalito's Marine Mammal Center, The Oakland Museum, Hong Kong's Ocean Film Festival. They were cited as co-authors in a report from the University of Tokyo about concentrations of pollutants in plastic pellets published in the 2009 Marine Pollution Bulletin. TV segments have included appearances on the PBS Newshour, The Travel Channel, Wowow Tokyo and The Today Show. In talks about the project they have appeared at the Newseum in Washington, DC, The Dallas Art Museum, California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, Oakland Museum, Oxbow School in Napa, CA, and California College of the Arts in SF. Their projects have been supported by the Feigenbaum Nii Foundation, the Arts and Healing Network and the Open Circle Foundation. Plastic Forever- Finding Meaning in the Mess is the working title for their forthcoming book about their art and plastic adventures. www.beachplastic.com

Featured images (top to bottom): ©Judith Selby Lang with Richard Lang, Unaccountable Proclivities, 2001; Unintended Consequences, photography exhibition at the U.S. Art in Embassies, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, September 2010 - June 2012; or here or to go? at Lands End at the former Cliff House, San Francisco, California, a FOR-SITE Foundation project, 11/07/21- 3/27/22; Ride-On, 2024, at 120710 gallery, Berkeley, California, January 2024; “all of it (well, alot of it anyway)” for FOR-SITE’s The Guardhouse project at Fort Mason, San Francisco, June 24 - August 31, 2023; portrait of the artists.

SunFlowers, An Electric Garden, a public artwork wanting to generate solar energy

an interview with Mags Harries and Lajos Héder by Patricia Watts

"The sun sustains all of our lives…. All of our energy is originally solar energy, (and) it has created our world and fuels all our activities. Coal and oil are stored solar energy, but they are running out, and obtaining and processing them causes problems. For our future, it is a question of how we capture and use solar energy, so that it keeps us going without environmental catastrophe. The sun and its light are the medium of most art.”  Mags Harries and Lajos Héder

Mags Harries and Lajos Héder are a wife and husband artist/architect duo who have worked collaboratively to create public art works across the United States from their studio in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1990, they have completed over thirty public art projects with budgets up to $6 million. With the upcoming total solar eclipse in the path of totality in Austin, Texas, where Harries and Héder created a solar-powered work titled SunFlowers and where ecoartspace will hold a pop-up event nearby on April 6 at Canopy, we feature an interview with the collaborative team discussing the trials and tribulations of creating a large-scale work in the public sphere addressing energy resilience.

Q. In 2006, SunFlowers was chosen out of 37 proposals for a signature art installation at Mueller, a LEED-certified planned community with eco-conscious mixed-use development, including single-family homes, apartment complexes, as well as retail offices and restaurants. Your solar artwork was selected by the community and was the most popular as well as innovative at the time. I can imagine you were super excited to create a work that was both aesthetically interesting, practical, and self-sustaining. Almost twenty years ago, what were the challenges of creating such an innovative public artwork?

A. Each proposal and or commission we do is always particular to the place. It is important that we observe and see what are the elements that make this place unique. What was unique about the project in Austin, Texas was that the 711 acre former Mueller airport had been transformed as an ecological community development. Of the 37 RFQ applicants, 4 finalists were asked to create a proposal to mask the Big Box companies that had been built on the edge of this development along the major Interstate Highway I-35, a six-lane expressway. This seemed like an impossible task. Rather than mask development, we decided to reinforce what was important about this site, its environmental goals to create a livable community. I-35 runs north-south, perfect to capture solar energy. The site, which is 1000 x 30 feet long, has a substantial easement from the highway that is maintained by state mowing crews. We are not artists that think of making iconic stand alone work but the site was huge and the fast-moving traffic was our audience. We would create an impact that was strong enough to detract from seeing the large box retail. We had a choice. We could create multiple elements that would face in one direction, or the other choice to have one unit that would track the sun that would not have the same visual impact.

We knew nothing about solar technology so we had to find a company that could help us design the system. We had to find someone that could build our solar panels and a glass company that could cut and drill glass. As these pieces would also be experienced from below, it was important that we sandwiched gels in the glass to create a feeling of stained glass when looking up at them. Each of these elements had to be researched and tested. As these were not standard modules they had to be electrically certified. We made ¼ scale models out of foam board to develop the form and then had an engineer to calculate whether the forms were strong enough to resist 100mph winds. As with all our projects we employed local companies to build and paint the forms and engineer the project.

Q. I understand there was a delay in launching SunFlowers, as the flowers did not glow as intended due to complications with the solar panels? Is this something that today would not represent such a problem? with technological advances in the solar industry?

A. There was a lot of research that had to go into this project. I think we would go with the same process at this time, unless we used standard sizes that were already certified. We had many people contact us after the work was officially launched, even a representative of the Chinese government who inquired about making more. Though, this might not have been economically feasible. There are more solar companies and expertise now that might make it easier, and tax incentives that did not exist then. We pushed the boundaries by making a non standard shape. Because the public could walk under the panels, the glass had to be laminated. The colored gels were also special. It was important that the underside of the panel would be beautiful.

We never repeat a project elsewhere, so we would have had to redesign a different form, perhaps with a different shape of solar. Would it have been more economical? Probably not, but we did have command of the process and technology changes all the time. The LED lighting was also specially designed to be brighter.

Q. The Powerdash online monitoring site is currently not working. Is this something you feel strongly should be relaunched? How long was it tracking the energy generation? And, what is the current generation, kilowatt-hours each year?

A. The Powerdash online monitoring system was funded after the project was up by another grant so that schoolchildren could monitor how much energy it was creating. It was measuring 1800 KW hours per year. Anne Graham, who worked with the city was responsible to get that grant. From an article she found, over a nine year period SunFlowers had generated 386,006 kWh, the equivalent of 565,000 miles of carbon emissions from a car.

Q. The 15 Sunflowers are considered one of the largest public art works in the City of Austin and had a budget over $600,000, fifteen years ago. Do you think it would cost the same today?

A. I am not sure what it would cost today as these were all specially cut and designed. There are more solar companies today, though are all using standard fixtures. Perhaps it would be harder to find collaborators as there is more demand as people are installing more and more solar units on their homes. This project was done at a time that solar was not as popular and certainly not experienced as an art project.  

Q. Has the project received any awards? It seems like the Public Art Network should have recognized this work.

A. I think the only award was the Livable City Vision Award in 2010 (Austin, Texas). Because this was administered by the city public art program, they never recognized it as theirs. And, the city did not submit SunFlowers to the Americans for the Arts, Public Art Network Conference.

Q. The selection process was coordinated through the city’s Art in Public Places program, but the development is private, owned by Catellus Development Group. How common is this arrangement? I know most of your public art projects have been coordinated through city programs. Was working with a private developer easier or more complicated?

A. We have one other project similar to this in Philadelphia titled Light Play (2016), also administered by the city public art program for a private developer on a building in the arts district. I do not know how many cities demand such a partnership. As the public art field is hard and there is high turnover in administration, maintenance records, which we always provide can get lost. On this project our same point person is still with the company. We have direct contact with him. Oftentimes city agencies do not have a maintenance budget, or someone employed by the city to maintain public art pieces. Perhaps a private company has more incentive to maintain a public artwork.

Q. From your artist statement for SunFlowers you state that the sun and its light are the medium of most art, can you expand on this concept?

A. Projects that came after SunFlowers include Light Gate (2015), Light Play (2016), and Xixi Umbrellas (2012), which are also all directly related to the sun and light. Engaging the sun allows there to be a daily change of perception. In a city like Austin, it was amazing how few people were installing solar power. It seemed we were selected because the city saw itself as forward looking, all the other artists proposed Texas stereotypes. I am sure we were also aware that it was a good move to demonstrate that Catellus had created a new environmentally friendly development from an old airfield.

Q. There are organizations that focus on technology based artworks to offer inspiration and practical applications for energy generation, such as the platform called Land Art Generator, directed by Robert Ferry and Elizabeth Monoian. I was a panelist for their Freshkills Park (Staten Island, NY) awards in 2013, and wrote an essay for their Powering Places (Santa Monica, CA) initiative in 2016. Something that concerns me with technology-based art is that it can often be a way to entertain more than a real world impact, by reducing our need for fossil fuels. For you, what percentage of this type of work should be art or entertainment and how much supporting ecological systems? What would be the best balance?

A. Rarely do we do work on this scale. But we were dealing with a huge highway, it had to have scale to be significant. It was important to us that it actually harvested energy and that one of the seven panels of each illuminated the flowers at night. It had to be iconic. Power dash was a way that children could monitor it so in that way it was a teaching tool, not entertainment. Change is important to this piece to see it during the day, then at night. The other thing we extended our site to include the large mowed grass embankment. We planted seeds from the Ladybird Johnson Foundation so that this “no man’s land” would burst with wildflowers. We also negotiated with the State Highway crews to only mow after the flowering season. This piece is not only experienced from the highway but it also has an inter-twining walking path between the SunFlowers. And, the path connects two open spaces parks within the development. Do these actions create change? I am not sure, but it is important to embrace something that one believes in.

Having had a recent conversation with Leo Lopez at Catellus who told us that the inverters had been stolen, which at a minimum would cost $100,000 to replace, it is sad that Sunflowers can no longer harness energy. They will, however, be sure that the flowers will be lit at night, though from an electric source and not by its own energy. So perhaps now fourteen years later they exist as a symbol rather than generating their own energy. This does not make us happy, but hopefully they will still be an important landmark for Austin. The sad part of public art it is that it is out there in the elements and so many of our projects have little budgets to restore and maintain them. What is important is that Catallus cares to maintain them. In that way the SunFlowers are successful.

Mags and Lajos, thank you for sharing about your experience with this inspiring solar work.

NOTE: As of today, led by California, rooftop solar installations fell by 12 percent nationally in 2023. It’s the first decline since 2017. It is estimated that California, which accounts for the bulk of the United States market, will see a 41 percent drop in 2024. Over 100 solar companies filed bankruptcy in 2023. (Article published January 26, 2024, Grist)