The ecoartspace blog features artist profiles and interviews, as well as writings on ecological systems. We are interested in presenting work that our members are making in collaboration with scientists, and poetics including spoken word, opera, and performative work. Painting, sculpture, ceramics, photography, drawing, and printmaking are all welcome media. Speculative architecture and public art are also encourage. Submissions for posts can be sent to info@ecoartspace.org. We look forward to hearing from you!

You can access the previous ecoartspace blog HERE (2008-2019)

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Mailing address: PO Box 5211 Santa Fe, New Mexico 87502
  • Tuesday, September 19, 2023 8:13 PM | Anonymous


    To Remember Amid Dismemberment

    A conversation with eco-artist Marina ‘Heron’ Tsaplina about Soils and Spirit
    for Orion Magazine by Petra Kuppers

    In this interview, we are getting exciting glimpses into the development of a long-term creative environmental project—Orion’s Winter 2021 cover artist Marina ‘Heron’ Tsaplina’s Soils and Spirit, which will premiere in NYC in Fall 2026 and tour to multiple locations in forests across the Eastern Seaboard. Tsaplina is part of a cohort of contemporary eco-artists who pay close attention to intersectional aspects of their work: her experiences of disability, immigration, and settler status deeply inform the ethics of her encounter with place.


    Indigenous artist moira williams (left) and Marina (right) improvising with the “soil phrases” prototypes on a NYC green-roof as part of the Kingsland Wildflower Festival, July 2023. ©Marina Tsaplina

    Petra Kuppers: In Dream Puppet, you had a very specific place – an ancient forest in the Yaak Valley threatened by a logging projectthat the piece was in conversation with. How does “place” function in Soils and Spirit?

    Marina Tsaplina: First, I’m thrilled to be able to say that the “Black Ram” logging project was ruled as violating multiple environmental laws, and was recently halted! In Rick Bass’ words, “Dream Puppet planted a seed that germinated [and] helped create momentum” in the effort by so many to successfully protect that ancient place.

    In Soils and Spirit, “place” is acknowledged as being fractured, moving, shifting, unstable. I am feeling into the fractured forests (both urban and rural) of the northeast, choosing locations that, together, tell a multidimensional story of some of what has happened to a portion of the “Eastern Deciduous Forest”. This means places where Soils and Spirit occurs will be where a community is working to return the land to Indigenous stewardship and working to build momentum around conservation. One place may be within a remaining sliver of an ancient forest that perhaps slipped through the chainsaws only due to a property dispute between two logging companies. One place will be where a deep history of incarceration of racialized and disabled people occurred. The final place will be on or near the U.S.-Canada colonial border, invoking the treaty histories between the U.S. Federal government and Native Nations that divided this land into two countries and through which land dispossession was enacted, while honoring the ecological continuity of the bioregion, and imagining what our future human-land relations may be.

    The project is grappling with some of the ways ‘land’ is imagined and organized in the U.S. How strange it is that many of us have to drive for an hour or more to get to a forest, or how cities can obscure the earth from which they grow. I’ve begun imagining that each NYC tree holds a dream of the forest that once was here. The “civilization” vs. “wilderness” binary has haunted the Western world for some 4,500 years. The “wilderness” designation creates “no touch” zones, but it can also create Indigenous erasure. My question is, how do we culturally learn to touch the land without violation? This medley of locations for Soils and Spirit is a challenge to perceive the forests, soils, waters, and cities across the region as being both fragmented yet interconnected—to form an integrated ecological thinking through the locations that the project will engage. Forests, waters, soils, histories, people.

    PK: Have specific forests been identified?

    MT: Two locations have already been identified, but until all resources and logistics (permits, insurance, rigging safety, etc.) are in place, I can’t publicly share them. Locations will be released before the premier of the work in 2026 in Lenapehoking (NYC). During the installation of Dream Puppet—which was only a 24-hour installation with no performance or audience component— we interfaced with authorities and border patrol, even though theoretically it was on public land, and “the public” has access. Some locations may be logistically easier—for example, a 20-acre preserved forest on “private” land. One of the most important components for deciding locations is whether there’s a community around the forest with whom Soils and Spirit is value-aligned, and does this community want to have the experience of Soils and Spirit to build momentum and deepen ecological intimacy? That’s where the magic happens.

    I’ve begun imagining that each NYC tree holds a dream of the forest that once was here.


    Continue reading interview at Orion Magazine, here


     


  • Monday, September 18, 2023 7:54 AM | Anonymous

    MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

    September 18, 2023

    This week we recognize  Nancy Macko Nancy Macko, and her thirty plus year photography practice focused on bees and nature's cycle of life/death/rebirth.

    "For many years, I have been fascinated, almost obsessed, with the desire to understand what happened in our world to cause the almost complete extinction of all matriarchal cultures in which women held equal and powerful roles in their societies. Again and again, I have read and researched the time period in which this supposedly occurred. In fact my obsession inspired me to travel to Romania in 1996 on my sabbatical to explore the archeological sites and remaining artifacts of the early (3500 BC) Cucuteni culture in hopes that I would be able to find some evidence that revealed more about these cultures and that could help me understand why they disappeared or were subsumed into the patriarchal society in which we now live."

     click images for more info

    "My early work with bee imagery revealed the features of a female monarchy within the hive and its apparent similarities to contemporary hierarchies. But further investigations also revealed the nature of the relationships among the worker bees themselves. They are responsible for all aspects of the hive from economics to politics to manufacturing. Although all workers, their relationships are egalitarian and interdependent. Different texts informed my thought-process at this time. In particular Savina Teubal’s Hagar, The Egyptian: The Story of the Desert Matriarch because she refers to priestesses and holy women. By shifting my perspective of the female monarchy and the worker bees, I re-created a scenario that more resembled the Goddess and her priestesses. This shift also affected the emphasis in my work from that of using bees as the metaphor for nature and exploring the relationships between nature, art, technology and science to focusing more intently on the notion of a bee priestess and creating a mythology that imagined her culture and her world by interpreting the rituals, customs and traditions that Western women still practice today."

    "In 2009, my focus shifted to examining the flora the bees draw nourishment from and so carefully attend through the process of pollination. Working directly with the camera and a macro lens, I created a body of work I call Intimate Spaces. This purely photographic work takes the viewer into a space of light, air and abstracted textures. The images are sensuous and seductive, poignant and tender, sometimes abject and unsettling--challenging the viewer to experience an image that is not easily defined by familiar landmarks or visual cues. In this work I am looking at beauty, aging, intimacy and fragility--characteristics that are expressed by subjects in nature. This work led to documenting the life cycle of the vegetables I raised in my garden, the honeybees that pollinated them and bee-attracting flora using a macro lens in order to reveal the less apparent, less obvious features concealed within these beautiful specimens. Capturing them from bud to bloom to seed—the manifestations of their life cycles. Hopefully my efforts assist in the recognition of natural beauty and the need to preserve the lives of the bees, which are so important to our ecology and food supply."

    For The Fragile Bee, 2015 - ongoing (below), Macko combines painting, printmaking, digital media, photography, video, and installation elements to create a unique visual language. This combination of media allows her to examine and respond to issues related to eco-feminism and nature, as well as to explore her interest in mathematics, and prime numbers, in which she attempts to make the implicit connections between nature and technology explicit. The series also explores the artist’s love of plants, and her images investigate the botany world as seen through the honeybee’s eyes. She photographs botanical specimens that the honeybee pollinates and visually records nature's exquisite beauty, fragility, and often, cruelty. The recent decline in the honeybee population and, more broadly, the idea of life and death in nature are prevalent themes in her work. Macko is deeply concerned with the disappearance of honeybees and through her art seeks to raise awareness regarding the vulnerability of their ecosystem.

    "Decompositions, 2021 (below), is a realization and a concrescence of all that has come before. Previous explorations also addressed issues of memory loss, dementia and cognitive decline–changes I witnessed as they affected my aging mother’s mental health. My interest in 'end of life' has clearly informed my photography. The work presents death and decomposition not as a hard stop, but as a change of state. Decompositions is the process by which vegetable matter breaks down to make its nutrients available for other life forms. The compost in these photographs is both metaphor and reality, representing change and transformation in ways that are both beautiful and surprising." 

    "The photographs in Nancy Macko’s "Decompositions" series present amorphous forms floating in a watery ether. Light streaks through the compositions, muted slightly by a translucent film that gives the whole composition the soft patina of an old master painting... hovering between abstraction and representation. Momentarily arresting this process with her camera, Macko presents a vision of time and life that is cyclical and fluid...presenting compositions that exist in a delicious state of indeterminacy." --Eleanor Heartney, 2021.

    Nancy Macko                 draws upon images of the honeybee society to explore the relationships between art, science, technology and ancient matriarchal cultures. She combines elements of printmaking, digital media, photography, video, and installation to create a unique visual language that allows her to examine and respond to issues related to eco-feminism, nature, and the importance of ancient matriarchal cultures. For ten years, Macko documented the life cycle of the vegetables she raised in her garden, the honeybees that pollinated them and bee-attracting flora using a macro lens in order to reveal the less apparent, less obvious features concealed within these beautiful specimens. She captured them from bud to bloom to seed--all manifestations of the life cycle. This work resulted in The Fragile Bee, first exhibited at the Museum of Art and History in Southern California in 2015 and which has been traveling since 2018 through 2023 to over 18 venues nationally. Originally from New York, Macko received her undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin and her graduate degrees from the University of California, Berkeley with a concentration in painting and printmaking. Her work is in numerous public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Mount Holyoke College Museum of Art, New York Public Library, North Dakota Museum of Art, Portland Art Museum and the RISD Museum of Art.  www.nancymackophotography.com


    Featured images (top to bottom): ©Nancy Macko, Hexagons, 1991-1994; Lore of the Bee Priestess, 2004, digital video, 13:43 mins; Intimate Spaces,IS05: Decammys (DECAM 13), 2011, archival digital print, 17 x 26 inches (Edition 5); Blanket Flower (Gaillardia aristata), 2018, archival digital print mounted on white sintra and faced with Plexiglas® 40.5 x 40.5 inches; Decompositions, Odalisque, 2020, archival digital print, 42 X 65 inches ;portrait of the artist by  Mary MacNaughton, 2021.



  • Monday, September 11, 2023 9:15 AM | Anonymous

    MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

    September 11, 2023

    This week we recognize     Patricia Olynyk, and her thirty-plus year practice at the intersections of art, science, architecture and technology.

    KleptoGenic Chamber, 2022 - work in progress (above) is a multi-sensory installation that perceptually steals the viewer’s understanding of the natural world and reflective reality. This chamber prompts the viewer to question reality and how we live and dwell in this world. In the KleptoGenic Chamber, the worlds of biology, art and architecture converge to become a room that redefines scale, materiality and gravity.

     click images for more info

    Sensing Terrains, 2012 (above) is a multi-media, site-specific installation based on cenesthesia, or the relationship between consciousness and bodily sensation. In response to a technology-mediated world increasingly desensitized to physical sensation, viewers are called upon to expand their awareness of the worlds they inhabit, whether those worlds are their own bodies or the spaces that surround them. Scanning electron micrographs of histological samples combine a variety of specimens – human and non-human, transgenic and otherwise – with photographs of images from special Japanese gardens that have been composed and constructed to "tickle the senses." The images impose a reorientation of our own sense of scale as the viewer navigates a new gargantuan landscape through the abstract projection of their own body into an alien space.

    Dark Skies, 2012 (above) is a multi-media, multi-sensory installation, which translates un-see-able phenomena into perceptible range, using mesmerizing visuals and sound to make tangible the penetrating effects of nightfall across multiple scales of being. It is a work that questions the future of the deep integration of life, light, and darkness which has developed over millennia. Growing out of my concern with light pollution and the recognition that night skies are becoming fatally obscured, Dark Skies captures the tension of a key cinematic moment: sundown. It reveals two distinct time frames on the 24-hour clock simultaneously, a situation that can only exist by way of technology. Dark Skies consists of a two-channel video projection on a large-scale dimensional wall: one side reveals a crepuscular sky and the other, a dark sky with smoky trails. The installation also features a soundscape, drawn primarily from field recordings of vespertine creatures, captured at twilight in the Rocky Mountains during high summer. The sound design in Dark Skies serves two functions: the first sonically articulates the ambiguous space between micro and macro environments, echoing those depicted in video elements, and the second adds an interactive/immersive quality to the work. The sound elements are projected directionally into the exhibition space, allowing viewers to migrate between these two soundtracks, essentially moving between macro and micro realms.

    The Mutable Archive, 2014 (above) is a multi-layered series of photographs and performance videos that speak to renewed nationalistic obsessions with Othering and difference. A unique artistic strategy of this project involves the interrogation of the mechanics of storytelling and who speaks for those who are lost, particularly in the absence of verifiable archival material. Each photograph from the 19th century collection of Viennese anatomist, Josef Hyrtl portrays a single specimen and post-mortem skull tattoo with an accompanying archive card, which details only partial information about each subject. Collaborators representing a diverse array of disciplinary fields—artists, historians, a medical ethicist, a philosopher, an opera singer, a hip-hop artist, and a spiritual medium—are invited to write and then perform speculative narratives about subjects of their choosing from the collection. Each script and recorded monologue, a 4K cinematic video, reveals a myriad set of issues related to race, ethnicity, gender, and class, while demonstrating the fictitious foundations of the human taxonomy itself.

    OCULUS, 2020 (below) is a complex digital sculpture depicting a colossal abstracted drosophila eye—replete with distorted compound faceted surfaces—inspired in part by a series of scanning electron micrographs produced in a transgenic lab several years ago. The title recalls the circular opening at the apex of a cupola while the form alludes to a surveillance device, or drone hovering in mid-air. Oculus invites the viewer to ponder the impact of the gargantuan and the miniature on our perception of bodily scale. This work explores those sensory modalities that play a dominant role in spatial perception, which spark the affect of scale on several fronts. Consequently, Oculus strategically triggers an affective encounter with the colossally represented miniscule, offering a fantastic voyage that navigates spatial, temporal, and phenomenal worlds.

    Patricia Olynyk                  works in photography, print, video, and installation while investigating science and technology-related themes and the ways in which social systems and institutional structures shape our understanding of our place in the world. Working across disciplines to develop “third culture” projects, she often collaborates with scientists, humanists, programmers, and engineers. Her multimedia environments frequently call upon the viewer to expand their awareness of the worlds they inhabit—whether those worlds are their own bodies or the spaces that surround them. Olynyk was appointed inaugural director of the unified Graduate School of Art and Florence and Frank Bush Professor of Art in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in 2007. She currently holds a courtesy appointment in the University’s School of Medicine and fellowships in The Institute for Public Health and Living Earth Collaborative, both interdisciplinary hubs that facilitate research across a wide range of fields. She was also appointed in Medical Humanities, Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and Performing Arts. Olynyk co-chairs the Leonardo/ISAST NY LASER Talks program in New York, which promotes cross-disciplinary exchange between artists, scientists, humanists, and scholars. She received her MFA with Distinction from the California College of the Arts and spent four years as a Monbusho Scholar and a Tokyu Foundation Research Scholar in Japan at the Osaka University of Foreign Studies and Kyoto Seika University. Recent exhibitions include Cyfest 15: Vulnerability, HayArt Cultural Center, Yerevan, Armenia; and Douro Biennial,     Côa Museum, Vila Nova de Roz, Portugal.    patriciaolynyk.com


    Images: ©Patricia Olynyk, Kleptogenic Chamber, 2023- in progress, model by Sung Ho Kim, Axi:Ome; Sensing Terrains, 2012, multimedia installation and sound collaboration with Kathryn Stine and Jukka Nurmela, and  solo exhibition at the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.; Dark Skies, 2012, solo exhibition, Sci Center Gallery, UCLA, design modeling by Sung Ho Kim, Axi:Ome, with sound engineering by Christopher Ottinger     The Mutable Archive, 2014, series of nineteen digital pigment prints on archival paper, 80 x 120 inches and 4K video;  Oculus, 2020, digital modeling by Nathaniel Elberfeld and Alex Waller, Metron Designworks, and Sung Ho Kim, Axi:Ome; Portrait of Olynyk by Stan Strembecki.

     

  • Monday, September 04, 2023 11:10 AM | Anonymous


    Recovering the Walkabout

    Kim Tanzer | August 31, 2023for MAHB

    “By singing the world into existence, [Arkady] said, the Ancestors had been poets in the original sense of poesis, meaning ‘creation’.  No Aboriginal could conceive that the created world was in any way imperfect.  His religious life had a single aim:  to keep the land the way it was and should be.  The man who went ‘Walkabout’ was making a ritual journey.  He trod in the footprints of his Ancestor.  He sang the Ancestors’ stanzas without changing a word or note—and so recreated the Creation.”
    ∼ Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines

    One thread running through much of my work is the intention to sing a preferred world into being through the act of walking. I have always loved walking: It keeps me physically and emotionally healthy, allows my mind to wander, and reduces my CO2 production when I walk rather than drive. It allows me to see the world at the pace prescribed by our human evolution over hundreds of thousands of years. It slows the world down. It engages my attention.

    It is no wonder walking is integral to my art.  While I am inspired by the canonical walkers—Tony Smith, Robert Smithson, Hamish Fulton, Richard Long, and others—I seek to replace objectivity, procedural neutrality, even aesthetic cynicism, with awe and inspiration.  I walk to absorb beauty through my senses, to retrace it with my feet, to share it through works I produce.  In so doing, I fortify myself, praise our Earth, and hope to inspire others.

    These are a few examples of my walking practices.


    Found drawing after #Duchamp, iPhone photo, created April 14, 2022 at 11:01 AM; posted October 15, 2022


    Continue reading full article here







  • Friday, September 01, 2023 9:26 AM | Anonymous


    September 2023 e-Newsletter for subscribers is here

  • Friday, September 01, 2023 8:05 AM | Anonymous


    Plastic Confluence series from Trash Trout Picture Show exhibit at the Blowing Rock Art and History Museum in 2022. Photo by Lauren Armbrust, courtesy of BRAHM.


    Interview by Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

    Tom Hansell uses a collaborative process within rural communities to create work that supports both natural and local cultures in North Carolina, and soon, Utah. Through the medium of experimental film and live performance or soundscapes, Tom shines light on the implications of plastic waste in the regions. His work impacts, honors, integrates and advocates his surroundings directly.

    Participants at a workshop sponsored by the New River Conservancy, 2022

    You have such an impressive body of work, but for today, I'd like to focus on your more recent projects. Let's start with "The Ancient New," which is a collaboration between yourself, other artists, community members and organizations within the New River Valley. Even the title contrasts current and historic impacts on this riverway environment and on local communities. What has the collaborative nature of this work taught you and what have the resulting conversations brought to fruition?

     “What you do to the land, you do to the people” is a saying I have often heard while working in rural Appalachian communities. "The Ancient New" is designed to gather people together to better understand our connections to the land and water that sustain us. Over the past decade of working on this project, I’ve learned about impacts of agriculture, industrial development, and tourism. I’ve learned that the New River feeds the Ohio River, which provides drinking water to more than five million people and demonstrated how water connects us. I’ve also met an inspiring number of people who are working on innovative ways to sustain their home place.  


    Plastic Confluence #3, plastic shopping bags and barrel hoop savaged from the New River, 2022

    You seem to be building these connections in your process as well by collecting plastic refuse directly in the landscape. How does your collection process influence how you approach the creation of your work?

    I have always collected trash while hiking, paddling, and fishing. The idea for "The Trash Trout Motion Picture Show" came after participating in organized river clean ups and having conversations with other volunteers about how many people choose not to see the plastic and other refuse that ends up in creeks and rivers. My films such as "The Trash Trout Motion Picture Show," "Benthic Salvage," and "Does Water Die?" are all attempts to put a spotlight on the waste that is generated from society’s increasing appetite for consumption.

    These films are part of a long-term project title "The Ancient New." For the next phase of this project, I am collaborating with grassroots organizations to produce a series of community festivals that use moving images and live performances to bring folks together, bridge cultural or political divisions, and celebrate the water that connects us to each other.

    In order to bring all of these topics together you are using some new stylistic choices for this piece. Previously, you used a documentary style approach (ex. “After Coal” from 2016 that compares mining communities in Kentucky, USA and Wales, UK), but your more recent approach to riverway plastic materials, on the other hand, embraces an experimental filmmaking approach. What have you noticed comparing both processes? And what has the difference in impact been using each approach?

    I moved toward experimental filmmaking after realizing how heavily my documentaries relied on the spoken word to create meaning. I wanted to strengthen my visual storytelling skills by making films that did not require language to communicate meaning. The challenge is that experimental films are more difficult to distribute, which can decrease the impact of the work. However, the participatory process I use for films such as the "The Trash Trout Motion Picture Show" offers an opportunity to deepen the experience of local people who are part of the project. For example, the town of Boone, North Carolina, the Watauga Riverkeeper and New River Conservancy helped coordinate the cleanup efforts and workshops that created the film.  More than 50 volunteers taped trash to film strips to create the visual elements of "The Trash Trout Motion Picture Show" and directly experienced the impacts of plastic pollution.


    Participants at workshop at the Appalachian Mountain Brewery, March 22, 2022

    Let's talk more about your work “The Trash Trout Motion Picture Show.” It integrates experimental film composition using plastic with nature sounds and Appalachian music and dance performances by taping found plastics onto film, you are able to replicate water texture and flow. What inspired you to pair this music and audio with your visual work? What does sound choice contribute to your films in the form of metaphor?

    "The Trash Trout Motion Picture Show" uses the power of music, dance, and film to reveal human connections to fresh water. I collaborated with traditional Appalachian musician Trevor McKenzie and musician / dancer Julie Shepherd–Powell to create a soundtrack that reflects the landscape and the cultures of the New River.

    Trevor McKenzie relied on his deep knowledge of historic musicians who lived and worked in communities along the river to arrange a medley of traditional songs including "Waterbound," "New River Train," and "The East River Mountain Blues." The musical selections follow the river’s flow, starting with songs from from western North Carolina before moving to southwestern Virginia and on to West Virginia. These regions are where the New becomes the Kanawha and empties into the Ohio River.

    Julie Shepherd–Powell brought her experience performing the Appalachian flatfoot dance style that is a vibrant part of mountain communities. She explains that dance is a “multi-generational and welcoming practice that encourages participation from young and old, accomplished and amateur, and local and visiting dancers alike.” The percussive elements of the dance mesh with the sound of the 16mm film projector, fiddle, and banjo to provide multiple paths for the audience to understand their personal connection to the river.

    Trash Trout Boonerang Sample from Tom Hansell on Vimeo.

    “Trash Trout Motion Picture Show”, live performance with Trevor McKenzie and Julie Shephard-Powell, activated experimental film installation, Boonerang Festival, June 17, 2022

    And, just like the river, these multiple paths lead to a common junction. Especially in “Does Water Die?,” the local landscape seems to be a primary theme. What are your foremost concerns related to waste on your local North Carolina environment? And what is filmmaking’s unique impact in this advocacy?

    Many people consider North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, where I live, to be a pristine environment. However, while making "The Trash Trout Motion Picture Show," I learned that microplastics have been found in every surface water sample from our region. The mountains in my home county are the headwaters of three major river systems that feed the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers as well as the Atlantic Ocean. Protecting water quality in headwaters communities will help millions of people downstream.

    Locally, my goal is to support my project partners who are advocating for a plastic bag ban. Plastic bags have been banned in many parts of the US, Canada, and Europe, but not in North Carolina. Emerging research shows that microplastics have been found in human blood and can potentially impact public health. I hope my films can raise questions, start conversations, and energize people to seek solutions. My ultimate goal is to help create positive feedback loops between geographic place, human cultures, and natural systems.


    Three Channel Installation for the 2022 New River Symposium at Bechtel Summit Reserve’s Sustainability Treehouse, Glen Jean, West Virginia

    And the work is expanding to other locations to create those feedback loops! In fact, you spent the month at the Moab Arts Reuse Residency in Utah projecting experimental films onto upcycled materials. What parallels did you notice between harmful pollutants and the natural environment through material use? What are your goals in this new environment?

    The Moab Arts Reuse Residency provided me the opportunity to collaborate with community members to make a series of short, crowd sourced films about the waste stream in this part of Utah. Uranium mining has left a lasting legacy on the local landscape, and the explosion of tourism in recent years has created new issues with waste disposal. During my residency, we focused on three aspects of Moab’s waste stream: I partnered with the Canyonlands Solid Waste Authority to create a short film about municipal waste and recycling, worked with Moab’s Sustainability Department to create a film about composting food waste, and collaborated with local residents to make a piece about the federal government’s efforts to remediate radioactive waste from an old uranium mine.  

    I also salvaged broken flat screen televisions and stitched the screens together to create a 12 foot by 7 foot screen to show the films to the community. My goal for this residency was to amplify conversations about how to make Moab’s waste stream more sustainable. I concluded the residency by screening the short film series, titled "Moab Waste Stream," to the community on August 30 of this year.  

    I am excited to see how this continues to develop. Thank you, Tom! 


    Does Water Die? from Tom Hansell on Vimeo.

    “Does Water Die?” Tom Hansell & Joshua White, experimental film made with plastic waste from New River. 2019

  • Monday, August 28, 2023 8:58 AM | Anonymous

    MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

    August 28, 2023

    This week we recognize  Eve Andrée Laramée, and her forty-five year practice engaging the alchemical, as a nuclear arms activist and agit-prop eco-art instigator.

    River of Stone, 1989 (above) made of copper, water, salt, glass, and mica, was included in "Revered Earth" in 1991, a traveling exhibition initiated by the Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The piece is a later work from Laramée's evaporation pool series, officially starting with "Venusian Lagoons," shown at the Albuquerque Museum in a solo exhibition with catalogue, in 1983. Comprised of several large evaporation ponds containing salt, water, copper and iron, her lagoons were inspired by early experiments she made while living in the San Francisco Bay Area during graduate school at SFAI in 1978-1980. The conceptual basis for this time-based series was alchemical processes, as well as being influenced by travertine deposits that form in mineral-rich hot springs, highlighting natural and geological/mineralogical phenomena.

    Parks on Trucks: Project for the City of Aachen, Germany, 1999 (above) consisted of a series of parks on a fleet of three large, commercial, flat-bed trucks which circulated through the city and were parked in different places on a weekly basis. Parks represent some of the most "natural" elements in our landscapes, yet they are designed and cultivated, controlled and aestheticized using methods that are clearly "unnatural" and sometimes extremely so. Cultures tend to see parks as "sacred spaces," luxurious romanticization and fetishizations of nature that are only possible because modern industrial economies buffer us from the worst of nature's hazards and discomforts. This security and comfort, however, frequently imposes high environmental costs that make it necessary to "rescue" nature from culture by designating and producing parks. Placing parks on trucks brings these seeming contradictions together for mutual consideration in a simultaneously humorous, sardonic, radical, and reverential gesture. One truck was cultivated with plants with medicinal and poisonous properties, a play on the phrase, "The Gift of Nature" as the word "gift" in German means poison. A second truck (above), the “Carbon Balance” truck was planted with a topiary garden representing transformed nature, it was driven only as far as it polluted the air and cleaned it at the same rate per research by a biogeographer. A third was planted with the staple crop, corn.

    Sugar Mud (Hudson River Project), 2003 (above) was installed in the drawing room of a Gilded Age mansion in Riverdale, New York, Wave Hill, and consisted of a room-sized mound of golden-colored sugar that referenced two local issues. One was the golden hue associated with the historic Hudson River School of painters and the accumulated toxic sediment from the sugar factory sludge located on the shore of the Hudson River. Collaborating with environmental scientists, Laramée created Sediment Profile Imagery using benthic disturbance mapping of the river bottom documenting the channels where 80,000 tons of sludge were dredged and relocated to the ocean floor.

    Halfway to Invisible (2009) was an installation commissioned by Emory University, an affiliate of the Center for Disease Control, focused on epidemiological and genetic issues in relation to uranium mining. More than 225,000,000 tons of uranium ore was mined by Native American laborers, including the Laguna, Navajo, Zuni, Southern Ute, Ute Mountain, Hopi, and Acoma cultures. These workers were poorly paid, and seldom informed of the dangers of working with uranium or given appropriate protective gear. Epidemiologic studies of the workers and their families show increased incidents of radiation-induced cancers, miscarriages, and birth defects. Field trips to the Jackpile Uranium Mine at Laguna Pueblo, meetings with retired uranium miners, hydro-geologists and remediation engineers informed the questions raised by the work: Is our atomic legacy producing genotoxic effects in indigenous human populations? If so, what is the extent of DNA damage, and how might this affect these populations in the future?

    NukeNOtes, 2013-ongoing (below) is a social sculpture project bringing environmental art and research to non-art audiences in the form of “alternative fact sheets,” or National Park brochures, as a vehicle to expand understanding, change perception and support engagement around public lands and adjacent nuclear legacy sites. The brochures draw attention to the use, misuse and commodification of our public lands by activities that produce serious environmental and health impacts such as uranium mining and milling, research, development and production of nuclear weapons, project engages this legacy. 108 of these sites exist in 38 states, several adjoining National Parks and public lands. They are former mining, milling, manufacturing and testing sites for the U.S. nuclear weapons production operations during WWII and the Cold War. As climate change occurs and vulnerability spectrum's shift these sites and the people surrounding them, including many indigenous populations are at increased risk. Sites include Atlas Uranium Mill/Arches National Park, Yucca Mountain/Death Valley National Park, among others.

    Eve Andrée Laramée is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher working at the confluence of art and science. She is a Professor of the Department of Art at Pace University. and the Director of the Dyson Center for the Arts, Society & Ecology. She received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her artwork has been exhibited throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Exhibitions include at the Venice Biennale, Mass MOCA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; among other institutions. Her work is included in the collections of the MacArthur Foundation, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, The Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the UCLA Armand Hammer Museum, and in numerous other public and private collections. Laramée has received two grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, an Andy Warhol Foundation Grant, two fellowships from the New York Foundation for Arts and grants from the Mid-Atlantic States Arts Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Museum Sculptor-in-Residence Program. Her work has been written about by art historians and art critics in in numerous books and journals including Artforum, Art in America, ArtNews, the New York Times, CAA Art Journal, among others. Laramée also writes about art and environmental issues.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_Andree_Laramee


    Images: ©Eve Andrée Laramée, River of Stone, 1989, copper, water, salt, glass, and mica, first exhibited at the New Museum in 1989, for the exhibition Strange Attractors: Signs of Chaos, and included inRevered Earth, a traveling exhibition curated by Dominique Mazeaud, with additional text and insights by Suzi Gablik, shown at Contemporary Arts Museum (TX), The Pratt Institute (NY), Atlanta College of Art with Nexus Contemporary Art Center (GA), University of Arizona Museum of Art, Blue Star Art Space (TX) The Mint Museum (NC), and concluded at the Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe (NM), 1990-1991, catalogue; Parks on Trucks: Carbon Balance Truck Project for the City of Aachen, Germany, 1999, truck, topiary, soil, and gravel, commissioned by the Ludwig Forum Museum, included in the exhibition Natural Reality: Artistic Positions between Nature and Culture, curated by Heike Strelow; Sugar Mud (Hudson River Project), 2003, crystalized yellow sugar, wood, digital photographs, lighting gels, 16.5 x 35 x 6.5 feet, exhibited at Wavehill, Riverdale, Bronx, New York, curated by Jennifer McGregor; Halfway to Invisible, 2009, kinetic sculpture, video, video projection, 60 lightboxes with transparencies, Cold War artifacts, archive of documents, photographs, ambient soundscape; Atlas Uranium Mill, from NukeNotes series, 2013-ongoing, activist National Parks brochures; below, portrait of the artist.

     


  • Monday, August 21, 2023 11:06 AM | Anonymous


    source: Library of Creative Sustainability, Creative Carbon, Scotland

    Inspiring examples of sustainability outcomes achieved through artistic collaboration. Read introduction here

    Case Study, published 8/21/2023 (written by Maja Rimer)

    Every second, Guanabara Bay receives 18 thousand litres of untreated domestic sewage and 90 tons of floating waste daily, as well as unaccounted amounts of chemical sewage and petroleum and oil released by industries. Oil and gas production spills that come from over 6000 naval, chemical and petroleum industrial facilities have contributed to the slow death of the territory of Guanabara Bay. The increased temperature of the oceans with climate change and noise pollution generated by the ships, are other important factors for the loss of marine life.

    The environmental degradation of Guanabara Bay affects the local population living in the area, especially the fishing communities whose lives depend on the waters, and so these conditions impose a necessity to change the life of the communities that can no longer survive on fishing. Together with the communities, Sensitive Territories discover possibilities for the reuse of waste, asking what we can learn from these ruins and how we can imagine new futures for them.

    ‘Sensitive Territories invites us to think about what kind of relationship we can create with territories in ruins’ says Walmeri Ribeiro. ‘In the relationship of art, fishing and life, we found a way together to initiate dreams and to connect our bodies with the territory that we inhabit.’

    Guanabara Bay encompasses 16 districts and is home to 8.6 million people. Environmental destruction forces them to find a new relationship with the territory and build resilience. Covering an area of 412 square kilometres and listed as a UN World Heritage site since 2012, the area is important not only for the local communities but for the entire ecosystem in Brazil. 

    Created as a research platform in 2014 by Brazilian artist Walmeri Ribeiro, Sensitive Territories investigates the impact of climate change and industrial pollution on traditional communities that live on the shores of Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro. Throughout the project, artists, scientists and local communities immersed themselves in the environment of water and mangroves to investigate possible solutions to water pollution. Sensitive Territories aims to rethink the creation of artistic practices, exploring ethical, political and aesthetic modes of producing art to address environmental challenges. Believing in the political dimension as much as the sensory experience of art practices, the project encourages ways of imagining a new coexistence among humans and non-humans.


    Territórios Sensíveis| Baía de Guanabara from Walmeri Ribeiro on Vimeo.

    Continue reading full feature on Creative Carbon Scotland, including summarized sustainability issues and outcomes, lessons, tips and advice here

  • Monday, August 14, 2023 7:29 AM | Anonymous

    MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

    August 14, 2023

    This week we recognize  Mary Edwards  Mary Edwards, and a ten year span of her public art and sonic installations.

    Per/Serverance, 2013 (above) is an interpretive soundscape that implies both a tenacity and a detachment evidenced by the predicament of the  2.7 mile-long Quequechan River. Once the centerpiece of the 19th Century Fall River, Massachusetts textile industry, it has since been buried under the city to accommodate the expansion of Interstate 195, and partially obscured by the mills built in that era that echo tragedies and initiatives occurring throughout the 20th and early 21st Centuries. Its memory and "voice" are represented by a collection of subtle sounds: fluid origins ranging from a purely ecological juncture of its most natural state prior to industrialization, to a human-altered waterscape; distant contrapuntal Siren-inspired choruses alternating between alluring resonance and foreboding dissonance; and faint reverberations that hearken to the height and decline of the mills and the vision to "daylight" the falls once again. Edwards came to Fall River several times to study the river, to understand its relationship to the city, and to find the remaining places where it can still be seen, and heard. Her sound installation is evocative of the memories that the water still carries,and the conversation it would have if someone were there to listen.

    click images for more info and sound

    Edwards' spatial sound work When the Ocean Meets the Sky, 2019 (above) pays tribute to the astronauts and aquanauts from the 1960s to present, who've prepared for deep space explorations by venturing to the bottom of the sea. As part of the REFUGE exhibition at Beatnik Gallery/Joshua Tree Cultural Preservation Center, Joshua Tree National Park, California, this installation invites the listener to engage in the reverie of the sonorous habitats of sea and space where immersive sonics range from expansive to infinitesimal.

    For Something to (Be)Hold, 2021 (above) was installed at locations around the Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery in Massachusetts. The stations served as portals and were the impetus for possibility. The work questions what we subconsciously navigate in our everyday patterns that can be transformative to our encounter and expectations if we pace ourselves and listen. What does “place” sound like when it, upon first impression, seems so familiar that one may bypass their imagination for the ordinary?  There is no actual silence or stillness afterwards. Through engagement, eventually you find music in nature, and beauty in between the complexities and unanswered spaces. Does the place itself repopulate with resounding motions other than our own? The soundtracks heard draw from the material form, and are an extension of Edwards’ relationship to the natural world.

    In CONSERVATION/CONVERSATION, 2022 (below) while Artist-In-Residence at ACA Soundscape Field Station at Canaveral National Seashore, Edwards explored the distinctive habitats and soundscape ecology of Apollo Beach. An audio companion to a poetic essay and a free verse narrative account documented the collaboration of visitors to the ocean and park, participants in her interactive and real-time exhibition.Questions arose such as: What are the parallels between a gentle rainstorm and a NASA rocket launch in the distance? A whisper in your ear and the crashing of ocean waves, or the beating of a drum and your own heartbeat when all else appears silent? What do we know what to listen for, and how do we describe these sounds to others? How does the practice of deeper listening raise our awareness to soundscape ecology, our compassion, or stewardship and healing of each other and the wellness of the environment?

    Drawing partly on sound as a vibrational phenomenon and space analogues, Everywhere We Are is the Farthest Place, 2023 (below) is an ode, rather than an elegy, to the transforming Arctic landscape, climate vulnerability, elemental sensuality and terrestrial/space connectivity. It comprises a score and text performed synchronically (and sometimes improvisational) with an immersive soundscape of cinematic audio and ambient field recordings of ice, water and wildlife sounds gathered from landings around Svalbard, Norway while on a sailing expedition on a research vessel above the 78th parallel. The work documents sound properties of glacial geology and oceanographic data, through sonification by “de-centering the centered and un-othering the others.” Edwards began inviting audiences to interact with the hydrophones, contact mics, keyboards, Waterphone, bows and mallets, used to record and respond to the fjords and glaciers, and incorporate their own "layer of experience."


    Mary Edwards  is a composer and sound artist. Themes of temporality, impermanence, nostalgia and the natural world recur throughout her work. She is interested in the invisible architecture and the emotive, historic, cinematic and spatial properties of sound. Listening is an inherent and integral part of her process in conveying how all sounds have the potential to be habitable and transformative once you get inside them, as they are simultaneously intimate and immense. Edwards has recorded and exhibited widely, and her works have received support from residencies and fellowships including ACA Soundscape Field Station at Canaveral National Seashore, Headlands Center for the Arts and The Arctic Circle. Her writing has been published by Oxford American, Invert/Extant (U.K.), The Mentor that Matters, The Santa Barbara Literary Journal and the anthology, Joy Has a Sound: Black Sonic Visions. She holds an Interdisciplinary MFA in Sound and Architecture from Goddard College. http://maryedwardsmusic.com


    Featured Images (top to bottom): ©Mary Edwards, Per/Serverance, 2013, sound installation at Grimshaw Gudewicz Art Gallery, Fall River, Massachusetts; When the Ocean Meets the Sky, 2019, included in REFUGE at Beatnik Gallery, Joshua Tree Cultural Preservation Center, California; Something to (Be)Hold, 2021, installation at Grimshaw-Gudewica Gallery, Fall River, Massachusetts; CONSERVATION / CONVERSATION, 2022, including book and sound soundscape on Bandcamp, Fall 2023; Everywhere We Are is the Farthest Place, 2023, sound installation and performance at The Spitsbergen Artists Center, Longyarbyen, Svalbard, Norway; Portrait of the artist.



  • Monday, August 07, 2023 9:58 AM | Anonymous

    MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

    August 7, 2023

    This week we recognize Margaret Cogswell, and her ongoing series of RIVER FUGUES that began twenty years ago.

    River Fugues are unique projects exploring the interdependency of people, industry and rivers. Each entail regional research, recording images and narratives with audio/video that are later edited into fugues and integrated into sculptural installations. The reason for using the fugue is because of its flexibility as a conceptual framework, which can be applied to any set of components one is trying to integrate, be they sounds, voices, narratives or images. 

    A precursor that influenced the River Fugue series, Thirst (above, a proposal drawing), installations exhibited in1999 & 2001, explored the idea of immortality being found in the waters of a particular place and/or through particular rituals involving water, including the Japanese tea ceremony, as well as the art of dowsing for water using divining rods. In both installations, dripping water turned to steam as it hit heated steel discs so that, just as with the fountain of youth, the waters are never accessible for drinking, and immortality remains elusive.

     click images for more info

    Lured by fire, water and the imposing presence of volcanic steel mills, during a residency at SPACES Gallery in Cleveland, Ohio, at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, Cogswell’s site-specific response became Cuyahoga Fugues, 2003 (above), a mixed-media installation inspired by and incorporating generations of stories reflecting the life and dreams embodied by the Cuyahoga River. Struck by the interdependence of the life of the river, people and industry to each other, and the realization that her installation would include multiple audio and video components, Cogswell turned to the musical structure of the fugue as a guide for editing the video and audio. Narratives recorded from people living and working along the river, video from along the Cuyahoga River and the steel mill industry were woven together as “fugues” to become Cuyahoga Fugues. Videos and narratives were rear-projected from inside steel and plexi-pipes, as well as from vents in walls, a re-purposed radio and TV. This installation was also included in River Fuges (2007-2008), as part of Melting Ice / A Hot Topic, a traveling exhibition organized by Art Works for Change.

    Mississippi River Fugues, 2008 (above) was a solo exhibition at the Art Museum of the University of Memphis in Tennessee. Entering the museum’s lobby, the viewer is surrounded by voices of cotton farmers, river guides, levee supervisors and others telling their stories which are emerging from hurricane lanterns. An 18th century French drawing of a "machine dredger" powered by men in squirrel wheel cages inspires the main installation. Entering the darkened gallery, the viewer is dwarfed by 2 giant squirrel wheels and 5 buoys. Inside the giant wheels (standing 15 and 20 ft. high) are video projections (10 ft. and 6 ft. diameter) of a man running endlessly, seemingly powering the dredger’s wheels. Each of the five buoys (6 to 14 ft. high) houses an oscillating motor and video projector in the top section. Oscillating 90 degrees, video images move across the surrounding walls and form a visual fugue exploring the haunting history, poignant beauty and delicate balance found in the interdependence of the lives of people in the Delta, the cotton industry and Mississippi River.

    Wyoming River Fugues, 2012 (above) explores the complex relationship between Wyoming's natural, cultural, historic, engineered and industrial landscapes. Of particular interest are water rights and issues related to river water usage including irrigation and mining. This mixed-media installation is comprised of video projected from three surveyor’s transits, and onto the floor of a stock tank. A “bucket of light” moves slowly 50 feet diagonally across the museum’s gallery space. Surveyor’s transits, normally determining division of land and access to water, serve as a vehicle for exploring the historical and cultural landscape of Wyoming through video projections moving across the surrounding walls. Narrative fugues were created from interviews with Arapaho and Shoshone elders, botanists, composers, archaeologists, ecologists, hydrologists, philosophers, ranchers, historians, environmentalists, poets, and scientists with the extraction industries.

    Moving the Water(s): Ashokan Fugues, 2014 (below) is a research-based mixed-media installation that explores the New York City water supply and its relationship to the Catskill Watershed. It was an elegy to the people of the Catskills who lost their land and homes through eminent domain for the building of the Ashokan Reservoir, which supplies drinking water for New York City through its aqueduct system. Using the musical structure of a fugue, the piece is “composed” to be played by a trio of videos projected inside the two water towers and from the one surveyor’s transit.  A green ball animates the water currents and becomes the visual thread linking the movement of water from the Catskills down to NYC. The work was installed for a solo exhibition at Cue Art Foundation in New York City. 

    Moving the Waters: Croton Fugues, 2017 (below) was inspired by the 2017 centennial anniversary of New York City’s aqueduct system, and the location of the Mid-Manhattan Library across the street from the site of the former Croton Distribution Reservoir, the first reservoir in New York City.  When that reservoir became inadequate, the City looked north to the Catskills for its water. The Croton Distribution Reservoir was then destroyed and the current New York City Public Library was built over the site. Layers of this history were reflected in the windows of the Mid-Manhattan Library across the street. This project seeks to entice the viewer into imagining and investigating the history of NYC’s water supply system through the accumulated layering of the experience of exploring these windows. Focusing on the Croton Reservoir, photographs and video stills from onsite research and documentation were layered with archival images from the NYPL digital files to form the window installations of panels of archival digital prints on canvas. Inspired by the structure of India’s 16th century Deccan Court paintings, each window installation is created with sections of narrative images, abstractions and repetitive patterns.

    Margaret Cogswell is a mixed-media installation artist residing in New York and a recipient of numerous awards including the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (2009), Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2017, 1991 & 1987), New York Foundation for the Arts (2007, 1993); and Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant (2014). Cogswell was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and raised in Japan where she lived until she was 13 years old. She received her Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. In 1982, she received a Master in Fine Arts in Sculpture from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Since 2003, the main focus of Cogswell's work is an ongoing series of RIVER FUGUES projects that explore the increasingly politicized role of water. RIVER FUGUES began in Cleveland, Ohio in 2002 with Cuyahoga Fugues, a mixed-media installation inspired by and incorporating generations of stories reflecting the life and dreams embodied by the Cuyahoga River.  https://margaretcogswell.net


    Featured images (top to bottom): ©Margaret Cogswell, Thirst, 1998, proposal drawing, watercolor, color pencil, chalk on paper, 20 x 30 inches; Cuyahoga Fugues, 2003, steel pipes, multiple video and audio components, 14 x 40 x 40 feet, Spaces Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio; Mississippi River Fugues, 2008, steel structures, multiple audio and oscillating video projections, 20 x 66 x 33 feet, Art Museum, University of Memphis, Tennessee; Wyoming River Fugues, 2012, steel and wood “surveyor’s transits,” steel stock tanks with video projections, 1 moving polyurethane “bucket of light”, multiple audio and oscillating video components, 16 X 64 X 37 feet, Art Museum, University of Wyoming, Laramie; Moving the Water(s): Ashokan Fugues, 2014, 2 steel & plexi “water-towers” with video and audio, 1 steel and wood surveyor’s transit and wall video projection, 15 x 13 x 15 feet, CUE Art Foundation, New York City; Moving the Water(s): Croton Fugues, 2017, window installations of archival prints on canvas, window dimensions 10 x 6 feet, Mid-Manhattan Library, New York City; self-portrait of the artist in Wyoming.


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