In Going Up: Climate Change + Philadelphia, eight artists from around the country – Daniel Crawford, Lorrie Fredette, Jim Frazer, Eve Mosher, Jill Pelto, Kaitlin Pomerantz and John Heron, and Michelle Wilson – explore the future of a hotter, wetter Philadelphia. Several of the artists use data as a point of departure, and others suggest imaginative ways of thinking about problems and solutions, even considering the responsibility of art to reduce its own carbon footprint. The gallery contains artwork made for indoor display as well as pieces that document social practice or conceptual art that happened outside the gallery or studio, less focused on the product than the process. Many help us to notice our surroundings more closely, observing the small and incremental changes around us that track global change. Going Up opened on September 24th at the Schuylkill Center, and runs through December 2016. Artist duo Kaitlin Pomerantz & John Heron explored waste and water pollution, presenting an imaginative way to think
Sculpture
Sculpting Creatures from the Sea
The edges of the earth must be explored by bike… I jump on my bicycle fitted with a trailer and head towards the beach of Terre Neuve in Camargue in order to recharge my batteries, read, and unearth creatures hidden in the deposits from the sea. Like the scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, unending beaches, dunes, meandering canals, and ponds come together in the first light of dawn to reveal the preserved and wild Camargue. With the sun’s first rays, the quietness of the night is disturbed by the mistral wind which whips sand on bare legs and face. Blown by the wind, the crop is ready to be harvested from the wide flat expanse. Plastic rubbish, half buried bottles, and polystyrene fragments entwined with marran grass both occupy and are hidden in that place. The landscape is striking, buried under great waves of sand where the water rushes during storms. Everything the sea has been carrying in its bowels for days seems to be stored there. An eclectic collection of objects weathered by wind
Climate Journeys Part II: Sailing the Southeastern U.S. and the Caribbean
I live in nature. Surrounded by it, I experience every subtle shift and change. I witness an amazing array of species as they inhabit the same place, and I am exactly where I want to be. I never could have predicted this would be my life. I never thought I’d give up my studio, my workshop, all my tools and supplies. I loved being a full time studio artist. But at some point, as an environmental artist, it wasn’t enough. As my ideas grew, the studio felt too confined, too removed, so isolated and incapable of adequately experiencing and expressing (incubating and containing) what I needed to say. Being more visual than verbal, that’s really what art is to me; another means of expressing a concept or idea. Having sold the bulk of our possessions, my studio now fits in eight small drawers and paints live in a tiny bin. The sailboat is impossible to keep tidy and organized, and mold is a constant problem. But when I step
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Teresa Posyniak’s Beautiful Losers
Teresa Posyniak is a painter and sculptor best known for her work with encaustic, using hot beeswax to create rich, sensual surfaces that incorporate textures, drippings, splatters and layers of tinted, glowing colors. She is also an artist exploring climate change issues in Calgary, Alberta – a city that boast over 100 energy companies, mostly in the oil and gas industry. One of the fasted growing economy in Canada, with the tar sands literally in its backyard, Calgary does not play well with those who criticize its economy’s main driver. Yet artists still find a way to make their voices heard. Note: The photos included in this post are studio shots of works in progress that will become part of Beautiful Losers: My Carbon Sink Muses. Each photo is a detail of a much larger installation. There will be at least 9 columns in total. Tree forms will number about a dozen. Bleached Forest will be one much larger piece with many more elements. You’ve provided this blog with a
Connecting Earth and Art
Susan Hoenig is a painter and sculptor whose work is deeply connected to the spiritual aspect of nature – the mysterious and intangible part of
Kinetic Sculpture
Kinetic sculptor Anthony Howe probably doesn’t consider himself a “climate change artist”. But as of today, I have officially added
Waiting for Climate Change
Galician street artist Isaac Cordal has nailed it. Perfectly, precisely, poetically, politically: Passivity. We, the collective we, seem to be
International Women’s Day/Month 2014
With March being #IWD month, I’ve spent several days scouring the internet for inspiring stories of creative women using their art to raise awareness about climate change. Here are two videos — one from the west coast, one from the east coast — which highlight the important contribution that women artists are making to the global climate change conversation. Australian Margaret Wertheim’s amazing TED talk describes the global hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef (CCR) project which she and her twin sister Christine created and curate through their Institute For Figuring (IFF) in Los Angeles, California. The CCR is an ongoing, experimental, participative feminine handicraft project that re-creates coral reefs using the technique of “hyperbolic crochet“. Below are two images from the IFF’s Crochet Coral Reef website, reprinted here with permission: According to the IFF website, this unique fiber arts project is “the nexus of maths, handicrafts, environmentalism, community art, feminism and science” and, simultaneously, “a testimony to the disappearing wonders of the marine world” due to climate change,
Dare to Trust
Mike Cook is a sculptor who is passionate about recycled metal. After a lifetime working in the public and private sectors, where, among other things, he commissioned public art for the Portland Development Commission and managed the corporate art program at Mentor Graphics, he is now devoting his retirement to making his own art. His sculpture has been shown on the North Coast at CART’M Recycling’s Trash Bash, CBAA Green/Verde, Shadow and Light, and Clatsop CC Student 3D. I asked Mike to talk a little bit about his inspiration, his process, and why artists should address climate change. What inspired you to start working with recycled metals? When I was little, our Detroit home and yard was very tidy. But we looked out into Mr. Miller’s yard strewn with junk metal. My mom would say, “Just look at your room. You don’t want to grow up like Mr. Miller, do you?” I guess I did. Detroit itself had its influences: Iron Country,
