what will our future look like?

"The rapid depletion of irreplaceable minerals, the erosion of topsoil, the destruction of beauty, the blight of pollution... all combine to create problems which are easy to observe and predict but difficult to resolve. If we do not act, the world of the year 2000 will be much less able to sustain life than it is now." Carter 1/14/1981

President Carter was a deep thinker on many things, like farming, civil rights, apartheid, peace in the Middle East, and nuclear arms reduction, and he was the first president to declare a federal emergency in 1978 in the neighborhood of Love Canal, Niagara Falls, New York, built on a toxic waste landfill. He was an advocate of energy conservation, and stated that the energy crisis was the "moral equivalent of war." He was also the only president to put solar panels on the White House and the first to invite gay male and lesbian rights activists there. Carter supported the Equal Rights Amendment and signed into law the American Indian Religious Freedom Act to preserve their inherent right "to believe, express, and exercise their traditional religions." Yet, he was ranked the tenth worst president of the United States. The recent timing of his death at 100 years of age begs reconsideration of what a president can be and should be today. His contributions were important.

As we move forward into 2025, we invite our artists to lean into their divergent thinking skills to envision speculative futures born of an ecoconsciousness. To this end, this month we will open the exhibition There is No Planet B in Scottsdale, Arizona, including nineteen of our state members. And, we will host presentations from our Fall Sustain(ability) and the Art Studio course and invite you to sign up for our Winter/Spring 2025 session. We will also launch the first in a series of Soils Turn speakers who will discuss their work about soils. see below

Dig in your heels and continue to do the good work!

Patricia Watts, founder

Header Image: Kim Abeles, James Carter, from the "Presidential Commemorative Smog Plates" (1992) including smog (particulate matter) on porcelain plate. The plates were left out longer, depending on the president’s environmental records.

online events

Online Course for Members

February 8, 2025 - May 3, 2025

DEADLINE January 15, 2024

This is our sixth course designed exclusively for ecoartspace members that will prepare artists to develop ways of thinking about sustainability in their practice, both conceptually and physically. Participants will learn how to wildcraft art materials, a practice that requires one to deepen their relationship with land, creativity, and self. Artists will also be invited to think critically about their relationship to place, materiality and voice in a time of socio-ecological destabilization. Through lectures, discussions, creation, and sharing, implications of a bioregional perspectives alongside the function of art to inform will be considered, and what a grounded and meaningful art practice can entail today.

Course led by Anna Chapman, including guest speakers Johanna Törnqvist and Lucia Monge.

Cost is $375 per member, new membership fee can be waved if needed. Approximately 12 participants minimum.

Email info@ecoartspace.org to participate

January 11 at 2pm EST the Fall 2024 cohort will present their projects via Zoom, open and free to all

Soils Turn Speaker Series

Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens

Thursday, January 23

United States: 9am HST, 11am PST, Noon MST, 1pm CDT, 2pm EST

Europe: 19:00 GMT  Australia: Friday January 24, 6am AEDT

For the first of five online events focused on artists addressing soils, we present multi-media collaborators Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens who will discuss their soil related works including Dirt Bed (2012), Wedding to the Soil (2014) and In the Dirt (2018). Join us for their "groundbreaking" presentation of eco-sexual works that shift the concept of Earth as mother, to Earth as lover.

This event is free for members + one guest. $5 for non-members. All participants MUST REGISTER.

upcoming exhibition

THERE IS NO PLANET B ecofeminism and climate

Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts/Center Space Gallery           

January 17 through April 27, 2025

Reception, January 24 at 6pm MT

This exhibition was a call for artists for our Arizona members and features the work of nineteen artists whose work expresses a concern for the future of planet Earth, identifying with an ecofeminist perspective that speaks to an equitable future for humans and the more-than-human world. Co-juried by Laura R Hales, curator of learning and innovation at Scottsdale Arts and Patricia Watts, founder of ecoartspace.

Ulrike Arnold, Camilla de Andrade Bianchi, Barbara Boissevain, Cherie Buck-Hutchinson, Heidi Dauphin, Jan Talmadge Davids, Jimmy Fike, Moira Geoffrion, Nancy Gifford, Rachel Ivanyi, Adriene Jenik, Saskia Jordá, Mary Meyer, Alan Petersen, Martina Shenal, Diane Silver, Shawn Skabelund, Beth Ames Swartz, Jen Urso

featured artist

andrea krupp

Anthracite coal is a material of the uncanny. Both organic and mineral, its ambiguous materiality spans epochs. Earth’s future climate is written in its carbon. Its color is a mysterious blacksilver. It rewards attention. www.andreakrupp.com

store

The New Geologic Epoch &   Basia Irland: Repositories 

The second printing of The New Geologic Epoch has been delivered. We have ten remaining books ready to ship.  

Go to store

announcements

Learning to Think Like a Forest was an installation at Beatrixwei in the Netherlands in 2024, which is now an interactive dialogue created by Ruth Wallen on her website. Above

Art In Public Places, Miami-Dade County has acquired three series of prints, 39 artworks by Xavier Cortada, for their collection including Endangered World: Biscayne National Park and 80.15W, Florida is…Diatoms, and Native Flags.

2024 Gottlieb Foundation Grant has been awarded to Dawn Stetzel in recognition of her dedicated art making over many years. She is one of 20 artists selected from 994 applications from 47 countries.

Sound as a Material for Reappropriation and Reclamation for Indigenous Lands is a talk with Amber Stucke, for Color Light Motion series, David Bermant Foundation, Episode 25. December 2024.

Alabama Gates 2024 was a community event commemorating the centennial waterway occupation, organized by Kim Stringfellow, which included three panel discussions at Statham Hall broadcast live on Fault Line Radio, a project of Metabolic Studio, Lone Pine, California. November 16 & 17, 2024. 

ecoartspace has served as a platform for artists addressing environmental issues since 1999. In 2020, we transitioned to a membership model. Members include artists, scientists, professionals, students, advocates and institutions sharing resources and supporting each other's work. This is an inclusive, non-competitive collaborative environment where we imagine and make real a healthy, equitable, resilient future.

PO Box 5211, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87502