Upcoming Lectures/Panels

ecoartspace NYC - amy lipton











September 24, 2009
Community Roundtable on Habitat for Artists Project
Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art
State University of New York - New Paltz

October 3, 2009
Q and A with Habitat for Artists Collective
Solar One (East River at 23rd St)
New York, NY

October 10, 2009
Strategies for Success in Challenging Times
International Sculpture Center Annual Conference
Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ


ecoartspace WEST - patricia watts











September 23, 2009
Art & Ecology: An International Perspective
Laney College, Oakland
EcoArt Matters

September 29, 2009
Art & Ecology: An International Perspective
School of Art and Design
San Jose State University, California
Tuesday Night Lecture Series

November 2, 2009
Art & Ecology: An International Perspective
Land Art: Art Nature Community
University of New Mexico

November 12th
Modesto Junior College
Civic Engagement Project (CEP)
Film and Lecture Series
Edward Burtynsky, Manufactured Landscapes

November 17, 2009
Art & Ecology in the Santa Monica Mountains
Culture in the Canyon: Chautauqua Series
Temescal Gateway Park, Pacific Palisades, California
Mountains Conservancy of the Santa Monica Mountains

November 24th, 2009
Hybrid Fields: Food and Art
Southern California Institute of Architecture
Community Design Program
Watts Cooking: Imagining an Accessible Food Infrastructure

January 28, 2010
Environmental Aesthetics: Artists Addressing Environmental Issues
Epiphany West 2010 Visualizing Sustainability Conference
Co-sponsored by Church Divinity School of the Pacific and
Center for the Arts, Religion and Education
Berkeley, California

Ecoartspace West: Report from Grand Canyon National Park – South Rim by Patricia Watts

Last month I was invited to participate on an artist selection panel for the Grand Canyon South Rim Artist-in-Residency Program. This AIR program is only a couple years old and was inspired by the North Rim program, which began six years ago and has placed traditional representational painters in residence. The new AIR coordinator for the South Rim program, Rene Westbrook, is a contemporary artist and member of The Caravan Project, which is a collaborative of artists who have performed mobile art shows inside and outside trailers since 1992. Westbrook was interested to bring a more diverse range of artistic media to the program this year, a goal that was apparently supported by the other panelists including a local artist, executive director of a chamber orchestra, a publications specialist for the park, and current artist in residence. Together we selected 12 artists (out of 62) who have been invited to come to the Grand Canyon between October 2009 and September 2010 and spend up to three weeks creating new work. Each of these artists will be asked to donate one piece inspired by the residency to become part of the NPS Collection.



Another important goal was to select artists who showed an interest in addressing one or all of the Park’s Interpretive Themes, including but not limited to: Water, Geology, Biology, Conservation, Inspiration, and Native American Connections. Westbrook felt that since recent programming at NPS has encouraged dialogue around the advocacy of environmental issues like climate change, water rights and indigenous people’s rights that it would be relevant to include more conceptual or content driven art that may have previously been considered too political. This is the new wave of Parks management, which I understand the superintendent at the Grand Canyon has embraced.

Of the 12 artists selected there were two landscape painters (Susan Klein and David Alexander), three photographers (Kim Henkel, Michael Miner and Leah Sobsey), a jeweler (Erica Stankwytch Bailey), a writer (Dana Wildsmith), a yodeler (Randy Erwin – Cowboy Randy), and four multimedia artists (Bridget Batch and Kevin Cooley, Andrew Demirjian, and Aaron Ximm). Kim Henkel proposed to do a pinhole photography workshop with visitors at the park and Leah Sobsey solar prints of plants, which looked like they would be a valuable addition to the NPS collection. And, believe it or not, I was quite taken with the potential of Cowboy Randy’s proposal to create new yodels that reflect the Park Themes! Bridget Batch and Kevin Cooley, a husband/wife collaboration proposed to engage the Native American population in a photo/film documentary, a very contemporary ethnographic portrait.

Of particular interest to me were two sound artists, Andrew Demirjian and Aaron Ximm, who included proposals to do audio postcards from the Grand Canyon. There is such potential to engage the elemental and architectural features at this site that these more conceptual artists, I believe, will be better able to actively engage a captive audience with temporal interventions in the landscape. Also, this more media driven work can also be experienced online for those who cannot make the trip to the “big ditch” as the locals call it. Both artists will be in residence during the peak tourist season at the Park next year.


Some interesting factoids about the Grand Canyon:

• Grand Canyon National Park is located in of one the cleanest remaining pockets of air in the United States and is a Class I area.
• Legislation passed in 1975 to enlarge Grand Canyon National Park contained the first-ever clause mandating the federal protection of “natural quiet and experience.”
• Although Grand Canyon reveals rocks ranging from 270 to 1,840 million (1.8 billion) years old, the landscape is relatively young, having been sculpted in just the last 5-6 million years.
• The vastness of its landscape—an average depth of 4,000 feet, width of 10-18 miles, and a length of 277 river miles—contains a seemingly infinite system of colorfully sculptured plateaus, mesas, buttes, cliffs, slopes, ridgelines, and side canyons.
• The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated Grand Canyon National Park as a World Heritage Site in 1979, recognizing it as a place of universal value under natural world heritage site criteria to be preserved as a part of the heritage of all peoples.

The South Rim National Park gets approximately 4.5 million visitors a year, mostly from Europe and Asia. It definitely felt like visiting a foreign country.


From Left to Right (AIR Jurors): Rene Westbrook, Burt Harclerode, Patricia Watts, Kim Buchheit, Richard Chalfant, and Tom Pittenger.
Art from Top to Bottom: Detail of book cover The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World by Bert Plantenga which includes Cowboy Randy, Solar print by Leah Sobsey, Pinhole photograph by Kim Henkel, Sound installation by Aaron Ximm (the walls are listening).

Artists Create Edible Gardens/Curated by Amy Lipton

UPDATE for Down to Earth: Artists Create Edible Landscapes opening September 12th. Artists: Joan Bankemper, Knox Cummin, Ann Rosenthal/Steffi Domike, Stacy Levy, Habitat for Artists (with Simon Draper, Jeff Baily, E Odin Cathcart, Cathy Lebovitz, Todd Sargood) and Susan Leibovitz Steinman. For more background on the exhibition please scroll down the blog page to the May 28th post for project descriptions. Also, click on images below to make them larger.




Three weeks since my last visit to see the progress of the artists' gardens in Philadelphia at the Schuylkill Center and the new growth was lush and overflowing. Philly has a warmer and more humid climate than where I live in the Hudson Valley, and I was shocked to see the rapid growth in comparison to my home garden that has produced very little in the way of veggies with the exception of cucumbers and lettuce (plants that don't mind wet and cold conditions). My tomato plants got early blight, but the red & yellow heirlooms planted in the American Roots Garden by Ann Rosenthal and Steffi Domike were healthy and delicious if not a bit overgrown! The rain barrel water collection system by Knox Cummin has done a great job, but on this visit the barrels seemed to be clogged and we had to resort to the hose off of the farmhouse. Ann did a kids' camp workshop in July at SCEE to create a series of art banners depicting the various plants that came out beautifully and are now hung on the tubing for the irrigation system above the garden.

Water issues have been the biggest area of troubleshooting during the course of these projects and the artists have all had to be ingenious at working out ways for the gardens to be watered in their absence. Urban Defense by Susan Leibovitz Steinman is being watered from the house spigot, five hundred feet away with a soaker hose and timer system installed by Susan's assistants Fern Gookin and Scott Torr from Philadelphia University's Sustainable Design Grad program. Since Susan lives in Berkeley, CA, maintaining her garden has had its logistical challenges. However, Susan has a great team in place and with added gardening expertise and help by her close friend Fredda London, a Philly resident - things are looking great. Many of the plants in both of these gardens are ready to harvest and will go to local organizations that distribute fresh produce to the needy.

Joan Bankemper's medicinal herb garden, Willa, was thriving and the soaker hose system she buried throughout her 7 chakra beds seemed to be in good working order. The tobacco plants in particular were enormous and had beautiful flowers, something I had never seen on these plants in fields that are not allowed to flower. In the photo to the left Joan is harvesting some flowering hyssop. There will be a complete list of all the herbs planted in each chakra and their medicinal benefits to those areas of the body available for the public at the opening.

Simon Draper and Todd Sargood of HFA were working when I arrived mid afternoon in the hot, sticky August weather. They looked wilted but happy. Todd was adding some recent art tiles as siding to the shed. These tiles have been painted by kids, campers at SCEE and from local schools. They will continue to make more art tiles to be added before the opening day. The 7 garden beds around the shed were tended, weeded, and in some cases re-planted, as the earlier part of this summer was rainy and somewhat cooler than normal. Not great conditions for seeds to thrive.

Stacy Levy's installation, Kept Out, consists of an enclosure of blue metal fencing that excludes deer from a section of the woods. I'm not sure if the deer are color blind - but her bright blue poles standing in the forest edge might also act as a deterent? Voracious and overabundant deer and their grazing results in fewer seedlings of native tree, shrub and herbaceous species. It will be interesting to watch this landscape over time to see what effect the exclosure will have. All of the gardens in Down to Earth have been protected by deer fencing but Stacy Levy's minimal poles, complex in their patterns and colorful in the landscape are an unusual choice and aestheticize the most functional aspect of growing edible food (for humans!)

This project has been a real learning process for all with many successes and some frustration, but the results are already worth the effort. The artists have met with challenges during this "garden growing art project" that they probably have not encountered before, but took them on with dedication. They have had to depend on many volunteers and deal with the unpredictability of weather, animals, insects and soil conditions. Like gardeners they have been willing to experiment and to cope with these inherent risks and lack of control, all for a temporal public art viewing experience.

Everyone will be back to finish up the first week of September in time for the opening day on the 12th. August 30th will be a volunteer day organized by Zoe Cohen and Rachel Dobkin, managers of the SCEE environmental art program. The gardens will be harvested, re-mulched, pruned and mowed around the edges to be ready for public viewing. A gallery exhibition related to all of the projects will be installed indoors at the Center. Stay tuned for a report then.

Rural Culture & Urban Arts: Terroir Wrap

After a three month run the Terroir exhibition in Marin County (Northern California), organized by ecoartspace west has closed. This indoor/outdoor exhibition included 28 Bay Area artists and several site-specific installations both indoor and outdoor. A few of the outdoor temporal works were already removed by the time of the closing reception. There are several posts on the Art at the Cheese Factory blog that capture the programs and artists included. Below are a few highlights and additional information.

Overall, it was a well attended exhibition with a high number of people who had not planned to see an art exhibition when they arrived to visit the Marin French Cheese Company. Of the 42 days the gallery was open to the public, attendance was approximately 70 persons per day. Outdoors there was high traffic flow, with up to 10,000 people over the three-month period. There was also a one-week residency, the very first at this site. And, a total of four events including an opening reception, curator’s tour & tasting, artist talk and closing reception. The owners of the cheese factory were closely involved and really appreciated the number of younger conceptual artists included. Our goal was to show work that visitors could relate to with regard to subject matter and that was a new aesthetic than they might expect to see in a local gallery (no landscape paintings or traditional sculpture). The consensus was that the works were engaging and that visitors were surprised to find conceptual art at their local gathering site.

Some highlights include:

Susan Leibovitz-Steinman
Land(e)scape (2009)
topsoil, rain and pond water all collected on the cheese factory grounds, and acrylic paint

Photo ©2009 Jeannie O'Connor





Philip Krohn with Paul Reffell
The Kindling (2009)
11’ X 8’ diameter
misc firewood (cypress, douglas fir, eucalyptus, monterey pine)










Mark Brest van Kempen
Lineaus Line, 2009
approximately 600 ft (500 tags)











Jessica Resmond
Jorge Bachman
Shipped: Global Terroir (2009)
58” X 130”
4 inkjet prints/sound component









Lewis de Soto
APPELLATION: Napa 4 (10.12.07)
K3 inks on paper
26" x 77.5” X 2"
Courtesy Brian Gross Fine Art, San Francisco


(at the top of the post):

Emily Payne Haven (2009) site-specific installation - clay, wax, linen thread

Report from Seattle Public Art Conference

ecoartspace participated in this year’s Americans for the Arts Public Art Network annual conference in Seattle (June 17-20, 2009), curating a Green Room workshop and also facilitating an afternoon roundtable session on selecting artists for “Green” public art projects. The theme of this year’s conference was Renewable Resources: Arts in Sustainable Communities.

Approximately 80 people attended the morning Green Room session rotating through 5 tables in 3 half hour sessions covering most aspects of greening the arts including Communications, Operations, Programs, Facilities, and Public Art. Ian Garrett, Executive Director of The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts (CSPA) and teacher of Sustainable Theater and Technology at CalArts (Valencia, CA), led the operations or office procedures sessions. Jennifer Orr, who is the green team leader for Bumbershoot: Seattle’s Music & Arts Festival, led the communications sessions. Michael Crowley, member of the Broadway Green Alliance in New York City led the facilities sessions along with one of the very first LEED attorney’s, Janet Kim Lin, with Bullivant Houser Bailey in Seattle. Michael wrote his award winning thesis in Arts Adminstration from Goucher College entitled Somewhere That’s Green: Environmental Stewardship in Performing Arts Organizations. Betsy Bostwick, Public art Manager for Clackamas County Arts Alliance and recent graduate of the Master’s program in Arts Administration from the University of Oregon (Eugene), led the public art sessions. Bostwick wrote her thesis on Going Green with Public Art and published an article for the Community Arts Network on Greening Public Art Policy in 2008. And, Patricia Watts with ecoartspace who led the programs sessions shared one of her most prolific exhibitions, Hybrid Fields, in terms of high community participation and engagement with a broad audience on issues of sustainability. This was a group show of artists addressing food issues both in the gallery and in the public sphere.

In the afternoon roundtable, a group of 20 artists and administrators discussed the artist selection process for LEED buildings and alternative transportation projects, led by artist and project manager Vaughn Bell with SDOT, Rebecca Ansert with the LA County Arts Commission, and again ecoartspace founder and west coast curator, Patricia Watts.

Overall the junior arts administrators (and some veteran administrators like Barbara Goldstein from San Jose who participated in the Green Room) were pleased that becoming sustainable was the thematic. And, being in Seattle we were surrounded by established public artists like Lorna Jordan, Buster Simpson, Dan Corson, and many others from the Pacific Northwest (Portland, OR) who have been creating sustainable artworks for years! However, the general feeling by most public artists was a real concern that if arts administrators are interested in greening everything from the selection process to what materials are being used to create works, that the focus is being taken off of the art. Many artists feel there are already so many limitations to doing public art that if they have to work in this theme or only use recycled materials, that they are not really creating ART. This is obviously debatable.

As of recent, funding has become stalled on many public art projects nationwide and everyone is sitting/waiting for stimulus funding to feed public art projects through transportation and water infrastructure projects. Public art programs that have already established an interest and built relationships with Environmental Services departments are poised to do some interesting projects in the coming years. A few exciting highly anticipated examples are the San Jose Water Pollution Control Plant, Brightwater Wastewater Treatment Facility, and the City of Ventura’s Harbor Wetland's Project. And, in Canada, A Public Art Plan for the Expressive Potential of Utility Infrastructure.

In summary, it appears the time for public art that addresses environmental issues has finally arrived and artists who have been doing ecological art or sustainable art will have a better leg to stand on when applying for these more integrated and functional projects. Let's keep our finger's crossed. And, give special thanks to artists like Buster Simpson who won this year's Public Art Award and who paved the way for all of us.

Dar Williams benefit concert 6/27/09

The first ecoartspace live concert and fundraiser took place this past Saturday. Singer/songwriter Dar Williams gave a solo acoustic guitar concert at the McKenna Theater at the SUNY New Paltz campus - it was a thrilling evening and the audience gave Dar a very welcome reception, they were all big fans. See Dar's blog post on the event HERE.

The concert coincided with a museum exhibition titled Ecotones and Transition Zones at the Dorsky Museum, housed in the same building with the McKenna Theater. Museum curator Brian Wallace describes the exhibition in this way, "New Paltz is an ecotone, a place where overlapping natural and social ecologies—the river and the mountains, the cosmopolitan and the rural—exist in a fragile tension. The artworks and art historical narratives associated with this region suggest the great opportunities (and responsibilities) that area artists, residents, and visitors have to visualize and act upon opportunities to contribute to a better world." The museum stayed open late that evening so that concert goers could stroll through the galleries before the show, it was a successful crossover event.

Included in the exhibition is a work by Simon Draper's Collective, Habitat for Artists (or HFA, which recently had an exhibition at the ecoartspace NYC project room). The Collective includes 15 artists -give or take- as the number changes with each project. There are 3 Habitats currently installed in New Paltz, one on campus, one on Main Street and the third (and most beautiful site IMHO) at Historic Hugenot Street. All of the Habitats have artist residency projects on-going for the duration of the exhibition.

Dar Williams was one of the original HFA members from the first exhibition last summer in Beacon, NY, where she turned her own Habitat into a writing space. She became interested in the bigger picture cause behind the HFA with her interest in recycling, sustainability, and artist's need for space, and decided to give this benefit concert to help ecoartspace and HFA's work continue.

The concert lasted for 2 hours with an opening act by Nick Panasevich who played some cool Randy Newman-esque piano tunes and also a guitar piece. Dar sang for an hour and a half, one great song after the next. Her set list included (The Ocean, The Beauty of the Rain, Spring Street, Midnight Radio, Book of Love, Buzzer, Iowa, The Babysitter's Here, You Are Everyone, Holly Tree), and my personal favorites, Mercy of the Fallen and Hudson, (see complete Hudson lyrics BELOW). Dar is one of those gifted musicians with a beautiful voice, moving lyrics, well crafted songs, great guitar playing AND a huge generous spirit. It was a privilege to work with her.

If we're lucky we feel our lives know when the next scene arrives so often we start in the middle and work our way out we go to some grey sky diner for eggs and toast New York Times or the New York Post then we take a ride through the valley of the shadow of death but even for us New Yorkers, there's a time in every day the river takes our breath away And the Hudson, it holds the life we thought we did it on our own The river roads collect the tolls for the passage of our souls through silence, over woods, through flowers and snow and past the George Washington Bridge, down from the trails of Breakneck Ridge, the river's ancient path is sacred and slow And as it swings through Harlem, it's every shade of blue into the city of the new brand new And the Hudson, it holds the life we thought we did it on our own I thought I had no sense of place or past time was too slow, but then too fast the river takes us home at last Where and when does the memory take hold, mountain range in the Autumn cold and I thought West Point was Camelot in the spring. If you're lucky you'll find something that reflects you, helps you feel your life protects you, cradles you and connects you to everything. This whole life I remember as they begged them to itself never turn me into someone else And the Hudson, it holds the life we thought we did it on our own And the Hudson, holds the life we thought we did it on our own.

Down to Earth at the Schuylkill Center

My current curatorial project Down to Earth: Artists Create Edible Landscapes is underway at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education (SCEE) in Philadelphia, a show with 6 artists or artist teams, each creating a work about sustainable agriculture. The show takes place at a section of SCEE's 3oo-plus acre site called Brolo Farm, complete with an abandoned farm house, barn, and farm fields that have not been actively used for decades. The overall site of the Schuylkill Center is the largest privately-owned open space area within the city limits of Philadelphia - featuring a variety of habitats including woodlands, meadows, five teaching ponds and wetlands. In addition, there are four miles of hiking trails and 7 sculpture/shelters from a current exhibition titled Gimme Shelter, commissioned by SCEE's environmental art program.

The artists in Down to Earth are Joan Bankemper (NYC) who is creating a new version of her Medicinal Herb Garden, titled Willa, a large-scale garden planted in the form of an archaic fertility figure; Knox Cummin (Phila., PA) is building a rain water collection sculpture which contains a "room" garden by Ann Rosenthal and Steffi Domike (Pittsburgh, PA) titled An American Roots Garden, planted with herbs and vegetable indigenous to Native Americans such as squash, corn and beans; Simon Draper and the Habitat For Artists Collective including Todd Sargood and E Odin Cathcart (Hudson Valley, NY) have begun work on Drawn from the Garden, an art studio, potting shed, and 7 raised bed gardens, 2 of which local artists and school groups have been invited to adopt. Stacy Levy (Spring Mills, PA) will create a work titled Kept Out, a deer exclosure built partially in woodlands and partially in fields as an experiment of sorts to see what will grow when the deer are absent. Last but not least is Susan Steinman's (S.F., CA) Urban Defense, a permaculture apple orchard housed within a built structure based on the pentagon form that the seeds make when you look inside a sliced apple.

I spent 5 days at the site last week, helping the artists get started, it was warm and sunny but low humidity, unusual for Philly but great working conditions. I'm pleased to see these projects start to take shape after several months of research on the part of the artists and discussion and planning with myself and the SCEE staff. The maintenance requirements of these living artworks after the planting (watering, weeding and eventual harvesting) are not to be underestimated. Ann and Steffi's American Roots, will benefit from the rainwater being collected above and a hose system running through the beds, but the watering for the other gardens has not been completely resolved other than running a long hose from the farm house to the fields.

Creating "gardens as art" requires lots of advance planning, time in the field with the appropriate tools, ammending the existing soil, tons of compost - and plain old hard labor. Isn't that always the case working outdoors? Real farmers deserve our utmost respect and this show aims to draw connections between art (culture) and working the land (cultivation). In conjunction with this exhibition The Schuylkill Center will soon be selling fresh produce from it's own "Market Garden". They have partnered with Urban Girls Produce (UGP) to begin growing a variety of organic fruits and vegetables, dedicating 1 ½ acres of their site for food production. UGB will plant, tend, and harvest all season to bring fresh produce to the Philadelphia market as well as having a weekly produce stand at Brolo Farm near the artists' sites.

The rewards of presenting Down to Earth will be great as the artist's gardens start growing (opening September 12th) and especially when we enjoy a harvest meal with the public on October 25th.

Sonja Hinrichsen in residence at the Marin French Cheese Company (Art at the Cheese Factory), Northern California June 1-6th

Bay Area artist Sonja Hinrichsen will be in residence at the the cheese factory for the first week of June to create a site-specific installation based on previous work where she sews words on leaves of plants and trees which reflect the place. She will also give a presentation of this site work and other residency projects on Saturday, June 6th at Noon in the gallery.

Hinrichsen has studied with Joan Jonas in Germany and completed her MFA in New Genres at the San Francisco Art Institute. She has performed over twenty artist residencies internationally including the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming; Art Farm in Nebraska; and Djerassi in Woodside, California. Outside the USA she has done several residencies in Poland, Estonia, Holland, Slovakia and Spain.

Most recently Hinrichsen created snow drawings for a residency at Anderson Ranch in Colorado. For more details about Art at the Cheese Factory and recent programs go to http://www.artatthecheesefactory.blogspot.com

Recent talks and presentations

On Saturday April 25th Chris Neidl of Solar One gave a presentation at ecoartspace NYC on solar energy. His talk focused on NYC and why the outer boroughs (in particular Queens and L.I.C.) pose a good prospect for solar panels (PV), providing many flat rooftops that are not shaded by tall buildings. His comprehensive lecture explained the current energy situation in NY in terms of the history of power plants, the energy grid structure, why NYC is susceptible to power failures and why solar energy could mitigate many of the existing problems. Energy use skyrockets in NYC during peak summer usage (prolonged hours of A/C use) which is not coincidentally the same time period that solar panels would kick in to provide the most benefit. Chris also discussed current energy legislation in NY State, how we as individuals can influence policy decisions (get active), cost benefit analysis/financial incentives for PV use and comparisons to other countries (Germany, Japan, Spain, Italy in that order) and U.S. states most using solar power (CA, AZ, NJ, NY). Not surprisingly in states where conventional power is cheapest - the incentive for using solar power is low, but NY State has the highest electricity costs in the country by a long shot.

On April 16th, along with co-curator and artist Joy Episalla, I gave a gallery tour of the "out of the blue" exhibition at Bergen College to a large group of art department students. The exhibition's focus was on weather, atmosphere and geological conditions, both literally and metaphorically. We discussed the idea of how artists create their own weather conditions and even "storms" in terms of their influence upon one another individually and as a group such as in this exhibition. While walking around the gallery during the tour, I pointed out some uncanny relationships between the art works that were mostly unintentional. I mentioned that without seeing their works at the same time in this show, I would not have realized before the possible influence of Robert Smithson on Felix Gonzales Torres for example, but Smithson's photograph of "Glue Pour" 1970 and Gonzales-Torres bright blue candy wrappers on the floor, Untitled, (Revenge) 1991, begged comparison in terms of ideas related to fluidity, entropy and erosion over time.

On April 6th, I was on a panel at the University of Albany Art Museum in conjunction with Jason Middlebrook's exhibition and installation , Live with Less which explores the relationship between nature and human consumption.

Middlebrook who make paintings, drawings, sculpture, and outdoor public works often uses recyclable materials to draw attention to larger social issues. Live with Less is an expression of Middlebrook’s artistic and environmental goal to see beyond the discarded nature of these materials and to re-imagine them as something beautiful and useful. He literally brings wastefulness and the over consumption of contemporary living to new heights in a massive 35-foot tower made from several tons of recycled cardboard. The cardboard, collected on campus over a two-month period, was stacked and layered from floor to ceiling creating visual stratifications analogous to the layers of a landfill.

The panel discussion titled, Responsive Art: Making Work in the Environment was moderated by Rebecca Wolff, editor at Fence Books and also included Jason Middlebrook and critic/poet Francis Richard who writes for Cabinet and Artforum. Richard also organized an exhibition and accompanying monograph titled Odd Lots: Revisiting Gordon Matta-Clark’s “Fake Estates.” I spoke about the fact that as a former sculpture park director and curator I’ve worked with many artists on site specific works outdoors, but one thing that is often not addressed by artists and art institutions is maintenance and long term care. As mundane as this might sound it’s really a very important component of making site specific work that isn't taken into consideration. What happens to the work 2 weeks or 6 months or 6 years later? What are the effects on the art of weather over time and has that been considered?

Since Francis Richard is a scholar on the work of Gordon Matta Clark we spoke quite a bit about his work and how today it would be difficult if not impossible to do his urban based interventions in abandoned buildings in U.S cities. We also spoke at great length about Robert Smithson. I stated that generally speaking Land and Earthworks artists in the 1970’s were not what we today call “site-sensitive” - meaning they worked in remote and vast stretches of open space with land-moving equipment, bulldozers, etc... with little or no regard to the natural environment. Contemporary artists working outdoors today are usually more respectful of the natural world and take into account the attention and sensitivity that is needed when making an artwork on the land.

Lastly – I mentioned that not all artists are well suited to working outdoors, site-specifically (and don’t have to be) - but working with Jason Middlebrook last summer at Art Omi was one of my better experiences. Unlike many artists who came for the day, having created their works off site in the studio and then placed them in the woods - Jason spent time looking, and searched out the right site which nature graciously provided him with. He found a fallen tree suspended in the pond. Jason worked on site for 2 weeks, planed the tree in half, created a painted bench complete with binoculars for viewing aquatic life and a stairway out of the wood for easy access to reach the pond.

On Weds April 29th, I attended a lecture by Neal R. Peirce hosted by The Trust for Public Land. Peirce spoke eloquently about his new book, Century of the City, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. By 2050, the United Nations projects, almost three-quarters of the world's population will call urban areas home. To help manage and plan for this accelerating urbanization, the Rockefeller Foundation convened an exceptional group of urbanists--leading policy makers and government officials, finance experts, and urban researchers for a Global Urban Summit at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center. This book shares their diverse perspectives, creative approaches, and urgent agenda for harnessing the vast opportunities of urbanization for a better world.

Rising Tide Conference REPORT

I was only able to attend one day of the three day conference last weekend in the Bay Area. Entitled Rising Tide, organized by Kim Anno, and jointly hosted by California College of the Arts, San Francisco, and Stanford University, there was a diverse mix of planning, art history, contemporary art, and design/technology.

A few highlights from the early morning session entitled Remaking/Reconceiving: I learned about Form Based Zoning Codes where the public participates in a greater way to decide what goes where in communities/cities. And, I was reminded by Amy Franceschini of the great work by former Super Mayor of Bogata, Enrique Penalosa, who encouraged performance based transformations in sustainability (like using mimes to direct traffic). Here is a short video on his vision for NYC presented last summer:

In the next session, Bonnie Sherk (creator of The Farm), moderated a panel called Material Culture Sustainability. Panel description: What are new materials that artists/designer/architects are experimenting with? What materials have impacts on which industries? Where are the holes in research? What is sustainable business? How is culture sustainable? Stephanie Syjuco presented her Counterfeit Crochet handbags; Lynda Grose presented the work of young designers doing Slow Fashion in her program at Sustainable Fashion Design program at CAA. And, Banny Bannerjee, Director of the Stanford Design program, talked about how human's are always trying to defy nature, stretch its limits, mimic nature, refer to nature, flirt with nature, evoke nature. He had a great saying: Doing Things Right, Doing the Right Things.

After lunch we got a dose of "Green Capitalism" with Amy Berk presenting her work TWCDC (Together We Can Defeat Capitalism). She showed several projects where they used signage to express anti-capitalist views like a road sign that said "Stock Market Crash Ahead" from 2000; "Capitalism Stops at Nothing" at a BART Station; and STOP BUS(H) in the bus lane in Oakland. She also presented her work bed-in-for-peace project, which she conceived in 2001 in Australia (based on Yoko Ono and John Lennon's performance). Basically her position was that true revolution is guided by true feelings of LOVE . . . . . and she proves this by driving around San Francisco in a "FRYBRID" car that runs on moonshine and represents the ethos of Marx (Capitalist production only develops the social process of production by simultaneously underminding the original process of all wealth, the soil and the worker). Next on this panel was Simon Sadler who made some great links with Steward Brand/Whole Earth Catalogue, Buckminster Fuller (design is a scientific study not an aesthetic one), and "soft tech" (the limits to growth, and small is beautiful).

In the following session entitled Futures, Amy Balkin gave a beautiful presentation on her Air Park project. She outlined how she researched carbon credits and set up her work, presenting basically signage about her conceptual dealings around who owns the air. A description of the project: Public Smog is a public park in the atmosphere that fluctuates in location and scale. Built through financial, legal, or political activities, Public Smog is subject to prevailing winds and the long-range transport of aerosols and gases. When built through the economic mechanism of emissions trading, the park opens above the region where offsets are purchased and withheld from use. Public Smog first opened briefly to the public during 2004 above California's South Coast Air Quality Management District, and was open over the European Union through 2008. Balkin is now working on opening the park again in West Africa.

In the final panel of the day Shelia Kennedy showed her portable light project, which is going to receive a big award in May (she couldn't tell us which), maybe the Fuller Challenge? and David Buuck shared about his project on Treasure Island in San Francisco, a tour called "Barge" looking at the paranoid landscapes of post industrial real estate.

There was a great gathering of people and it was a pleasure to finally meet Ian Garrett and see Miranda Wright again, both from Los Angeles with the Center for Sustainable Practices in the Arts who drove up for the conference.

For those of you who attended Friday and Sunday's presentations, please comment and fill us in.

SEE COMMENTS BELOW:

Beach Plastic said...

After Sheila Kennedy’s inspiring keynote, conference attendees proceeded to the Cummings Art Building for an opening reception for “Disposable Truths”, an art exhibition by Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang, a collaborative team, who combine their love of nature with their interest in science to produce an on-going series of art works about the oceans and the environment. Since 1999 they have been collecting beach plastic from Kehoe Beach in the Point Reyes National Seashore then shaping it into artworks and installations. From that one beach they have collected almost 2 tons of plastic, which has washed ashore from as far away as Asia and as close to home as the San Francisco Bay.

For the Rising Tide Conference, to demonstrate the ubiquity of plastic waste in our oceans, they configured their collection of plastic detritus into a series of prints that represent the aesthetic strategy of counting and categories.

There was also a “living room” arrangement with a chair, table, and lamp covered with beach plastic. On the floor was a square of white beach plastic with a hula-hoop rug with multi-colored plastic.

National Geographic’s new blog featured their Rising Tide exhibition as their lead Earth Day story. http://blogs.ngm.com/blog_central/2009/04/these-sculptures-are-all-washed-up.html#more

April 26, 2009 7:51 PM

Email from Aline Mare: Sunday April 19th, 2009

Sunday's presentations were quite inspiring. Alberto Moreno from the
Seri Tribe of Mexico directs a sustainable indigenous aquaculture
project in partnership with the Comcaac Nation and was an incredibly
articulate advocate for his tribe's inspired attempt to bridge their
relation to the sea that surrounds their environment, working with
mussels, oysters and active attempts to protect the endangered turtles
sea turtles of Mexico.

Robert Dawson, a well known local, whose wonderful photographs take a
hard look at the West's relationship to water was deep and poignant in
his presentation which included world wide visions of humankind's
changing connections to an ecology, shot while traveling through Viet
Nam and India.

Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang presented together and they
described their collaborative process as an alchemical one of making
dross into gold. Making art of trash they have found and categorized
over ten years from Kehoe Beach in Pt Reyes has become a shared
passion, which they shared with a witty humor mixed with political
environmental wisdom

Kim Anno's closing speech rounded up the many disparate elements and
voices of the past several days to a shared voice of passion and
urgency.

All in all it was a deep and meaningful morning- albeit in a dark room
on an unbelievable beautiful day!