Art and Environment (again!)

miwa koizumi, plastic water bottles, 2005
installation view at sawaguzo at Redux
(see number 3 below)

Sorry for the extreme lack of posts lately, but school's winding down, blah blah blah. Anyway, in honor of this week's Feet to the Fire Festival (happening this coming Saturday, May 10), I wanted to post a few different examples of "environmental art":

1. Here is a Dot Earth post about poetry and photography; the post also links to some paintings about biodiversity and cartoons about global warming.
2. Here's a link to Chris Jordan's photographs. I've been meaning to post about his work for a while, as per requests by various people (specifically ones named Jacob). Anyway, his work is great because it allows you to see the part and the whole at the same time. It helps you to better understand statistics (usually huge numbers) that can be hard to relate to. I actually went to a workshop (a Tuesday Lab with Eiko) on understanding numbers and statistics using art, and the thing I came away with is that you really need to come up with a way to personalize numbers and experience them bodily. Eiko's example was that at a 9-11 memorial, they read all the names of those who died (something like 3000 names) and it took 2 or 3 hours (I can't remember which). Then, every time she encountered a similar statistic, she was able to divide that number by 3000 and figure out how many hours it would take to recite the names. Anyway, I think an understanding numbers and other abstract concepts (which often go along with discussions of climate change and sustainability) is important, and art can help facilitate that understanding.
3. Here's a link to a post about Miwa Koizumi, an NYC-based artist who makes jellyfish and other sea creatures out of plastic bottles (she calls them PETs). The post is from the blog for the student forum I co-led this semester about Environmental Artwork. I would encourage you to check it out if you're interested in ways artists have engaged with the concepts of nature, environment, and sustainability. I'm hoping to continue contributing to the blog, but hey, obviously I'm not that great at updating.
4. If you're not too swamped with finals (or are staying around for Senior Week and have some free time...?) I strongly encourage you to check out Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art. I went last weekend and it was really great. It's at the Joseloff Gallery at the University of Hartford. The exhibition will be up until June 10. Also, fun fact: the exhibition announcement doubles as a pot for starter seeds...like, you can fold it up and grow some stuff in it. Free Soil's F.R.U.I.T. project is on display; it's an urban education campaign of sorts. Using fruit wrappers that explain where foods come from, "for Beyond Green, Free Soil will use oranges as a vehicle to explore the complex relationships that make up the worlds Food Systems." (that's from their website). My other favorite piece was a video by Allora & Calzadilla, called "Under Discussion." You can find it here. In it, a man rides a table with a motor affixed to it through various bays/other watery areas near Puerto Rico. The other video shown was of a man riding a motorcycle with a trumpet attached to the exhaust pipe. Though the situations sound somewhat ridiculous now that I've typed them, they're really lovely to watch. Both take the viewer on a journey through the Puerto Rican landscape and highlight (subtly) different aspects of the place. Anyway, I hope you get a chance to check it out.