art

By Patrick Rogers “I’m really into trees,” said the sculptor Hugh Hayden. “I’m drawn to plants.” Nature and plants have always been a source of fascination for the artist, who grew up near a protected greenway on the outskirts of Dallas. “My family was always outdoors, not in the sense of camping, but of gardening,” […]

By Clara Chaisson Photographer Terry Evans has been piecing together prairies for more than 40 years. After she first encountered the plant life growing in these iconic midwestern habitats in 1978, Evans memorized their “names like poems”: the silverleaf scurfpea, a dark-violet wildflower; the prickly pink catclaw sensitive briar; the white orchid known as nodding […]

By Clara Chaisson Dutch interactive artist Thijs Biersteker is something like a real-life Lorax—except instead of speaking for the trees, he equips them with the technology to speak for themselves. Trees are among our most diligent and prolific data loggers (no pun intended), recording a wealth of information about the world around them in the […]

At least eight million tons of plastic ends up in the world’s oceans every year, and some of it washes up on the beautiful pink-sand beaches of Bermuda. But one inventive artist has found a way to turn this tragedy into a unique and educational take on the traditional Advent calendar, CNN reported. Every day […]

By Patrick Rogers Miami artist Xavier Cortada lives in a house that stands at six feet above sea level. The Episcopal church down the road is 11 feet above the waterline, and the home of his neighbor, a dentist, has an elevation of 13 feet. If what climate scientists predict about rising sea levels comes […]

By Clara Chaisson Anthropocene is a clunky word for an even more unwieldy concept. But props to the Merriam-Webster team who have given us a dictionary definition that’s easy enough to follow. Anthropocene: (n.) The period of time during which human activities have had an environmental impact on the earth regarded as constituting a distinct […]

By Jeremy Deaton Eighteenth century French choreographer Jean-Georges Noverre once wrote, “A fine picture is but the image of nature; a finished ballet is nature herself.” Noverre was arguing for the immediacy of dance. Twenty-first century American choreographer Diana Movius took his words literally. In GLACIER: A Climate Change Ballet, Movius depicts the slow melt […]

By Patrick Rogers The fact that nature and nation share a common root—the Latin verb nasci, “to be born”—might rate as trivia to most people. But in the context of early American art, at least, the connection has profound cultural meaning. Paintings of natural vistas, from New York’s Hudson Valley to the purple mountains and […]