The ecoartspace October 2022 e-Newsletter for non-members is here

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

September 26, 2022

This week we recognize   Toby Zallman Toby Zallman, and her work focused on plastic pollution.

Trained as a painter in the 1970s, Zallman transitioned to sculpture in the 1990s, and began to examine the role of technology in our lives in 2004. She stated in an interview, “It was a period where I transitioned from looking inward to becoming conscious of what was happening outside of me, in the landscape.” She learned about the burning of e-waste in China and the resulting air pollution, and subsequently became concerned about safe drinking water. By 2014, the artist was shocked and captivated by the relentless proliferation and neglect of plastic pollution and decided to make her materials the message.

Zallman's Molluscs (above), one of eighteen total, is made from plastic drinking cups that the artist had in her studio for years and decided to use, together forming the series Small Works Group. The sealife simulation is also a combination of stones and cloth, all upcycled and assembled as a memorial portrait.

The artists has also made sculpture using plastic bags wrapped around wire in the shape of ocean corals. Her work Mongo consists of a broad range of food packaging (below).

"My art transforms toxic refuse into evocative objects of abstract seduction, that bring a sense of beauty to environmentally devastating situations and arouse cognitive dissonance in viewers. Since 2005, I have made sculptures and drawings which respond to the by products of our society’s rampant consumerism. My aim is for the work to incite both a sense of pleasure and a disturbing awareness of the degradation of our oceans, land and bodies. This engaging visual experience will support change in viewers' behaviors. My involvement with the group, Organizing for Plastic Alternatives, has both channelled some energy towards finding practical solutions to these problems, as well as increased awareness of my own problematic behaviors."

Plastic production is expected to triple by 2050. By then, our oceans will contain more weight in plastic than fish. In 2018 China refused to accept non-recyclable waste from other countries, and it’s cheaper for manufacturers to make virgin plastic than recycle. In America, we still have eighteen states that have preemptive laws stopping plastic bag regulations. As John Oliver states in his recent special on plastics in March 2021, “the real behavior change needs to come from manufacturers, the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). They need to create the infrastructure to recycle the products they make.” EPR laws are being proposed now, and it cannot happen soon enough for Toby Zallman.

Toby Zallman        is a Chicago artist whose art practice focuses on sculpture and drawing. In 2004, after becoming aware of how damaging our plastic and e-waste is to the environment, she changed her materials to both incorporate recycled/re-purposed materials in her sculpture as well as a source of visual inspiration for both the sculptures and drawings. She has used computer detritus, plastic bags, plastic bottles and solid plastic trash to create unique art works that shed light on the environmental devastation cause by our culture of consumerism. Zallman shows both locally and nationally. Zallman has been the recipient of several Illinois Arts Council grants, including one in 2021 for her exhibition “Our Plastic Trash,” and an Individual Artist Program Grant, City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) and a 2022 Puffin Foundation grant for her project, "reefscollape." She has had artist residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo and Ragdale. Zallman received her BFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. tobyzallman.com

Featured Images (top to bottom): ©Toby Zallman, reefscollapse, 2018-2022, site-responsive installation made with discarded plastic packaging; (sculpture), large format color print on muslin with pastel and plastic (backdrop), approximately 12 x 8 x 6 feet (sculpture) 9 x 18 feet (backdrop); Mollusc 10, 2020, plastic, 2.75 x 1.375 x 2 inches; Mongo, 2021, plastic refuse, 13.5 x 19.5 x 19.5 inches; Water Bottles, 2007, mixed mediums on plastic water bottles, 33 x 51 x 36 inches; Whorl, 2016, acrylic, laser print, graphite, pastel, plastic bags on muslin, 43 x 62 inches; Portrait of the artist (below), by Tom Van Eynde.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

September 19, 2022

This week we recognize    Bremner Benedict  Bremner Benedict, and her Hidden Waters Series.

Benedict’s projects center on the role that landscape plays in the human experience. Her focus is on unrecognized, under-valued yet important elements of the natural world. Her earlier projects, range from the role of landscape in creating memory - Distant Places; to electrical towers interruption of the American Western landscape - Gridlines; to a child’s imaginary play in natural history dioramas - Field Trip, Re-Imagining Eden. Benedict’s recent work, Hidden Waters, combines art and science to envision the impacts of climate change and overuse on endangered arid-land springs in the American West.

"Since prehistoric times springs have been key to humanity’s survival. Unfortunately arid and semi-arid land springs, ciénegas, and their aquifers in North America are endangered and disappearing at a rate that continues to increase as the water crisis in the West prevails across lands that are the driest they have been in 1,200 years. Being an artist who is passionate about the water crisis in the West, I am drawn to their story as unseen yet essential details whose importance is misunderstood."

"Living on the Colorado Plateau I was struck by the contrast between spring-fed oases and their parched surroundings. I noticed how a landscape of drought and aquifer overuse can drain color out of the environment. The toned colors of Maynard Dixon’s Western landscape paintings provided my inspiration to use color to imply the vulnerability and precarious future of dryland springs. This series is an intersection of art and ecology where I interpret scientific data visually and viscerally to humanize its complexity, while at the same time addressing a wider view of climate change and its impacts on dryland springs by making them feel accessible and personal in order to encourage their stewardship."

"Currently there is a lack of public information on the importance of these waters and the need for their protection; conservation is inconsistent at best. Springs continue to hold vital clues to the health and longevity of the underground aquifers we depend on and the loss of these significant ecosystems will continue to threaten our ability to live in dry places. If we want any chance to combat the climate crisis, then the importance of documenting these ecological sites before they are gone, and capitalizing on these opportunities to raise awareness, cannot be understated." 

Bremner Benedict's     photographs have been featured at Fidelity Art Boston; Center for Photography, Tucson, Arizona; Florida Museum of Photographic Arts; New Mexico Museum of Art; Decordova Museum of Art and Sculpture, Massachusetts; Harvard's Fogg Museum, Boston; and George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York. Solo exhibitions include Florida Museum of Photographic Arts; Griffin Museum of Photography at Stoneham, Winchester, Massachusetts; Texas Woman’s University, Denton; and Philadelphia Print Center. Her Hidden Waters archive resides at the Museum of Art & Environment, Reno Nevada. Recent awards include Juror’s Award, Karen Haas Juror, Conversations with the Land, Center for Creative Photography, 2021; Massachusetts Cultural Council Finalist, 2021; Juror’s Honorable Mention, 2021; Art and Science 2, A. Smith Gallery, 2021; Critical Mass Top 200, 2019; the FENCE, New England, 2019; Legacy Award, Griffin Museum of Photography; two Puffin Foundation Grants; Museum of Northern Arizona artist residency; and solo exhibitions at Texas Women’s University, and Philadelphia Print Center. Benedict is a member of Blue Earth Alliance. Photographer Mark Klett chose her work Quitobaquito Springs for inclusion in his up-coming book, Wild Visions. bremner-benedict.com

Featured Images (top to bottom): ©Bremner Benedict,Hidden Water Series; portrait of the artist below.

Fundraiser & Pop-Up Exhibition

Miriam Sagan’s Poetry Yard, Santa Fe

Ana MacArthur, Ahni Rocheleau, Chrissie Orr, Frances Whitehead, Toni Gentilli, Hilary Lorenz

FUNDRAISER EVENT September 30, 4:30-630pm

POP-UP EXHIBITION October 1 & 2, 11-5pm (free)

RSVP info@ecoartspace.org

ecoartspace invites you to experience site-works by six ecoartspace artists for our three day pop-up exhibition at member Miriam Sagan's private poetry yard in Santa Fe. We will be serving drinks and appetizers, and there will be seating to listen to the artists talk about their work.

Suggested donation is $50-$100 per person

Donations will go toward the printing of two ecoartspace publications; a second edition of our annual exhibition book for 2021, Embodied Forest; and our upcoming 2022, Earthkeepers Handbook.

RSVP for fundraiser by September 28

Can't make it? Not in New Mexico, please consider making a donation here

RSVP for fundraiser by September 28

jj

Newton Harrison in 2019. Photo: The Harrison Studio/Various Small Fires.

ARTFORUM September 07, 2022 at 10:53am

Newton Harrison (1932–2022)

Newton Harrison, who with his wife, Helen Mayer Harrison, introduced the ecological art movement that positively affected both neighborhoods and nature around the world, died September 4 at the age of eighty-nine. The news was announced by the Los Angeles–based gallery Various Small Fires, which represented “the Harrisons,” as the couple were known. In a practice that spanned more than five decades and encompassed a broad range of media, the Harrisons collaborated with ecologists, biologists, historians, architects, urban planners, and activists, as well as other artists, to investigate issues of biodiversity and community development, presenting their carefully documented findings within the context of art. The couple’s work shaped government policy and city planning in the US and Europe, and continues to influence a broad network of eco-artists focused on raising awareness of the ongoing negative impacts of militarization, environmental disregard, industrialization, and pollution on the land.

“Put most simply,” Harrison told the journal Ecopoesis in 2021, “I as an artist am unafraid to offend. I as an artist feel compelled to improvise much the way my other companion species do. I improvise my existence as best I can with the material at hand. The intention,” he concluded, “is to the improve that which is around me.”

Newton Harrison was born October 20, 1932, in Brooklyn, New York, the grandson (through his mother) of Russian immigrant Simon Farber, a tinsmith and the founder of the kitchenware brand Farberware. Harrison grew up in the nearby suburb of New Rochelle, and by fifteen knew he wanted to be an artist, though his parents urged him to finish his prep-school studies. From 1948 through 1953, Harrison assisted sculptor Michael Lantz, to whom he had introduced himself. From Lantz, whose 1942 Man Controlling Trade greets visitors to the Federal Trade Commission Building in Washington, DC, he learned to sculpt with a variety of materials and to read and draft architectural blueprints, which would themselves become a key facet of his own practice.

Continue reading on ARTFORUM here

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

September 12, 2022

This week we recognize   Sarah Kanouse   Sarah Kanouse based in Boston,  and her recent works including a solo performance "My Electric Genealogy (above), which will premiere in Los Angeles this month.

For nearly forty years, Kanouse's grandfather worked for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, designing, planning, and supervising the network of lines connecting the city to its distant sources of electricity. His legacy includes some of the most polluting fossil fuel infrastructure in the country—much of it located out of state, on Indigenous land. As these power plants finally and belatedly come down, the performance asks what is owed to the communities long harmed by this infrastructure? Weaving together signal moments in the city’s history with voices of Diné advocates for just, equitable transition, “My Electric Genealogy” is an essayistic working-through of energy as a personal and collective inheritance at a moment of eco-political reckoning.

"A People’s Atlas of the Nuclear Colorado (above) is a digital public humanities project that documents and interprets the relational geographies of nuclear materials developed and deployed by the United States. With contributions by scholars, students, and artists, the Atlas offers the public an opportunity to explore, research, and document nuclear materials and ecologies of Colorado. Powered by the Scalar publishing platform, the Atlas is loosely organized around the nuclear fuel cycle, from extraction, milling, and processing to the assembly and deployment of weapons to the storage and monitoring of waste. It challenges, however, conventional models of this process by weaving in its 'shadow side:' environmental contamination, workplace exposures, boom and bust economies, geopolitical instability."

"Beyond Property (below) is a suite of tools guiding inquiry into the proposition that property is an Anthropocene technology. The collection includes: a book of readings; a suite of cards for embodied exploration; a small sculptural object; and a section of barbed wire removed from an American fenceline decoupaged or “bandaged” with text from the writings from Gerrard Winstanley, the 17th century English activist-philosopher. Rooted in Quakerism, Winstanley’s True Levellers movement enacted a powerful critique of the morality of private property at the moment of its formalization through enclosure. The project began as part of Field Guides to the Anthropocene Drift, published by Field Station 2 with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and the Goethe Institute, Chicago." [Free downloads]

"Ecologies of Acknowledgement (below) was commissioned by the University Hall Gallery at UMass Boston for the exhibition Local Ecologies, which included a video, letterpress print, and boat tour, focuses on the land use histories of Deer Island in the Boston Harbor. Going beyond mere ‘recognition’ of Native territory, the project asks instead what it means to accept the relationships and responsibilities that come with living on occupied land. In the 17th century, Deer Island was a forced Indian removal and incarceration site, where between 500 and 1,000 people suffered from dire conditions comparable to a concentration camp. It is now the site of Boston’s wastewater treatment plant."

"The experimental nonfiction film Grassland (below) uses stop-motion animation, live action footage, text fragments, and expressive sound to excavate the stratigraphic layers of belief, ecology, practice, and geology that form a northeastern Colorado landscape. Carved out of decimated ranch lands during the Dust Bowl, the grassland is both a conservation zone and a working landscape. Cattle grazing, nuclear missiles, hydraulic fracturing, and wind power generation co-exist within a few miles of each other. Less explication than essay, the film locates the grassland in historic and geologic time, ranging over changing frameworks of law, ideology, and cosmology, variable and contradictory human practices, and the material and geological forces of the land itself. Meditative original footage of the grassland merges with collage animations created from diagrams, drawings, and found photography to portray the refuge’s subterranean activities, from well drilling to missile storage to soil sedimentation. The resulting nineteen-minute film is a poetic and unsettling portrait of a complex, evolving place."

Sarah Kanouse is an interdisciplinary artist and critical writer who examines the politics of landscape and space. Migrating between video, photography, and performative forms, her research-based creative projects shift the visual dimension of the landscape to allow hidden stories of environmental and social transformation to emerge. Her creative work has been screened or exhibited at Documenta 13, the Museum of Contemporary Art-Chicago, the Cooper Union, the Clark Art Institute, the Smart Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, and in numerous academic institutions as CUNY Graduate Center, George Mason University, University of California Berkeley, and the University of Wisconsin. She has written about performative and site-based contemporary art practices in the journals: Acme, Leonardo, Parallax, and Art Journal; as well the edited volumes Ecologies, Agents, Terrains, Critical Landscapes, Art Against the Law, and Mapping Environmental Issues in the City. A 2019 Rachel Carson Fellow at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Sarah Kanouse is Associate Professor of Media Arts in the Department of Art + Design at Northeastern University. She earned her MFA degree in Studio Art from the University of Illinois, and a BA in Art, magna cum laude, from Yale University. readysubjects.org

Featured Images (top to bottom): ©Sarah Kanouse, My Electric Genealogy, 2021-2022; A People's Atlas of the Nuclear Colorado, 2021; Beyond Property, Field Guides to the Anthropocene Drift, 2021; Ecologies of Acknowledgement, traveling exhibition 2019-2021; Grassland, 2019, nonfiction film recently screened at the Mimesis Documentary Film Festival, Boulder, Colorado; portrait of the artist (below).

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

September 5, 2022

This week we recognize the ecological work of  Renata Padovan   Renata Padovan based in  São Paulo, Brazil.

In the last two decades, Padovan's work has narrated the consequences of anthropogenic transformations on the landscape. Navigating between landart and art engaged with socio-environmental issues, her work has a strong denunciatory character. Captivated by what is ephemeral and transient, the artist creates memories about life’s state of impermanence, documenting the impacts of natural resource exploitation and the construction of mega-infrastructures, the foundations of neoliberal capitalism.

Returning the water to the seam, 2015 (above) is a video documentation of an action performed at the former Aral Sea in Uzbekistan. The artist walks back and forth on what was once the bottom of the sea, watering can in hand, pouring water on the sandy soil. As she walks, her footsteps mark deep into the ground of what was once the fourth largest inland lake in the world. Due to soviet policy of growing cotton in the region, waters of the two rivers that fed the sea, Syr Darya and Amu Darya, were diverted to irrigation channels. In about 20 years the rivers dried out. The Aral Sea dehydrated becoming a vast desert of polluted sand, a socioenvironmental disaster. The fishing industry collapsed and only those who had no conditions to move out still live in the inhospitable area.  

Frozen at sea, 2009 (below) was developed during Padovan's Nes artist residency in    Skagaströnd,    Iceland. It is a large sculpture made of ice, in the shape of Iceland, set afloat in the sea where it drifts until meltdown. The work had double meanings, one concerning global warming and the melting of glaciers, and the other concerning the economic crisis Iceland was going through at the time.

The installation ‘Irreversible’ (below) presents a legacy of destruction and impunity, linked to the history of colonization of the Amazonian rivers for the production of energy, revealing the real socio-environmental cost of hydroelectric plants in the Amazon. The artist creates an immersive environment about the Balbina Dam disaster, the first in a series of large hydroelectric plants built in the Amazon basin in the 1980s. After more than thirty years, such constructions continue to be imposed by State policies, despite their devastating impact on local communities and ecosystems.

The piece “Para Saber Onde Está Pisando” (To Know Were You Stand), stems from a drawing, a graphic representation that seeks, on a macro scale, to bring a new sensitivity to the destruction of the Amazon (below). After being transferred onto canvas, the drawing was hand embroidered in wool, by artisans from the state of Pernambuco. Representing the Amazon area as a biome, the artist maps the deforested regions in red, protected forests in green and indigenous lands in ochre, while gray areas correspond to oil blocks. The white areas, shown within the external limits, refer to non-destined public forests, which are public lands susceptible to speculation, invasions and squattings. The piece establishes a counterpoint between the act of constructing the work, expressed by weaving, which is manual and feminine, with the act of destruction, which is male and mechanized.

Renata Padovan      graduated from the Social Communication Department that belongs to the Faculty FAAP (Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado). In 2001, she was given a scholarship from “Virtuose” to do a masters program at Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. The artist has been participating in various residencies around the world, such as Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada; Nagasawa Art Park, Japan, Braziers international artists workshop in England and NES in Skagaströnd, Iceland. Her solos shows include: Baró Gallery, Eduardo H. Fernandes Gallery, Thomas Cohn Gallery, Centro Cultural São Paulo, Millan Gallery, Valu Oria Gallery, Brazilian Sculpture Museum in São Paulo, and in Rio de Janeiro at Espaço Cultural dos Correios, Paço Imperial e Açude Museum. Padovan's work has been exhibiting at group shows, festivals, national and international, and in Brazil. www.renatapadovan.me

Featured Images (top to bottom): ©Renata Padovan, Venal Series, Balbina, 2018, Food coloriong on tree, Intervention at the Balbina Hydroelectric Dam, Amazonas, considered one of the biggest ecological disaster in Brazil; Returning the water to the sea, 2015, action performed on what was once the bed of the Aral Sea, Uzbekistan; Frozen at sea, 2009, Ice sculpture in the shape of Iceland, launched in the sea where it floated until complete melt down, Skagaströnd, Iceland, 60 x 86 cm; Irreversível | Irreversible, 2019, Photos of dead trees at Balbina dam, one of the worst ecological disasters in Brazil, Large format prints on voile fabric. Installation at Paiol da Cultura, INPA, Manaus; Para Saber Onde Está Pisando (To Know Were You Stand), 2022 at Casa Nova Arte e Cultura Contemporanea; Portrait of the artist.

The ecoartspace September 2022 e-Newsletter for non-members is here

Published August 1, 2022  Shoutout LA

We had the good fortune of connecting with Linda Gass and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Linda, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking

With very few exceptions, my best experiences and most satisfying projects in life have come from risk-taking. Taking risks has enabled me to learn new skills, taught me to be more comfortable with the unknown and discomfort. I wouldn’t be the artist I am today if I hadn’t taken the risk of walking away from a successful career in the software industry where I was managing large projects alongside brilliant and wonderful colleagues. But I wasn’t doing what I love, and it was time to do what I love, to make art full time. I view risk taking as a necessary part of staying true to my vision for life and art. I go through plenty of ups and downs with those risks. The beginning is charged with the excitement of embarking on a new idea. Then the reality of not knowing how to do it sets in and that old emotion of fear of failure tries to take over. Risk taking definitely includes a lot of type-2 fun: miserable while it’s happening and fun to look back on. I’ve found the best way to deal with the fear is with what I’ve learned from long-distance backpacking: if you just keep taking one step at a time, you can travel more miles than you thought possible. I break large problems into smaller problems that are easier to solve. I do experiments and tests, almost as a methodical form of play. Sometimes I’m successful in solving the problems and other times I fail. I can be stubborn and the failures make me feel even more determined to find a solution. I’ve learned that failures are a form of success because it if you are willing to analyze your failures, it often leads to the solution.

Continue reading here

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

August 29, 2022

This week we recognize  Fredericka Foster and her contemplative and dedicated work focused on water.

"Our bodies are mostly water, and we are an intimate part of the hydrological cycle. Think about this when you first awaken – we are all water filters. We intrinsically know this, and that all life depends on water. Looking at water, or a painting of water, resonates emotionally in our bodies and minds."

Foster, a painter and photographer, works primarily with the theme of water to raise awareness and examine its centrality to life; how its movement shapes the world socioeconomically, environmentally and subconsciously. An accomplished colorist using a limited palette and many layers of paint, she works "in the romantic landscape tradition of Dove, Hartley, Burchfield and O'Keeffe." She has shown her work since the late 1970s, though the AIDS epidemic, healing and dying has inspired her paintings and installations since the 1990s. Buddhist practice influences her art and she has engaged in public talks on this topic with composer Philip Glass.

"Each water painting begins with a photograph. I travel to bodies of water ranging from the deep fjords of Norway to the industrialized Hudson River, choosing images that stimulate my imagination and that showcase the complexity of water as it plays with light, wind, and the earth beneath it. These photos are models for, but not dictators of, the painting process. My vision changes even as I seek to get the image down, and I experiment with ways to mix and layer pigments in order to trap the evanescent nature of the experience." 

Foster often collaborates with artists, scientists and non-profit organizations on water in relation to the environment, pollution and climate change. To teach about the water crisis, she has presented her work to hundreds of scientists, including a performance titled   Exploring a Catastrophe to Water Through Science and Artat the Sage Assembly 2017, based on a sewage spill into Puget Sound that same year; and an exhibition and talk at the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries. Her video series, Like a Circle in Water, was part of the Elements video series commissioned by the Tricycle Foundation in 2014, an official selection of the Awareness Festival and Blue Ocean Film Festival.

Fredericka Foster    grew up surrounded by water, and with a Sami great grandmother who nutured a mythical reverence for water and water culture for the artist. As a cultural activist, through her painting and exhibition curating, Foster raises and sustains dialogue, transforming our understanding and misperceptions in relation to the environment. She is known for guest curating and participating in The Value of Water at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City (2011-2012), which was the largest exhibition to ever appear at the Cathedral. The show anchored a year long initiative by the Cathedral on our dependence upon water, and featured over 200 artworks by forty artists, including Jenny Holzer, Robert Longo, Mark Rothko, William Kentridge, April Gornik, Kara Walker, Kiki Smith, Pat Steir, Edwina Sandys, Alice Dalton Brown, Teresita Fernandez, Eiko Otake, and Bill Viola. Foster is the founder of Think About Water, a water advocacy website that gathers cultural activists and their work together in order to strengthen their cause. Foster’s notable one-person shows include Water Way, Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries at Clarkson University, Beacon, NY; five solo exhibitions titled Water Way at the Fischbach Gallery, NYC (2013, 2009, 2006, 2004, 2002); Deus/Virus: Transforming the Protease, Riverrun Gallery, Lambertville, NJ; and Transforming the HIV Protease, The Norbert Considine Gallery at Stuart Country Day School, Princeton, NJ. frederickafoster.com

Featured Images (top to bottom): ©Fredericka Foster, Arctic Diptych Midnight Sun, 2017, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches; Covid 19 Drowning, 2021, oil on linen, 20 × 34 inches; Tree and Water, 2017, oil on canvas, 18 × 24 inches; Hudson River IX, 2007, oil on canvas, 42 x 64 inches; Himalayas Carved by Water, 2013, oil on canvas, 42 x 64 inches; below is portrait of the artist by Andrew Gladstone.