This post comes to you from Green Public Art
On May 6, 2011, H20: The Art of Conservation, at the Water Conservation Garden, San Diego, CA, will open to the public. Green Public Art reviewed over 1100 artists portfolios before inviting 14 San Diego artists to participate in the exhibition which offers San Diego homeowners an artistic alternative to incorporate water conservation into their own garden spaces. Green Public Art awarded each artist a mini-grant to develop their site-specific sculptures. In the weeks leading up to the exhibition opening the artist’s concepts will be revealed on this site. Questions? Contact Rebecca Ansert, Curator, Green Public Art at rebecca@greenpublicart.com.
CONCEPT: Dew Harvesters. San Diego receives less than ten inches of rain a year, with almost no precipitation falling between May and October, but yet many native plants stay green throughout the summer. This project provides sculptures to harvest dew and/or fog, demonstrating the way that local plants survive during the summer months. Dew harvesting was practiced in antiquity and is again being explored as populations grow, climates change, and water becomes increasingly scarce. Actual dew harvesters would generally be much larger than the proposed sculptures. While these sculptures are functional, harvesting a small amount of potable water that could be used to water a garden, they are also meant to raise awareness about the local ecology and the need to regard water as a precious resource.
ABOUT: Ruth Wallen is a multi-media artist whose work is dedicated to encouraging dialogue about ecological and social issues. She has created outdoor interactive “nature walks†at Carmel Mountain, the San Bernardino Children’s Forest and Tijuana River Estuary, and has participated in group exhibitions at the Long Beach Museum of Art and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Colorado. She is a founding member of the multiethnic/national collaborative artist group Las Comadres.  Her work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Light Work, New York. and the Atheneum San Diego. She has published critical essays in journals including LEONARDO, Exposure, High Performance, The Communication Review, and Women’s Studies, as well as two anthologies, With Other Eyes: Race, Gender, and Visual Culture and Blaze: Discourse on Art, Women and Feminism. She is core faculty in the interdisciplinary arts MFA program at Goddard College, a lecturer at the University of California, San Diego and was a Fulbright lecturer at the Autonomous University of Baja California, Tijuana. She received her BA from Swarthmore College and her MFA from the University of California, San Diego.
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.