Monthly Archives: February 2011

H20: The Art of Conservation

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This post comes to you from Green Public Art

H20: The Art of Conservation

May 6 – November 12, 2011

at The Water Conservation Garden

12122 Cuyamaca College Drive West, El Cajon, CA 92019

This unique exhibition, curated by Green Public Art, offers San Diego homeowners an artistic alternative to incorporate water conservation into their own garden spaces. The exhibition challenges fourteen established and emerging San Diego artists to reflect on water conservation, to consider the natural context in which the artwork is being created and to explore working with recycled, re-purposed or non-traditional materials. This group exhibition, hosted by the San Diego Fine Art Society, will include art works that are an aesthetic manifestation of water conservation, providing another lens with which to view our role in Southern California’s efforts to act sustainably, conserve energy and preserve natural habitats.

ARTISTS scheduled to participate in the exhibition include: Dia Bassett, Bociek & Bociek, Lea de Wit, Rebecca Goodman, Matthew Hebert, Terri Hughes-Oelrich, Miki Iwasaki, Benjamin Lavender, Omar Lopez, Collective Magpie, Adam John Manley, Christopher Puzio, Fritize Urquhart and Ruth Wallen.

ABOUT THE WATER CONSERVATION GARDEN: The Water Conservation Garden has nearly five acres of displays that showcase water conservation through a series of beautiful themed gardens, such as a native plant garden and a vegetable garden, as well as how-to displays such as mulch and irrigation exhibits. Admission is free, and the Garden can be viewed on a self-guided tour, or through one of their programs. Located at 12122 Cuyamaca College Drive West, El Cajon, CA 92019.

ABOUT SAN DIEGO FINE ART SOCIETY: San Diego Fine Art Society (SDFAS) is strengthening the art pulse of the community through education and collaboration. By removing barriers and building bridges, SDFAS is helping San Diego reach its potential as a top arts destination in the country. Its mission is to strengthen the art pulse of the community through education and collaboration.

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Rebecca Ansert, founder of Green Public Art, is an art consultant who specializes in artist solicitation, artist selection, and public art project management for both private and public agencies. She is a graduate of the master’s degree program in Public Art Studies at the University of Southern California and has a unique interest in how art can demonstrate green processes or utilize green design theories and techniques in LEED certified buildings.

Green Public Art is a Los Angeles-based consultancy that was founded in 2009 in an effort to advance the conversation of public art’s role in green building. The consultancy specializes in public art project development and management, artist solicitation and selection, creative community involvement and knowledge of LEED building requirements. Green Public Art also works with emerging and mid-career studio artists to demystify the public art process. The consultancy acts as a resource for artists to receive one-on-one consultation before, during, and after applying for a public art project.
Go to Green Public Art

Creative Review – What does a ton of CO2 look like?

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BIG VORTEX is the idea of Berlin-based artists realities:united. Waste gases will leave the chimney of the plant (which will turn waste into energy) as revolving gas clouds in the shape of smoke rings. The rings become visible due to the condensation of water in the flue gases as they slowly rise and cool, before resolving into the air. The rings produced in this way will, the artists estimate, be 30 metres in diameter and three metres thick and “constitute exactly one ton of fossil carbon dioxide, which is added to the atmosphere”. “[In] this way the rather abstract pollution aspect gets somewhat more graspable and understandable, something you can see and relate to,” the artists say.

via Creative Review – What does a ton of CO2 look like?.

Growing Communities pick-up point in the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden

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Sustainability embodies many facets; entwined in the common strands of energy and water efficiency and cutting carbon emissions sits food. As a nation a lot of the food we consume is non-seasonal and has to be imported. This has a tremendous impact on the environment through transportation pollution from increased food miles. We could easily make changes to our eating habits and more carefully choose the foods we eat to include more fresh locally produced seasonal produce. Making this change would have many benefits, such as supporting the local economy, reducing food miles and therefore environmental damage, involving local community groups in producing the food, and encouraging healthy eating.

In Hackney, this change is made easier for you by the work that Growing Communities does. It is a social enterprise which runs community-led box schemes that build community-led alternatives to the current damaging food system. In short, community groups grow vegetables which are delivered in boxes to various pick-up points in Hackney which you then go and collect. How does this work? You choose the size of your box, you place a standing order, and this guarantees you a box of fresh vegetables each week! This is a fantastic idea which means you are eating seasonal locally produced food, from carrots to cucumbers and leeks to beetroot, and lies at the core of the importance of sustainability.

We would like to know your thoughts of this scheme and whether you would use a Growing Communities pick-up point in the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden.

If you would like to know more about the scheme or to place an order, click on the link below:
http://www.growingcommunities.org/organic-box-scheme/pick-up-points/

If you are interested in a possible pick up point in the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden, please email: boxscheme@growingcommunities.org

Below is a link to the Eastern Curve garden where you could soon be collecting your veg boxes from!
http://www.dalstongarden.com/

Go to Arcola Energy

Mediterranee / e-flux

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“Méditerranée”
20 November 2010 – 20 May 2012

www.oceano.mc

The Oceanographic Museum unveils a site-specific commission by Huang Yong Ping as part of a major exhibition dedicated to the Mediterranean Sea
The Oceanographic Museum in Monaco hosts a unique exhibition dedicated to the Mediterranean Sea, bringing together contemporary art and science. The exhibition presents a monumental installation by the celebrated Sino-French artist Huang Yong Ping and features an exceptional collection of maritime objects that illustrate the rich biodiversity of the Sea. The exhibition, which is on view from 20 November 2010 to 20 May 2012, is presented with the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco.
Huang Yong Ping’s 25 metre installation, “Wu Zei”, is a site specific commission for the Museum’s Salon d’honneur and alludes to the 9 metre octopus from the Museum’s collection that is exhibited on the floor above (1st Floor).

“Wu Zei”, a gigantic hybrid animal—an octopus and a cuttlefish—is inspired by the sea and refers to the maritime disasters caused by man. While its head is suspended around the Medusa chandelier, designed by the German biologist, philosopher and free thinker Ernst Haeckel, its tentacles invade the gallery space. One of the tentacles circles around the column, another stretches out towards the first room of the exhibition, and others reach out towards the sea and the statue of Prince Albert I.

The hybrid animal’s head is red like that of an octopus; its tentacles are black like those of a cuttlefish. One of the tentacles looks set to suck in, like a vacuum cleaner, the different objects and blackened animals lying on the floor.

Wu Zei’s body and tentacles are made of a flexible material around a metal frame. The bulb-like head is slightly transparent to allow for the light of the chandelier to shine through in the evening.

By calling his installation “Wu Zei”, Huang Yong Ping creates ambiguity in the meaning of his work. The title “Wu Zei” (乌贼) is the Chinese name for a cuttlefish. “Wu” (乌) is the character for the colour black and “Zei” (è´¼) is the symbol for stealing. Huang Yong Ping plays with language and semiology juxtaposing cuttlefish ink to oil spill and corruption to regeneration.

The Mediterranean is a major reservoir for the world’s biodiversity. The increasing urbanization of the coast, overfishing, exploitation of the natural resources, proliferation of invasive species, maritime transport and pollution of different kinds such as toxic waste are daily dangers facing the Mediterranean Sea and can lead to biodiversity impoverishment, with irredeemable cultural, economic and ecological consequences.

“Méditerranée” is accompanied by an illustrated book, produced by the Oceanographic Institute, Albert 1st Foundation, Prince of Monaco and published by Les Editions Rocher.

An artist’s book is co-edited by Galerie kamel mennour and the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco including a text by Jessica Morgan, Daskalopoulos Curator International Art at the Tate.

Huang Yong Ping: Biography

Born in 1954, Huang Yong Ping participated in the seminal exhibition “Magiciens de la Terre” at Centre Pompidou, Paris in 1989, and represented France at the 1999 Venice Biennale. In 2006, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis organized and premiered his retrospective “House of Oracles,” which travelled to Mass MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts; Vancouver Art Gallery; and Ullens Center, Beijing. Other solo exhibitions include: CCA Kitakyushu, Japan; De Appel, Amsterdam; Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris; Atelier d’Artistes de la Ville de Marseille; Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo; Barbican Art Gallery, London; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; and Musée des Beaux Arts, Paris. In 2007, Huang Yong Ping participated in the exhibition “Why Sculpture, Why Here?” at the Tate Modern, London.

Huang Yong Ping is represented by Galerie kamel mennour, Paris, and Gladstone Gallery, New York.

For further information, please contact:

Roya Nasser/Maïwenn Walter
Roya Nasser Communication
rn@royanasser.com
Tel : + 33 (0) 1 42 71 25 46
Mobile : + 33 (0) 6 24 97 72 29

Pauline Herouan
Institut océanographique,
Fondation Albert 1er, Prince de Monaco
p.herouan@oceano.mc
Tel +377 93 15 36 39 /+ 33 (0) 6 27 33 71 6

via Mediterranee / e-flux.

Slouching Towards Yucca Mountain

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This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

So you want to make radical work about radiation waste, for example, and whilst you write grant applications, you also want to build interest around the work, and avoid reliance on ‘committees’ effectively giving you permission to make the work by waiting for a grant to be approved.  You are an artist first and fund-raising is a task, not an occupation.

Yucca Mountain Glow, Eve Andrée Laramée, Digital Print Archival Ink/Paper

Slouching Towards Yucca Mountain, a video installation by Eve Andrée Laramée – United States Artists – Great art forms here.

This is the second really interesting project which a US-based artist has brought to my attention through the crowd-source fund-raising mechanism of UnitedStatesArtists (the other one was Suzanne Lacy’s The Performing Archive).  These are projects where the support is in the form of publicity, and sometimes match-funding.  (UnitedStatesArtists also offer Fellowships to selected artists.)  I suspect that to benefit from this site you still have to apply and in this case the money comes from your own list of contacts.

The UnitedStatesArtists web site says a few of interesting things,

All donations simultaneously support artists’ projects and the nonprofit mission of USA. The site is built on a joint fundraising model: 81% of every dollar pledged goes directly to the artist’s project, and 19% supports USA’s programs for artists and the site’s administration.

But it also says,

United States Artists has created a structure to identify America’s finest artists and to grant money to them in an efficient manner. Thanks to the generosity of its founders, USA’s operating expenses are fully funded for the next five years. This means 100% of donor contributions are directed to the artists we support.

It also says,

Our horizon line is not three, five, or 25 years, but rather 100 years and beyond. We are building a program that is privately funded, prestigious, and permanently endowed.

And it says,

Historically, public support for the arts and artists is unstable and unreliable; therefore USA will accept only private contributions.

And it doesn’t say,

by ‘private’ they mean individuals and corporations (so it is clear that Ford is a major contributor, but the other corporations are not clear.  Corporations should be explicit and some ethical limitations should be set).

Eve’s project is excellent and you really ought to support it: even $25 makes a difference.

No fund-raising is without hard work.  This is another approach to the problem.  It does make it more personal rather than remote and bureaucratic.  I do want this project to happen, and I did want Suzanne Lacy’s to happen, so I did contribute.  Art may belong to a ‘gift’ culture, but where does the gift come from?

ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.

It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.

Go to EcoArtScotland

Greening Western Queens Fund | North Star Fund

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Greening Western Queens Fund

In the fall of 2009, North Star Fund launched the “Greening Western Queens Fund,” a new $7.9 million initiative to invest in energy-efficiency and environmental projects in the Western Queens community affected by a July 2006 electric power outage. This program is supported by funds from the community’s settlement with Con Edison. The Public Service Commission of the State of New York selected North Star Fund to administer the project because of our expertise in facilitating community led grantmaking processes.

According to Hugh Hogan, Executive Director of North Star Fund, “This is a story of a community that stood up to demand public accountability from a public utility that failed them. It’s provided an opportunity unique in the history of New York City to invest in an environmentally conscious and economically robust future of the affected neighborhoods. The community-driven process will serve as a model for the next generation of urban neighborhoods.”

Funded Projects

Western Queens will soon see an infusion of trees, green jobs and youth environmental programs thanks to $3.39 million in grants distributed by North Star Fund. Fifteen projects have been funded with one- to three-year grants that will result in up to 850 trees, support environmental education and recycling programs, and help fund community gardens and green jobs training programs. Click here to download a pdf of the projects.

Request For Proposals (RFP)

The Greening Western Queens Fund seeks to support projects that will result in tangible, physical and visible improvements to the Long Island City, Woodside, Sunnyside, and Astoria areas. We are not currently accepting applications for the Greening Western Queens Fund. The next RFP will be released in July 2011 and the deadline will be in September 2011.

Click here for common questions about applying for a grant from the Greening Western Queens Fund.

Advisory Board

We have developed a Greening Western Queens Fund Advisory Board of local stakeholders and environmental experts to distribute grants to local groups for tree planting, energy efficiency, job training and open space enhancement projects. The projects will incorporate conservation education and replicable models that will have a lasting impact in the neighborhood and beyond. All of the advisory board members provide unique and important expertise which will be utilized throughout the grant program. Please click here for more information about the Greening Western Queens Fund Advisory Board.

Visioning Sessions

In March 2010, North Star Fund hosted two community visioning sessions for residents of Sunnyside, Astoria, Woodside, and Long Island City. Over 120 residents, organizers, community members, and experts came together to share their vision, goals, and ideas for a greener Western Queens. Visioning Session participants actively engaged in large group and small group conversations and shared their ideas for the outcomes of the three-year grants.

The outcomes of the informative visioning sessions, as well as additional outreach and landscape research and scans of current greening programs and projects in the area were used by the Advisory Board to finalize the overall vision, grant criteria, priorities, and guidelines for the Fund.

Impacted Area

Click here for an interactive map indicating the boundaries of the prioritized areas impacted by the blackout.

via Greening Western Queens Fund | North Star Fund.

O Donald Trump, Woe Donald Trump

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This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

“It is not an art poem. It is a bardic declamation coming out of a tradition that speaks social truth direct to power – hot, rough, and on the hoof.”

O Donald Trump, Woe Donald Trump, from Alastair McIntosh to Donald Trump on a personal basis, published on Bella Caledonia, an online magazine exploring ideas of independence, self-determination and autonomy.

It starts,

O Donald Trump
It was my own old mother’s taxi driver
on the Isle of Lewis
who said he lives next
to your old mother’s house
on the Isle of Lewis
That made me think
how close we are
being separated by
just two mothers
and one Stornoway taxi

more…

For those of you who don’t know, Donald Trump, of Trump Towers, etc., wants to create a major new Trump branded golf and leisure resort at Menie in Aberdeenshire dispossessing locals and over-running a site of special scientific interest.

ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.

It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.

Go to EcoArtScotland

warning signs

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[iframe http://player.vimeo.com/video/17869877?byline=0&portrait=0 500 281]

Two New York University grad students have created prototype sweatshirts that change colors upon exposure to pollution—“anything from car exhaust to second-hand smoke,” reported Abbie Fentress Swanson for WNYC’s culture section. One shirt dons a set of lungs, the other a heart. “Veins” running through the organs turn blue when a censor in the fabric detects high carbon monoxide levels, notes Swanson.

The students—Nien Lam and Sue Ngo—designed the shirts for a project they call “Warning Signs,” part of their master’s coursework for NYU Tisch School of the Arts. “Air pollution is kind of one of these things that’s all around us,” Lam says in Swanson’s piece. “You don’t see it, but it exists, and it’s invisible—and we wanted to bring that to light.”

From Hypercolor’s Back (Sort of), and It’s Pointing Out Pollution

Networking the arts to save the Earth

An Arts and Ecology Notebook, Cultura21, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This post comes to you from Cultura21

Cathy Fitzgerald, film-maker and author of ecoartnotebook.com, has completed a research paper on the “sometimes under-utilised potential of online art and ecology networks“:

Online social networks are a recent global phenomenon of the last five years. This paper considers the value and under-realised potential of online social networks that connect cultural practitioners and organisations who are responding to ecological concerns across the world. That the cultural sector will have a significant role in engaging the world’s audiences and projecting new visions of how humanity may live more sustainably on this finite earth is increasingly recognised. However, while online social networks have in the last few years made art and ecology activities more visible their use has not been strategically utilised or examined in detail and efforts across the sector are as yet scattered and uneven. To fully harness the potential of these radical new and change-making communication tools, art and ecology networks that reference responses to ecological concerns, and in particular climate change, would clearly benefit from implementing online strategies from environmental and political activism, marketing strategies from business, as well as connecting with social media experts and research from the social sciences.

The full paper can be downloaded at http://ecoartnotebook.com/?page_id=1511

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)

– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)

– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)

– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

Bees

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This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Scottish Natural Heritage’s recent video on the importance of bees.

More information:

Thanks to Nazim Merchant and the World Development Movement for these links.  Please add comments with other links and information.

ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.

It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.

Go to EcoArtScotland