Art as Resistance, Public facing Actions

Another historic month behind us. Looking forward, if we can manage to stay focused on our communities, near and far, and not retreat too far inside ourselves, we will survive. The above image is meant to inspire, where we need to be, creating aesthetic engagements in the public sphere. This is not the time to stop making art.

Today we launch our 2025 annual call for artists titled Wicked, Monstrous, focused on plastics. A wicked problem is one that is so big we are immersed within it, a hyperobject (Morton), if you will. A monstrous hybrid is when plastics are mixed with other materials, thereby making them non-recyclable. We have several members who are making work about plastics, although with this call, are also inviting members to consider making new work addressing this often invisible, wicked, and monstrous problem. see below

For our members Plastic Dialogues this month, we have invited an expert speaker from the World Wildlife Fund to share about a program fighting plastic waste in businesses. And, for our public Soils Turn speakers series, we will hear from the third in a series of five speakers, this month focused on "undevelopment." see below

This week I will be heading to Louisiana to launch the apex International exhibition titled Plastic, The New Coal at The Descendants Project, which I co-curated with Monique Verdin (Houma Nation). I invite you all to follow along via social media; see the programs listed on our website. see below

"March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb." Farmers Almanac

Patricia Watts, founder/curator

Header Image: Kellie Bornhoft, By a Thread: Great Salt Lake, 2024, art installation at Utah State Capitol rotunda for Utah Cultural Industry Advocacy Day, February 2, 2025. Photo by Kirstin Roper.

NOT A MEMBER???

eas call for artists

CALL FOR ARTISTS, SCIENTISTS, DESIGNERS, & WRITERS

Wicked, Monstrous

For the 2025 ecoartspace annual call for artists, an online + print on demand book, we are seeking existing artworks, proposals for site-specific and speculative artworks, and writings addressing THE most impactful ecological issue of our time, plastics. Plastic production is a byproduct of the fossil fuel industry and, in almost 100 years, has become a wicked, monstrous problem. We invite artists, scientists, designers and writers to contribute to this creative "field guide" so that curators and scientists have entree to our members for participation in exhibitions and art/sci collaborations. 

OPEN FOR APPLICATIONS March 1, 2025

DEADLINE June 1, 2025

online course

Online Course for Members

NEW DATES March 15, 2025 - June 7, 2025

DEADLINE EXTENDED March 5, 2025

4 SPOTS LEFT!

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

zoom dialogue

Soils Turn Speaker Series

Lauren Bon + Metabolic Studio

Thursday, March 13

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

Europe: 19:00 GMT, 20:00 CET  Australia: Friday, February 14, 6am AEDT

For the third of five online events for the Soils Turn Speaker Series, presenting the work of artists focused on addressing soils, artist Lauren Bon will discuss her multi-year large-scale project in downtown Los Angeles. Un-development, is unsealing tarmac, dismantling concrete and letting the land breathe on a one-acre vacant lot adjacent to the Los Angeles River. Through the concept of Un-development, the project proposes breaking away from conventional urbanization practices and dismantling structures that suffocate living systems. It envisions a city that embraces the natural processes of decay, abundance, and interconnectedness, revitalizing the relationship between the city and its environment.

The presentation and Q&A will be moderated by co-editor of the upcoming printed book, Soils Turn, Patricia Watts, also founder of ecoartspace.

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

exhibitions

PLASTIC, THE NEW COAL 

is an apexart International Exhibition

March 15 - April 15, 2025

Reception, March 15 at 6pm CST

at The Descendants Project, Education and Cultural District, 167 Alexis Court, Vacherie, Louisiana

Located along the Mississippi River in St. John the Baptist Parish

Co-curated by Monique Verdin and Patricia Watts, founder of ecoartspace*

Hannah Chalew*, Shana M griffin, Heather Bird Harris*, Pamela Longobardi*, Juan Carlos Quintana*, Renee Royale, Luba Zygarewicz*

Including a proposal for an outdoor Labyrinth by The Descendants Project, in partnership with Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies and Design Jones

There Is No Planet B

Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts/Center Space Gallery in Arizona    Through April 27, 2025

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

blog posts

Please Don't Cut me Down: Donna Bassin's "Portraits of a Precarious Earth" at the Newport Art Museum, review by Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein (above)

The Fragile Power of Sund: Time, Tides, and Textiles in Moira Bateman's Solo Exhibition, review by Laura Laptsevitch

Nature Needs Art More Than Ever: Interview with Jenny Zeller at Berheim Forest and Arboretum in Kentucky, interview by Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

featured artist

camila de andrade bianchi

GUT-ROT processes ideas of mass generational decay through the lens of digestion as a praxis—a catalyst for an embodied change that transcends mere biological processes— one that manifests through the daily practice of engaging in reflection and care for our rejects. A practice of thinking and feeling with our guts. Through hybrid sculptures made of compost, kombucha cultures, and immersive installations, the work explores the abjectivity of waste and our learned repulsion toward it. It examines human-made infrastructures, such as sewage systems and waste facilities, as sites of contention for the forms with which waste and decay are refused of their natural regenerative potential. The work invites us to sit with it, smell it, and care for it; to be intimate with it in order to be taught by it; to find joy in the painful process of composting it, to create space for fertile soil where what will grow is still unknown. bianchicamila.com

store

The New Geologic Epoch &   Basia Irland: Repositories 

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

Go to store

announcements

Soil: The World at our Feet - microbes, mushrooms and the sound of a cactus drinking, review of exhibition titled SOIL at Somerset House, London, including members Jo Pearl, Kim Norton, Daro Montag, and Miranda Whall, in the Guardian, January 26, 2025. Above

Energy Fields: Vibrations of the Pacific is a review of works by Virginia Katz and Lauren Bon, included in the PST ART: "Art & Science Collide" exhibition Energy Fields at Chapman University, Orange, California. Various Venues online, for Artforum.  

My Art Is Garbage is a published article on plastics in art by Beth Shepherd, in The Goose (the official publication of the Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada). February 15, 2025.

Members' books available through our website click image

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