Archive for the ‘Waste’ Category

Elements: An Eco-Art Conference.

Saturday, June 26th, 2010

Have I made it clear? I’m a conference junkie.

Ain’t nothing better than being in a room full of smart people and listening to them talk about the smart things they’ve done. With smart words and smart brains. And especially now, when the green conferences are sprouting up every-which-where, like volunteer plants or something, you can listen to the experienced and the earthy-heroic, all at once. Smart and savory, your basic brain food.

But, unlike most green, super green, shiny-slick-looka-me-green conferences (and boy, do I love those), the producers of the Elements Eco Art Conference were exclusively women, and women with a very clear stated agenda: they were The Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art.

That official part explains the special certificate bestowed upon the conference by Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner. But it also explains the style of the conference itself. Held in the shiny-green David Brower Center, bereft of plastic bottles but packed with compostables and a small altar, Elements was a gathering of some of the women who have been doing this eco-art thing for a long time. In some cases, 10 years. In some cases, 40. In most cases, before you figured out that it was a pretty cool thing.

And so we heard from Susan Leibovitz Steinman and the Recology Artists in Residence. And so we heard from Tierney Thys and Andree Singer Thompson. In the meantime, the presenters talked through a stream of technical glitches, and you could make art postcards and trade them, and we all looked under our seats when somebody lost a notebook. Because despite the fact that much of the work discussed was ground-breaking, iconic or simply Hella Good, the focus never strayed from its purpose. That we were here for the art, not the artist, that we were gathered for a purpose, not a form.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Nobody was barefoot. There were no drum circles. There was a bit of a libation, but no sage. The refreshing thing lacking was the ego. The puffed-out-chest of “I’m smart and here to talk about my smartness.” Which I usually love. It was refreshingly absent. It was, simply, all about the work, and the places the work was from.

Maybe it’s just humbling when your power-point doesn’t work, or when you know everyone in the room by name, or when you just get to make art in service to the planet. And it doesn’t have anything to do with being a lady. But regardless, Leibovitz-Steinman said a smart thing: “Many young women today think they don’t need to be feminist . . . but the fact is we’re standing on the shoulders of these women.” She’s got a chart that lays it all out for you, all the way back to Silent Spring, the work of another grounded woman. Was she even a feminist?

I’ll be taking tomorrow to go over more of the smart details, but for now, my brain is fed.

Earth Matters on Stage: Sustainable Practice

Friday, May 29th, 2009

Many of the lectures here at EMOS are held at the very-new Hope Theater at the University of Oregon’s Miller Theatre Complex. Boom: there’s a big square fact to start the post off for you. But I’m going somewhere with it.

Right now, where the Hope would be a big black box is all full up with Set. The floor is painted in a curling desert-river pattern. Upstage is a forest of recycled wooden planks and juttings, a kind of grandpa’s-attic bamboo. In one corner is a platform with puzzle-piece innards: old bedposts, chairs and plywood fold over each other in a hefty collage.

It’s all for the stagings of the Festival’s top two prize-winning playsSong of Extinction and Atomic Farmgirl. But what was intended to represent a Bolivian forest and an American farm has come to represent the EMOS festival itself, both literally and figuratively: the set was  constructed with recycled materials.

Today’s sessions were sponsored by the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts. Led by Ian Garrett, they included presentations by Steve Mital, University of Oregon’s Director of Sustainability, PhD candidate (and EMOS Production Manager) Damond Morris, several eco-conscious designers, and several pioneers of a Sustainable Dramaturgy program at CalArts.

At this point: it’s day seven. Everyone in the room knows each other, at least by sight. We’re calling each other out in the audience: could you talk about your experience with . . . what’s your perspective on . . . and what begins as a formal presentation becomes a group conversation quickly and easily.

Inspired by Mike Lawler, here are a few questions asked in the course of the day (some got answered, some did not):

What is a “sustainable university”?

What is the impact of a theatrical lighting system?

Where in this stream can we reduce our waste?

What are the next steps in expanding/refining sustainable pedagogy?

How do we reframe our relationship to resources?

How can we implement what we believe in the art we create?

If your curiosity is piqued, I’d encourage you to visit the CSPA’s wiki for tools and nuggets of information. As to the rest, I leave you with Morris’ Five D’s of Design for Environment:

Design for Dissasembly. Design for Recyclability. Design for Disposability. Design for Reusability. Design for Remanufacture.

See you on the other side of  a recycled-wooden forest.

Plastic Bagalicious

Friday, May 16th, 2008

plastic people

It’s kind of nice. Here plastic bags are the scourge of the highways and oceans, choking aquatic wildlife and making whole islands in the sea, and artists everywhere are turning them into a material of art.

Currently you can view such art by Temporary Services at Off the Grid, an exhibition of works inspired by, well . . . look at the title. Temporary Services displays woven objects and signs made of plastic bags, as well as images of the faux jellyfish out in the world in their piece Personal Plastic. Peruse the exhibit co-curated by free103point9 at the Neuberger Museum of Art or online for other fascinating objects, works and inventions.

Artist Ruby ReUsable from Olympia, WA works often with old plastic– her plastic-person is above, featured in the soon-to-close Black Front Gallery. Plastic people also spring from the mind of artist Jet Mondares, who makes beautiful collages with shopping bags, and has begun his own online campaign to reduce, reuse and recycle his materials.

Then there’s this guerilla artist, featured in drain magazine, who simply chained together the number of plastic bags potentially used by the students of Pacific University on one day, given one bag apiece. The chain was 1347 plastic bags long and was titled “Plastic Impact.”

Urban Waste Stream: Van Hoorn, Bradley, Ukeles

Monday, February 18th, 2008

Ukeles

A message from your mother:

I’m sure that little scrap of paper was once very annoying. But that was no reason to lose track of it. It could be anywhere now. A gutter. A forest. It could be a peninsula in an island of trash.

Steve Bradley could have picked it up and shrinkwrapped it. He might have called you up to thank you for “contributing to his exhibition.” Or worse. Some artist could have just cleaned it up for you, leaving you laughing but feeling eight years old. Your little piece of paper might have been something Nico Van Hoorn picked up from 2002 to 2005 in his trashlog. Looks much nicer in the stark photos with the black background, yes? It could also have participated in any one of Mierle Laderman Ukeles maintenance pieces, doing anything from dancing with sanitation trucks to simply getting scrubbed off the street. Is Mierle Laderman Ukeles your maid? I didn’t think so. Next time keep track of your scraps.

Urban Waste Stream: Steven Siegel and Tim Gaudreau

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008

Steven Siegel

In the spirit of examining the castoffs, crap and carcinogens produced by the American Urban Environment, a la The Story of Stuff we’ve decided to take this week to showcase some artists who address the issue in their own work.

So, for instance, you’ve seen all of the shots of tractors pushing mounds of trash in landfills. Seagulls calling everywhere. Impressive in its own messy, big, depressing way, yes? Well, Steven Siegel takes similarly huge amounts of trash and makes quite a different statement. Elegant and humorous, his site-specific sculptures involve massive amounts of paper, shredded tires, aluminum and wood. These mounds can be found in the middle of forests, along gallery floors, or in public spaces and parks. We are instantly impressed by the sheer magnitude of stuff and its reincarnation as a thing with its own distinct presence.

For a more personal confrontation of waste, take a look at the work of Tim Gaudreau, whose pieces include an extensive self-portrait through items discarded, and a series of LOST and FOUND signs detailing habitats misplaced and six-pack rings recovered. To make sure they have your attention, Gaudreau’s works announce themselves with an alarm. A funny and startling way to examine our individual involvement in waste and litter.