Open Call for Actions
Last night, I went to the opening of On the Ideal of Permeable Barriers,which features four shows at Art in General. Here’s a piece by artist Virginia Poundstone (I picked up lucky NO. 139 . out of an edition of 300). According to the press release provided by the gallery, viewers take away these flickers, which are modeled after party favorites for confetti. Following the directions on the packaging, viewers are asked to choose any site with exposed dirt and sprinkle seeds . This piece leaves the final product of the artwork in the hands of the viewer, not the artist. In a sense, it makes the owner of the flicker a bit of an activist too. Poundstone’s ideas straddle the line between art and activism, and right now, that seems like a positive thing.
I’m definitely planning to make use of my flicker and document the site before the flower sprinkles and then after. Any suggestions for a place in NY that needs a flower bed?
Melting Art Objects: David Kennedy-Cutler’s Antarctica
Although I met David Kennedy-Cutler for a talk several weeks ago, this might be the perfect time to blog about his Antarctic Soap Multiples in light of the new study from the journal, Nature.
I heard about the study first from DotEarth and then later on NPR . The study concludes that the West Antarctic ice sheet will collapse within a process spanning several thousand years.
While other bloggers nitpick over what the results of the study mean, I want to turn towards an art piece from 2006 that brings us this discussion through a totally different medium: soap.
For this piece, David created 500 palm sized Antarcticas out of “Arctic Breeze” scented soap.
These multiples were made for North Drive Press, an annual publication that routinely includes 3-d multiples amongst interviews and prints.
While David doesn’t consider himself a political artist, others have told him his work is indeed political.
“The thought of Antarctica was just something that permeated my work,” he said. ”It was in our mass consciousness at the time.”
In February, David gave a lecture at NYU regarding the use of multiples throughout different moments of art history.
I saw the piece for the first time during his lecture, and throughout the talk, I knew I wanted to interview David about Antarctica because he didn’t seem like he was explicitly trying to create Eco Art.
In our talk, David said, “I don’t identify with the term, because I don’t consider myself an eco artist.”
It seems that while creating Antarctica David’s thoughts worked around a fascination with the sublime:
“I’m interested in this intangible, changing phenomenon that can’t be trapped or owned….I was taking this thing that is remote and far out from us, and soap [has] this idea of purity or hygiene, and I felt that there was an equivalence to our notion of icebergs and we have this uncomplicated view of what Antarctica is or what unspoiled nature is.”
I have a soft spot for sculptures in which the medium carries the message. Here, soap expresses the washing away of Antarctica, which David said he felt equated with “a feeling of destiny.”
More images of Kennedy-Cutler’s Antarctica, here.
Eco Concerns Moving into the Design World….via New Typeface
As I keep researching the Eco movement, I’m continually amazed at the number of different fields it spreads to. Even Graphic designers are not immune to environmental awareness. Here’s what I found one day while standing in front of a heavy duty NYU copier waiting for about 100 sheets of assigned reading to print out:
SPRANQ Eco Sans
This typeface uses 20% less ink, while still maintaining a comprehensive level of readability, according to the Dutch Company’s website. In my opinion, it’s exactly that. It’s got this Broadway-sign-esque quality that works if used to present a big title, but I would imagine that in smaller blocks of text, Sanq Eco Sans will become an eye-sore (once I figure out how to install the font on my computer, this will be tested. It’s free for anyone to use here).
The font will probably not be used for major print in books or magazines, according to a post from the Times Online, but it can certainly be helpful for the office world where countless, unpublished drafts are printed daily.
Outside of these factors, I’m most intrigued by the afterthoughts of the font. Regardless of how much actually gets saved, or what it means to preserve such a thing as ink, the creation of this typeface is also a message about consumption, getting people to think of ‘less as more,’ and how to fix our Earth woes, creatively. Who knew a bunch of holes could do so much?
Words & Greeness
This piece from every/day clues us into the ecologically conscious poetry of E.J. McAdams. Specifically, he has been revisiting the subject of urban ecology in his work ever since the New York poet came to the city in the early 90′s.
Essayist, Catherine Owen makes a distinction between nature and environmental poetry now surfacing in a very informative article published in February. In the piece, Owen explains that writings on nature have existed for centuries. Think of the Japanese haikus dating from the 17th Century, or the wave of nature poetry from the Romantics.
Today, however, poets such as McAdams have a slightly different perception of the Earth. Owen describes environmental poetry as expressions that “comprehend the ecological cycles [...] and admit to complicity in the destruction of [nature's] fragile systems.”
I just had an interview with McAdams last month (which will be posted later…much later after some fine tunnings) and I was really taken by the way he became so involved with nature in the first place:
“I would take walks in the park because that’s what I could afford….it was like finding a bag of money, finding this thing that no one told me was here. So many people think of nature as being out there in wilderness, and that became a point of pride that all I knew was nature in the city.”
While there were money factors that made McAdams a frequent park-goer, it was also the Beat poet, Gary Snyder, whose work influenced McAdams to take an interest in learning about the natural world.
Currently, McAdams is writing poetry on the subway as he travels back and forth to the Bronx. By this summer, the Bronx’s Grand Concourse will be turned into The Tree Museum, which will include McAdams’ poetry in the exhibition.
EJ McAdams at the Brown Cup
Q & A with David Van Luven
Ecologist, David Van Luven is the director of the Hudson River Estuary Landscape. On Wednesday, he kindly gave me his insights on art and environmentalism. During the summer of 2008, EXIT Art recruited Van Luven for a panel discussion between artists and scientists on the intersection of climate change and the arts.
David Van Luven on the Hudson River
AT: How did you get involved in the panel?
DVL: Well, there’s nothing romantic there. It was a fellow in our NY office E.J. McAdams. He used to be a part of the Audubon society, very involved in the arts society and I’m working on climate change, so he called me.
AT: The online video of the panel only showed Eve Mosher speaking . Could you tell me about your role in that discussion?
DVL: I introduced the project I’ve been working on, the Hudson River Estuary initiative. In this project, we’re building four potential futures for the Hudson Valley and then we put together robust strategies that respond to those potential futures. It’s an effort to move forward strategies that will help people become aware of climate change problems.
Really, it’s just that people don’t put too much effort into preparing for things like climate change. The Hudson is hit in two different ways. First, sea level has been rising and we’ve seen it move 15 inches over the past 150 years put projects that it will speed to 6′ over the next 100 years. That might not sound like much, but it’s significantly rapid.
The second consequence is altered weather. We’re going to see fewer, more intense storms and flooding. Levees are one option we have against flooding, but they’re also expensive and difficult to maintain.
AT: All of this sounds like it’s related to Mosher’s piece, especially what you’ve said about awareness in people.
DVL: I loved that piece. You what I liked about that piece? It was so clean and simple.
This is why I think Art is such a powerful movement, and Eve’s project was so simple, she was drawing this line and people came out and talked to her about it. She wasn’t trying to teach them, she was just this person in her neighborhood and she wasn’t threatening, and so when she talked, people listened to what she had to say.
Artists are brilliant in that they see the same things we see but they see them in very different directions. Very powerful insights on how to communicate effectively, and makes us re-think what we’re talking about ourselves. I loved her project.
AT: You seem pretty positive about this collaboration between science and art.
I am, one because I love Art, and I really didn’t get to discover art till I was in college and I met my wife then. One of the challenges I see, most of the people I work with in the environmental world, I don’t think we see the potential that lies in the Art community.
AT: Who are your inspirations, artists, writers, other scientists?
DVL: David Roberts. He made these neat drawings of the East. I just love them. They draw me in and they create this world that I want to walk through.
Musically, I love Phillip Glass. Have you seen Kyannisquatsi? It’s about he break down of the earth, and it’s just, just, you’ve got to go see it. Rent it, download it, you’ve got to go see it. The music is just brilliant. I listen to it all the time.
And I’m just trying to think of other artists I love, it’s like when someone asks you what your favorite music is and you blank out for some reason.
AT: Oh yeah, I know. It puts you on the spot. What about writers?
DVL: I don’t read many environmental books, but I love Beak of the Finch; one of the most lucid descriptions of what evolution actually is, as well as the survial of the fittest presentation. Most people actually don’t really get what that is and it’s such an elegantly simple, simple concept.
OH, and Andy Goldsworthy! I love Andy Goldsworthy.
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