This Football Stadium Was Transformed Into a Living Forest In Dystopian Future Art Installation
11 September 2019
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FOR FOREST – The Unending Attraction of Nature Art Intervention at Wörthersee Stadium, Klagenfurt. UNIMO
Austria's Wörthersee Football Stadium has a new team on the playing field. Normally packed with up to 30,000 sports fans, the stadium has been transformed into a living forest in an attempt to bring attention to climate change and deforestation.
<p>The art installation by Klaus Littmann titled <em>FOR FOREST – The Unending Attraction of Nature</em>, is a temporary exhibit meant to "stir up a range of emotions and reactions" showing the stark contrast of linear, man-made stadium arena juxtaposed against shrubbery and sky-reaching trees in a variety of green hues.</p>
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word-wrap:break-word;" target="_top">Leonardo DiCaprio on Instagram: “#Regram #RG @cnnclimate: Wörthersee Football Stadium in Austria has been transformed into a lush forest 🌲🌳🌱 in an effort to raise awareness…”</a></p>
</div></blockquote></div><p>"The installation is a clever play on our emotions when faced with what should be a familiar sight, placed in an entirely different context," <a href="https://forforest.net/en/" target="_blank">wrote</a> the project. "With this monumental work of art, Littmann challenges our perception of nature and sharpens our awareness of the future relation between nature and humankind."</p><p>Nearly 300 trees between 8 and 14 meters tall, some weighing up to six tones each, were brought in from surrounding nurseries, reports <a href="https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/forest-grows-in-the-middle-of-a-football-stadium/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a>. </p><p>The entire field is covered by a mixed forest characteristic of Central Europe complete with 16 trees commonly found in the region, including maples, alders, birches, beeches, larches and pines. Much like the forests surrounding Europe's urban centers, the <a href="https://forforest.net/en/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">stadium landscape</a> is "shaped by weather as well as the autumnal turning of the leaves". </p><p>"I have never worked with living beings before and I am absolutely aware that this cannot be compared to working with a sculpture, a photo or a painting," Littman told the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49640345" target="_blank">BBC</a>. "The work has to be adapted to the species and has to be done with a lot of attention and respect."</p>
<p>The concept is based on Max Peinter's 1936 dystopian pencil drawing, "The Unending Attraction of Nature" which famously showed crowds packed into a stadium admiring a forest of trees. Meant to imagine a time when forests might only exist as exhibition objects, the painting was displayed in over 20 German-language books, according to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/gallery/2019/sep/06/for-forest-an-art-intervention-transforming-austrian-stadium" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>. </p><p>"I thought that the idea behind the work was simply fascinating," Littman said, adding that he had wanted to buy the drawing but it had already been sold to a collection. "That's when I decided I wanted to realize the drawing, have it in front of me and experience it in real life." </p><p>The project comes with it a warning to its viewers: "One day, we might have to admire the remnants of nature in specially assigned spaces, as is already the case with zoo animals." In a world of increasing <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/deforestation" target="_self">deforestation</a>, the thought experiment highlights threats currently facing the natural environment. Earlier this year, deforestation rates in the Amazon — the world's largest rainforest —hit a record of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-deforestation-unrecoverable-tipping-point-2639358982.html" target="_self">three football fields per minute</a> — the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-rainforest-deforestation-2621547166.html" target="_self">highest rate in a decade</a>.</p><p>Entrance to the exhibit is free to the public until it closes at the end of October. The forest will be replanted in public spaces near the stadium to serve as a "<a href="https://forforest.net/en/fakten-for-forest/" target="_blank">living forest sculpture</a>."</p>
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Hedges, 2019 © Hugh Hayden. All photos courtesy of Lisson Gallery
By Patrick Rogers
"I'm really into trees," said the sculptor Hugh Hayden. "I'm drawn to plants."
<p>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," he recalled fondly. "When I was in high school, I was the youngest person in the North Texas Water Garden Society — I was, like, 15, and most of the people were over 55."</p><p>Now working out of a studio in the Bronx, Hayden uses elements of nature to powerful effect in sculptures that have grabbed the attention of curators in the U.S. and Europe. And he recently won a major commission at New York City's newest cultural outpost, The Shed. Housed in a large exhibition space, Hayden's <em>Hedges</em> installation presents an architecturally accurate facade of a single classic American suburban home that, thanks to mirrors mounted on opposing gallery walls, is amplified into infinity to form the illusion of an entire street.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMDY2NDkyMC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMTY0NjM3MX0.plXaBwTad17IQ2v2ziMtg862SXUIGx-pY9YFmcHlyLA/img.jpg?width=980" id="25dcb" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ccf6e055062ba8be7539058771e425d8" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Hedges, 2019 © Hugh Hayden
<p>Those illusory houses and their imaginary middle-class occupants, however, are not alone. Sprouting from holes in the walls is a thicket of bare tree branches that appear to colonize the living space. When seen in the mirrors, they form what looks like the world's longest hedgerow.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMDY2NDkyMS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyODAzNjE3Mn0.AwVahgtQ319uXh5Sxuipsy1-xXQd9EN7CVXkgSi8vOw/img.jpg?width=980" id="671f6" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5e78a717c7ece675c84661da5f44734c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
© Hugh Hayden
<p>There's an obvious tension in <em>Hedges</em> between human civilization and untamable wilderness. But Hayden, whose art tends to challenge perceptions of social order and the environment, is also interested in how people use nature as a form of camouflage to mask their differences in order to become part of their communities. "It's the idea of home ownership and being part of the American dream, of having a little house with its own yard — of blending into a landscape that is also a social landscape," he said.</p><p>Hayden mostly uses salvaged wood that he manipulates through carving and juxtaposition. The branches used in <em>Hedges</em> came from a display of Christmas trees that once stood in the median strip of Park Avenue in Manhattan — one of the nation's most pedigreed addresses, he notes — which lends his work an aspirational quality. And due to the mirrors placed around them, viewers cannot avoid encountering their own reflections. The artist said, "They're seeing themselves reproduced in something that is a fantasy. They see how they fit into that American dream."</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMDY2NDkyMi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NDgyMDQxMn0.0BnS0qHFxtF8U5Vz1Tr7M8QclZeWyxfuBOfcdCdHdDA/img.jpg?width=980" id="ef69a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="091e25886aaae7e17f813b529a6965ac" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
America, 2018 © Hugh Hayden
<p>Hayden, who trained as an architect at Cornell and quit his day job designing in the hospitality industry last year to pursue art full time, has been finding great meaning in the trees that he uses as raw material for his sculptures. In 2018 he traveled to the U.S.–Mexico border and gathered branches of mesquite, a tree that many Texans regard as an undesirable invasive species. "Mesquite trees thrive where other trees can't, on limited resources like water. Given the issue on the border around immigration, I thought of the material as politically charged." Hayden used the thick branches in a sculpture titled <em>America</em>, which takes the form of a kitchen table and chairs, a classic symbol of welcoming and comfort, but with sharp protuberances that discourage gathering.</p><p>On the same Texas trip, the artist paired up with a crew of nursery scouts who buy slow-growing desert palmettos from landowners in the region and then resell them for a profit to wealthy urbanites in Houston. Together they located stands of so-called Texas ebony trees, which have a narrow range of growth in the southern part of the state and in northeastern Mexico. Hayden used the dark brown and blackish wood of the trees' interior in a pair of meticulously rendered sculptures that comment self-reflectively on the experience of young African-American men.</p><p>"To me, that species was like my own identity as a tree," he said. One piece, <em>Crown of Thorns,</em> which was exhibited at Art Basel in Miami Beach last year, was in the shape of a football helmet, with a knot of thorns inside that render it impossible to wear. The other, <em>Oreo, </em>shown at New York's Lisson Gallery, represented a baby's crib also studded with sharp thorns. "I was interested in positioning the imposed expectations of a black man in Texas. I hated playing football, for example, but it was the expectation that I play." As for the crib, its construction brings to mind the neoclassical architecture of a typical Texas courthouse, where, because of <a href="https://www.aclu.org/report/bullies-blue-origins-and-consequences-school-policing" target="_blank">systemic injustices</a>, an African-American man is likely to turn up during the course of his youth.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMDY2NDkyNS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMDg1MTYzNX0.ZZ3w9gAQ0haKfIQxjsSRXzIzutMdSXur2DHR5RjfAWU/img.jpg?width=980" id="2e3d8" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0d69fdbaba097ed509110acd7a553ed4" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Oreo, 2018 © Hugh Hayden
<p>"I think people could interpret my work as an ad for a group like Greenpeace," Hayden said when asked if he considers himself a part of the environmental movement. "Of course, I am <em>for</em> the environment. But I would say my use of natural material is more an extension of my personal interests," he explained. "I like plants, and I like the idea that I can use something as ubiquitous as trees to change the way that people think."</p><p>Hedges<em> is on view at </em><a href="https://theshed.org/program/76-open-call-hugh-hayden" target="_blank"><em>The Shed in New York City</em></a><em> until August 25.</em></p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMDY2NDkyNy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0MDA0Nzc4OH0.-RfGMZJW7Mton3gGBA9pKRhoAXoDvXBVzDldoWqb7DQ/img.jpg?width=980" id="a9fb2" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f2637268fab79fa8b7a2fb6a875e7347" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
<p class=""> <em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/artist-who-finds-uncommon-meaning-common-trees" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">onEarth</a>.</em><em></em></p>Crown of Thorns, 2018 © Hugh Hayden
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Terry Evans's Ancient Prairies project
By Clara Chaisson
Photographer Terry Evans has been piecing together prairies for more than 40 years.
<p>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 lady's tresses; and green antelopehorn, a milkweed that serves as a nursery to monarch butterflies. "I felt embarrassed when I came across one whose name I'd forgotten or hadn't yet learned," Evans said. "It was like slighting a friend."</p><p>Today Evans is continuing her education by breaking down these grassland ecosystems into their component parts. Each large-scale image from her new series, <a href="http://www.terryevansphotography.com/" target="_blank"><em>Ancient Prairies</em></a>, is made up of a patchwork of individual photographs hinting at the ecological complexity that underlies the prairie landscape.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xOTMyNDU0MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMDc4NDYyN30.AAFzL1i8uPdpXW9B1G1z1PC8f0w9Fco024GUOlz43YY/img.jpg?width=980" id="27d89" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4dbdf3a9b73b4cf411e82962baf512ef" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Terry Evans's Ancient Prairies project
<p>Landscape photography was not part of Evans's original plan during her years at the University of Kansas, where she received a BFA in painting. For years the Missouri-born artist drew inspiration from the relationships between people. But a decade after Evans graduated, a friend asked her to capture some images of a virgin prairie not far from Evans's home in Salinas, Kansas. She agreed, and the friendly favor forever changed the trajectory of her career.</p><p>"Suddenly I began to see the ground," <a href="http://www.terryevansphotography.com/project-statements/ancient-prairies" target="_blank">Evans wrote</a> of the experience. "The realization came that I could stand in one spot and look at the ground for at least an hour and still not see everything happening at my feet ... There was a whole cosmology there, and that was fascinating to me."</p><p>The artist's depictions of prairies have traveled far beyond the habitat's natural range in the middle of our continent. Her work has brought the American prairie to the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and more.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xOTMyNDU0My9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTU5NTU0MzY2MH0.rPXU7HGSzFgpW4w8aOGCRErwDSthw459Kx5r7oazKW4/img.jpg?width=980" id="5ca65" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0673f2008fc65f3077662540e0e44d34" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Terry Evans's Ancient Prairies project
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xOTMyNDU0Ny9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwNzg5NjA4M30.sZIGH8LUzVx3zUYitdf2GPF7T4FmzxyiGEls1os-1qY/img.jpg?width=980" id="21c01" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d036bc0176e8e5d309db87b56231e59d" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Terry Evans's Ancient Prairies project
<p>Evans's interest in humanity's influence on the environment has also led her to industrial landscapes. Working alongside writer Elizabeth Farnsworth earlier this decade, she <a href="http://www.terryevansphotography.com/petcoke-in-chicago" target="_blank">documented activists fighting to ban petcoke</a> on the Southeast Side of Chicago, the city where she now lives and works. But after spending years working on projects such as <em>Petcoke vs. Grassroots</em>, <a href="http://www.terryevansphotography.com/north-dakota-oil-boom" target="_blank"><em>Fractured: North Dakota's Oil Boom</em></a> and <a href="http://www.terryevansphotography.com/steel-work-production" target="_blank"><em>Steel Work</em></a>, Evans said, "I started having this longing to see some undisturbed prairie again . . . Beauty matters for our spirit."</p><p>When she returned to Fent's Prairie, though, she found that something had changed within her. "I was no longer satisfied with making single images," Evans said. "It seemed like there's so much rich information and wisdom in an untouched or restored ecosystem."</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xOTMyNDU1MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwNTcwOTE3NH0.Ebau0MV4Rs37iTsjqRpyQ4O0lK6XdpikQRJ8Os8Dj1o/img.jpg?width=980" id="62573" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="374dca3831e84c6e95704f181be7e42f" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
<p><em>Five images from Ancient Prairies are featured in the winter issue of <a href="https://orionmagazine.org/" target="_blank">Orion</a> magazine. <br/></em></p><p> <em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/patchwork-imagery-hints-hidden-complexity-american-prairie" target="_blank">onEarth</a>.</em><em></em></p>Terry Evans's Ancient Prairies project
<p>The name of the series, <em>Ancient Prairies, </em>isn't intended to consign its subject matter to the past. "It's not about nostalgia, and they're not a eulogy of something that's gone," Evans said. "Rather, they're a celebration of life that can still inform us. We need these places as an archive of what an undisturbed ecosystem looks like."</p>From Your Site Articles
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Voice of Nature β01 by Thijs Biersteker–Woven Studio. Thijs Biersteke
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.
<p>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 growth rings they produce each year. Collectively these rings tell a detailed story about the events the tree has experienced over its lifetime—stories of drought, wildfire, heavy precipitation, pollution, extreme temperatures and more. Archaeologists use tree ring data to date artifacts; paleoclimatologists use the information encoded in these thin lines of wood to <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/lord-tree-rings" target="_blank">model past climates</a> and inform our understanding of future <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change">climate change</a>.</p><p>Long-term records, steadily accumulated over the centuries in tree rings (or <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/look-my-ice" target="_blank">ice cores</a> or sediment), are crucial to science. But they take time—and as someone trying to cultivate a widespread sense of urgency about climate change, Biersteker can't afford to wait. His newest installation, <em><a href="http://thijsbiersteker.com/project/voice-of-nature/" target="_blank">Voice of Nature</a></em>, uses environmental sensors and 1,600 data points to create a vivid visualization of the conditions a tree is experiencing, in real time.</p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xOTEzNjUyNS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxOTAyOTM5OH0.JYOFeJZlrQIbnDBpjIIayTZxANfKiArKgxZneNCNNH4/img.jpg?width=980" id="f1a3d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4c752a8218a2d3a08d5793d357888ca8" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Thijs Biersteke</small></p>
<p><em>Voice of Nature</em> is Biersteker's effort to "speed up the process to a human pace," making our species' profound influence on the environment immediate and easier to grasp. Watching something as steadfast as a tree react in the moment, observers can tune in to the invisible forces that surround us at all times.<br></p><p>After taking inspiration from the seasonal changes of a tree outside his window in Amsterdam, Biersteker worked with the Netherlands' Delft University of Technology to develop the project for <a href="https://lumenprize.com/event/light-up-bashu/" target="_blank">Light Up Bashu</a>, a monthlong art festival in Chengdu, China, last fall.</p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xOTEzNjUyOS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMTM4OTcxOX0.KDNjNpk_IbSaJMKKN_aHvTnQfkW80akk0S-yI1mwVX0/img.jpg?width=980" id="8ab7e" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="c601ef927365198dd43b27b829f6eed5" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Thijs Biersteke</small></p>
<p>His team rigged a Japanese cinnamon tree, which is protected in China, with sensors that measure conditions such as moisture levels, air quality, carbon dioxide, and soil temperature. When fed into an algorithm, these data calculate the tree's growth rate moment by moment and project it, in the form of expanding rings, onto a giant, auralike circular screen behind the tree. A slower growth rate corresponds with tightly spaced rings, while a faster growth rate sends out a steady pulse of visually distinct rings. Disruptions like <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/particulars-pm-25" target="_blank">PM 2.5</a> air pollution create uneven, textured lines—ironically, the worse the growth conditions are, the more complex and beautiful the design becomes.<br></p><p>Biersteker's technique has proved effective on audiences of all ages. "My mother says the tree gets angry if a lot of cars are smoking," one young viewer told the artist.</p>
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<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xOTEzNjUzMy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NDA5MjkxNX0.6AldIH50q0zbpKj93CopSHPkbwcSUL_vCe3YULS7CjE/img.jpg?width=980" id="1f9a1" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="e061b104a8a66349a8de79b7a5c61c49" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Thijs Biersteke</small></p>
<p>"Phrases like <em>climate change</em> or <em>anthropocene</em> feel so out of reach. What I try to do is make it tangible at that moment," said Biersteker. "In the longer spectrum, a lot of people don't connect to the issues because they become too big. I want to make them small again, so you have the idea that you can act. It's happening at <em>your</em> time, not the next generation."<br></p><p>In the words of the Lorax:</p><blockquote><em>Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,<br>Nothing is going to get better. <br>It's not.</em></blockquote>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube">
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<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">Voice of Nature . βº1-version</small>
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<a href="https://youtu.be/DnSy1SCg55Q" target="_blank">youtu.be</a>
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<p><em><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/dutch-artist-thijs-biersteker-gives-trees-voice-lights" target="_blank">onEarth</a>.</em></em><br></p>
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Artist Creates Advent Calendar From Beach Trash to Raise Awareness of Ocean Plastics
24 December 2018
Oceans
Courtesy of Meredith Andrews
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 this December, travel photographer Meredith Andrews has been using her Instagram to add a new page to her "Adventgram." Each page photographs a collection of artfully arranged plastic items Andrews has found.
<p>"I'm just trying to say that this is all of our problem. We are choking in plastic. We are drowning in plastic," Andrews told CNN. "Killing our ocean and choking our ocean with plastic is going to have such a detrimental effect on everyone on the planet."</p><p>Andrews focuses on a specific category of trash each day, and offers viewers suggestions for how they can stop more of that item from ending up in the sea. December 1, for example, focused on toothbrushes. </p><p>"Roughly 3.5 billion toothbrushes are sold each year and in the US alone that equates to 50 million pounds of waste," Andrews wrote. "Think about making the change to a toothbrush made of bamboo."</p><div id="a724d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="XSL25N1576662474"><blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-version="4" style=" background:#FFF; border:0;
border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15);
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<div style=" background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAAGFBMVEUiIiI9PT0eHh4gIB4hIBkcHBwcHBwcHBydr+JQAAAACHRSTlMABA4YHyQsM5jtaMwAAADfSURBVDjL7ZVBEgMhCAQBAf//42xcNbpAqakcM0ftUmFAAIBE81IqBJdS3lS6zs3bIpB9WED3YYXFPmHRfT8sgyrCP1x8uEUxLMzNWElFOYCV6mHWWwMzdPEKHlhLw7NWJqkHc4uIZphavDzA2JPzUDsBZziNae2S6owH8xPmX8G7zzgKEOPUoYHvGz1TBCxMkd3kwNVbU0gKHkx+iZILf77IofhrY1nYFnB/lQPb79drWOyJVa/DAvg9B/rLB4cC+Nqgdz/TvBbBnr6GBReqn/nRmDgaQEej7WhonozjF+Y2I/fZou/qAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC);
display:block; height:44px; margin:0 auto -44px; position:relative; top:-22px; width:44px;">
</div></div><p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;">
<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bq2R_eqhc5L/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif;
font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;
word-wrap:break-word;" target="_top">Meredith Andrews on Instagram: “Day 1 Adventgram- This year my creations will be sourced exclusively from ocean plastics. 🌊 Roughly 3.5 billion toothbrushes are sold each…”</a></p>
</div></blockquote></div><p>Andrews explained her process to CNN.<br></p><p>"I think about what I have, what I've done the day before, what message I want to express and actually in a way I sort of let the trash guide me," she said.</p><p>Entries range from expected items like bottle caps (Dec. 2) and plastic rope from fishing gear (Dec. 6), to more surprising finds like deodorant containers (Dec. 17) and glow sticks (Dec. 7), which long-line fisherman use as lures.</p><p>December 20th's entry on plastic toys doubles as a last-minute shopping suggestion for anyone with children in their life. </p><p>"Try <a href="https://www.greentoys.co.uk/" target="_blank">Green Toys</a> who make their rocket ships, tug boats & submarines from recycled plastic," Andrews wrote.</p><div id="dbb2f" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="N6JDFL1576662475"><blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-version="4" style=" background:#FFF; border:0;
border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15);
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<div style=" background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAAGFBMVEUiIiI9PT0eHh4gIB4hIBkcHBwcHBwcHBydr+JQAAAACHRSTlMABA4YHyQsM5jtaMwAAADfSURBVDjL7ZVBEgMhCAQBAf//42xcNbpAqakcM0ftUmFAAIBE81IqBJdS3lS6zs3bIpB9WED3YYXFPmHRfT8sgyrCP1x8uEUxLMzNWElFOYCV6mHWWwMzdPEKHlhLw7NWJqkHc4uIZphavDzA2JPzUDsBZziNae2S6owH8xPmX8G7zzgKEOPUoYHvGz1TBCxMkd3kwNVbU0gKHkx+iZILf77IofhrY1nYFnB/lQPb79drWOyJVa/DAvg9B/rLB4cC+Nqgdz/TvBbBnr6GBReqn/nRmDgaQEej7WhonozjF+Y2I/fZou/qAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC);
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</div></div><p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;">
<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BrnZLYthfKb/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif;
font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;
word-wrap:break-word;" target="_top">Meredith Andrews on Instagram: “Day 20 Adventgram - Playtime is over! 🔫 Plastic pollution can now be found on every beach in the world, from busy tourist beaches to…”</a></p>
</div></blockquote></div><p>This isn't the first time Andrews has used her artistic skills to raise awareness about ocean plastic pollution, as a scroll through her Twitter and Instagram feeds shows. On the Fourth of July, <a href="https://twitter.com/photomeredith/status/1014598639547830274" target="_blank">she tweeted</a> an American flag made from plastic, with the message, "Now just don't forget to clean up after yourselves."<br></p><p>Her piece "The Rainbow Connection" was featured in an exhibit of trash art organized by the litter-cleanup group <a href="http://www.kbb.bm/" target="_blank">Keep Bermuda Beautiful</a> this summer, <a href="http://www.royalgazette.com/news/article/20180705/trash-art-helps-to-keep-bermuda-beautiful" target="_blank">The Royal Gazette reported</a>.</p><div id="0660f" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="927QEE1576662475"><blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-version="4" style=" background:#FFF; border:0;
border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15);
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<div style=" background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAAGFBMVEUiIiI9PT0eHh4gIB4hIBkcHBwcHBwcHBydr+JQAAAACHRSTlMABA4YHyQsM5jtaMwAAADfSURBVDjL7ZVBEgMhCAQBAf//42xcNbpAqakcM0ftUmFAAIBE81IqBJdS3lS6zs3bIpB9WED3YYXFPmHRfT8sgyrCP1x8uEUxLMzNWElFOYCV6mHWWwMzdPEKHlhLw7NWJqkHc4uIZphavDzA2JPzUDsBZziNae2S6owH8xPmX8G7zzgKEOPUoYHvGz1TBCxMkd3kwNVbU0gKHkx+iZILf77IofhrY1nYFnB/lQPb79drWOyJVa/DAvg9B/rLB4cC+Nqgdz/TvBbBnr6GBReqn/nRmDgaQEej7WhonozjF+Y2I/fZou/qAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC);
display:block; height:44px; margin:0 auto -44px; position:relative; top:-22px; width:44px;">
</div></div><p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;">
<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BkiL5-Gg98V/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif;
font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;
word-wrap:break-word;" target="_top">Meredith Andrews on Instagram: “The Rainbow Connection”</a></p>
</div></blockquote></div><p>Andrews has done Adventgrams <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BcIRqVuFiBY/" target="_blank">in previous years too</a>, using found objects to shape numbers, but this year is the first year she has focused on using beach trash to count down the days till Christmas.<br></p>
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As Miami Battles Sea-Level Rise, This Artist Makes Waves With His 'Underwater Homeowners Association'
08 December 2018
Climate
An underwater marker in front of Cortada's studio helps predict how many feet of water needs to rise before the area becomes submerged. Xavier Cortada
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 true, the Atlantic Ocean could rise two to three feet by the time Cortada pays off his 30-year mortgage. As the polar ice caps melt, the sea is inching ever closer to the land he hopes one day to pass on to the next generation, in the city he has called home since the age of three.
<p>"It is with incredible pain that I say I know my city is doomed by climate change," said Cortada, who is the artist in residence at Pinecrest Gardens, a recreation center a few blocks from his home in South Miami. "But as a Miamian, my job is to do everything I can to help us through this chaos."</p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODk3NDc4Ni9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NTkyODk2NH0.Ioiuu11uGuX4u701dKgEVu4YvUHM_SZff7iv5by4MI8/img.jpg?width=980" id="f88f5" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="b81bb9ec975fcebbcbe301dc97be019c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit..."> Xavier Cortada</small></p>
<p>That explains the big sign in Cortada's front yard. In watery blues and greens, it displays the property's elevation with a bold number 6. It's also why the artist has invited other residents of this upscale district to join his wryly named <em>Underwater Homeowners Association</em> project. Across the community, elevation markers designed by Cortada are now standing in front of his neighbors' homes and businesses—a colorful, albeit painful, reminder of what's at stake.<br></p><p>"The underwater markers are basically me trying to let people know that Antarctica is coming to town," said Cortada, who has traveled to both the southernmost continent and the North Pole to witness the rapidly melting glaciers that are contributing to the rise of ocean levels around the globe. In a converted laboratory in Antarctica and on the pitching deck of a Russian icebreaker in the Arctic Ocean, he created more than 100 paintings out of glacial meltwater mixed with paint and sediment from Antarctic mountain ranges.</p><p>Cortada wants to use the elevation markers to get neighbors talking about the changing climate and its effects on their lives and homes by mapping the destruction and chaos in advance. "The residents of Florida are at ground zero when it comes to sea-level rise," he said. "Unfortunately, our politics and mind-set don't reflect that we need to do some serious problem solving. I wanted to create a way of helping us understand that, by making the invisible visible and just a little bit strange."<br><br>The <em><a href="http://cortada.com/2018/underwaterHOA/main" target="_blank">Underwater HOA project</a></em> launches this month during Art Basel Miami Beach, an annual festival that draws art lovers from all over the world. Miami is already feeling the consequences of sea-level rise in the form of widespread flooding during storm surges and <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/can-miami-beach-hold-its-ground-against-king-tides" target="_blank">seasonal king tides</a>.</p><p>"The reason I know we can do something about this is that we've done it before," he said. "Everybody from Miami could tell you their hurricane stories, when neighbors come together like they never have before. That sense of community and purpose when there's a problem in front of us—it's something we know how to do. With sea-level rise, it's an existential problem."</p><p>As part of the artist's multifaceted project, high school students have painted huge versions of Cortada's elevation markers on the pavement of intersections along Pinecrest's main thoroughfare. At Pinecrest Gardens, the artist will also be exhibiting a selection of 60 his "Antarctic Ice Paintings" that have never been seen before. He made these haunting abstract compositions with ice samples from the Ross Sea and fragments of earth gathered by climate scientists nearby in the McMurdo Dry Valleys.</p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODk3NDc3MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwNjE2NzEwMn0.iQ86X_j11OHXxClYYS777ekoZSU8UQgnG0NY1lIY9xA/img.jpg?width=980" id="aedf7" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9edafecb46804ad544818db014f7afdd" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">"A-01: Antarctica" from Cortada's "Antarctic Ice Painting Global Coastline" series.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Xavier Cortada</small></p>
<p>The combination of community activism and striking artistry is typical of Cortada, said Barbara Matilsky, curator of art at the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington, who has included his work in two exhibitions. "The 'Antarctic Ice Paintings' are a beautiful idea—they physically embody the continent, so that we have a remnant of Antarctica in the museum—but they are also very beautiful visualizations" to look at, she said.<br></p><p>Matilsky also admires how Cortada's projects have raised awareness and galvanized action on climate issues. For his <em>Reclamation Project</em>, launched in 2008, he persuaded merchants in Miami Beach's trendy Lincoln Road district to care for mangrove seedlings grown in planters outside their shops. After being on public display for a month and a half, the mangroves were transplanted by volunteers along the shore of Biscayne Bay, where they act as natural barriers against storm surge. The project was such a success that it was adopted as an ongoing program by Miami's Frost Museum of Science. So far, <a href="http://restorationproject.net/" target="_blank">eight acres of mangrove swamp</a> have been created.</p><p>The artist hopes he'll reach even more people with <em>Underwater HOA</em> but says he isn't concerned with the actual numbers. "At the end of the day," he said, "I'm just trying to get this conversation beyond a whisper."</p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODk3NDc2NC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNjEyMTI1OX0.WcgwfUsCL8DPfhz5pnt6geOGLVG97AQ4GCjU1Ry70i0/img.jpg?width=980" id="29a00" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f8b4166736e16b9b1710ca02b3b95d11" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">"A-07" from Cortada's "Antarctic Ice Painting Global Coastline" series.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Xavier Cortada</small></p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/miami-battles-sea-level-rise-artist-makes-waves-his-underwater-homeowners-association" target="_blank">onEarth</a>.</em><br></p>
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The Anthropocene—Coming Soon to a Theater (and Museum, and Bookshelf) Near You
01 December 2018
Popular
"Log Booms #1". Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, 2016. Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Howard Greenberg and Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York / Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto
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.
<blockquote>Anthropocene: <em>(n.)</em> The period of time during which human activities have had an environmental impact on the earth regarded as constituting a distinct geological age.<br></blockquote><p>Try to list those planet-altering human activities, though, and you'll quickly realize that you could go on forever. Even geologists, those who decide if the Anthropocene merits an official geologic epoch, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/29/declare-anthropocene-epoch-experts-urge-geological-congress-human-impact-earth" target="_blank">disagree on which specific markers</a> characterize this nebulous yet distinct time. (<a href="https://ecowatch.com/tag/plastic-pollution">Plastic pollution</a>, nuclear tests, concrete particles, artificial fertilizers and even domestic chickens are all contenders.) Our impacts on the planet are so vast and multifaceted, there's just no simple way to illustrate their scope.</p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODkzNzI2OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMTM4NzU3N30.I7o2LgJLvDrw6lz-jQzWYWPYCR346x-bbt1YT5qONXk/img.jpg?width=980" id="ddeef" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0ddc3a7d60cb14cea7c3b19ab660bb49" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">"Dandora Landfill #3". Plastics Recycling, Nairobi, Kenya, 2016</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Howard Greenberg and Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York / Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto</small></p>
<p>But filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal, photographer Edward Burtynsky and cinematographer Nicholas de Pencier are giving it a try. Wisely, these collaborators don't limit themselves to one approach or even one medium. <em><a href="https://theanthropocene.org/" target="_blank">The Anthropocene Project</a></em> fuses photography, film, virtual reality, augmented reality and research, resulting in a body of work that attempts to give audiences a panoramic view of the Anthropocene. The project, currently on view at the Art Gallery of Ontario, takes the form of a traveling exhibit, educational program, book and documentary film.<br></p><p>The three Canadian artists have teamed up before. The documentary portion of the project, <em><a href="https://theanthropocene.org/film/" target="_blank">Anthropocene: The Human Epoch</a></em>, is the third of a film trilogy that also includes <em><a href="https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/films/manufactured-landscapes/" target="_blank">Manufactured Landscapes</a></em> and <em><a href="https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/films/watermark" target="_blank">Watermark</a></em>.</p>
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<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="033bb7293f564f57494218186c1c5df6"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/puE32LuxPz4?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">ANTHROPOCENE: THE HUMAN EPOCH Trailer | TIFF 2018</small>
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<a href="https://youtu.be/puE32LuxPz4" target="_blank">youtu.be</a>
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<p>For their latest endeavor, the trio spent four years traveling to 20 countries across the globe, shooting at potash mines in the Ural Mountains of Russia; lithium ponds in the Atacama Desert; Australia's Great Barrier Reef; the German open-pit coal mine that houses <a href="https://theanthropocene.org/anthropocenes-jennifer-baichwal-ponders-the-demented-argument-between-technology-and-nature/" target="_blank">Bagger 288</a>, one of the world's largest machines; and many more of earth's human-altered landscapes and seascapes. Seeking to describe humanity's relationship with the environment rather than prescribe one, the team took an expansive approach to collecting material, shooting some 400 hours of footage to produce their 90-minute film. Their photography ratios tend to be even higher—Burtynsky sorted through an astonishing 26,000 photos to select just 110 for his previous book, <em><a href="https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/books/water/" target="_blank">Water</a></em>. (He didn't keep an exact tally for <em>The Anthropocene Project</em>, but you get the idea.)<br></p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODkzNzI2Ny9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNTg5NzgwMH0.o9iGtN53XeRygCi1ebEIsyvD-axcQbr9fNu1mFjl7BM/img.jpg?width=980" id="d1a78" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f70fe527b0219ffdeee5e9a8993fa777" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">"Lithium Mines #1". Salt Flats, Atacama Desert, Chile, 2017</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Howard Greenberg and Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York / Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto</small></p>
<p>The scenes Burtynsky captures with his camera reflect a strange and surprising beauty in the world we've created. <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5915c70e59cc6830f44a9d74/5bb79114085229d5a7b7f2be/5bb7a0aee2c48360e4f01c70/1538767791912/ANTH_TURB_MN_RUS_04_17_alt4_p20k_KdkGlossy_alt2_WEB.jpg?format=750w" target="_blank">Potash mines</a> appear as vibrant, <a href="https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/photographs/anthropocene/" target="_blank">psychedelic corridors</a>; <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5915c70e59cc6830f44a9d74/5bb79114085229d5a7b7f2be/5bb7a0b31905f41771e11eac/1538767463984/Lithium+Mines+%231%2C+Salt+Flats%2C+Atacama+Desert%2C+Chile++2017.jpg?format=1000w" target="_blank">lithium mines</a> in the Atacama Desert look like <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=dj+board&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjk6cOon9_eAhUwmeAKHXATBf0Q_AUIDygC&biw=1366&bih=562#imgrc=N6AWxZlkS57ynM:" target="_blank">DJ boards</a> for giants; a <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5915c70e59cc6830f44a9d74/5bb79114085229d5a7b7f2be/5bb7a03d104c7b425011f7f1/1538766841584/ANTH_AGR_CA_IMP_03_09_alt3_WEB.jpg?format=750w" target="_blank">massive highway</a> through California's Imperial Valley strikes a satisfying note of symmetry.<br></p>
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<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODkzNzI2MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwMTQyOTU0NH0.LgEo9khERa3m-_dwa9uKB14CjZtCHRnVVvhjbEN2m-w/img.jpg?width=980" id="bb9b0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5e6f532b42591e92157b05e1e8a9aff3" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">"Uralkali Potash Mine #4". Berezniki, Russia, 2017.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Howard Greenberg and Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York / Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto</small></p>
<p>The tension in these images between despoilment and allure makes it hard to look away. Still, the artists are quick to acknowledge that engaging with their subject matter is not always easy. Burtynsky reminds us that these are <em>our</em> industrial landscapes, designed to produce materials that we use every day. "We've created them, but we turn our backs to them," he says.<br></p><p>Yet taking a long, hard look in the mirror doesn't have to lead to despair. Even after everything Baichwal has seen in her travels to some of the most polluted sites in the world, she describes herself as an optimist. "In every one of these places that we were, there were these little hints of hope," she said. "We had the ingenuity to do all of this; we can also use that to change . . . We just have to summon the collective will, and the will of our governments, and the will of our corporations, and the will of individuals."</p>
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<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODkzNzI2MC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0MDA4ODY0N30.lPJAnbNPOcqnLGirH1xAQaMoUwseZuC7Tx9zeifoDrY/img.jpg?width=980" id="02734" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="8e417f2a918b645fa2b89016f7b6156c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">"Building Ivory Tusk Mound". April 25, Nairobi, Kenya, 2016.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Howard Greenberg and Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York / Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto</small></p>
<p>That's a tall order. But if we're going to address our anthropogenic footprint, it seems only fitting to start by exploring it through the lens of that uniquely human endeavor: art.<br></p><p>The Anthropocene Project<em> is on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto through Jan. 6, 2019, and at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa through February 24, 2019. Having had its world premiere in September at the <a href="https://www.tiff.net/" target="_blank">Toronto International Film Festival</a>, </em>Anthropocene: The Human Epoch <em>is now playing in select Canadian theaters.</em></p><em> <em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/anthropocene-coming-soon-theater-and-museum-and-bookshelf-near-you" target="_blank">onEarth</a>.</em></em>
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GLACIER: A Climate Change Ballet. Rob Cannon
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.
<p>In <em>GLACIER: A Climate Change Ballet, </em>Movius depicts the slow melt of the Arctic with stirring dance and vivid multimedia accompaniment. In the spirit of Noverre, who revolutionized ballet through his focus on emotional honesty, Movius captures the pain and heartache lurking at the ends of the Earth.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube">
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a53ae932fc6611d20140ad0aa342a0da"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6Myeml08zJw?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">Climate Change Ballet</small>
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<a href="https://youtu.be/6Myeml08zJw" target="_blank">youtu.be</a>
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</p><p>"What does climate change feel like? It's mostly considered an analytical issue, something where you have to think far in the future," she said in an interview during the show's <a href="https://www.brava.org/all-events/glacier" target="_blank">September run</a> in San Francisco. "Is there a way that performance can make climate change into an immediate issue that you actually feel in your heart instead of know in your mind?"<br></p><p>A climate policy analyst by day and choreographer by night, Movius is well-suited to craft a ballet about the melting Arctic. Dancers clad in white mimic glaciers and ice floes as they crack, splinter and vanish into the sea. They leap and twirl to the music of Max Richter, David Lang and Andrew Thomas, while images of the melting Arctic, stitched together by artist Robin Bell, flash against the backdrop. <em>GLACIER </em>is now playing at <a href="http://www.danceloft14.org/dance-loft-events/2018/11/2/glacier-amp-rite-of-spring-crash-of-fall" target="_blank">Dance Loft on 14</a>, the Washington, DC dance studio Movius founded.</p><p>"The great thing about working with these dancers is they can really take an idea and make it their own, and they can tap into their own life experience and their own emotions," Movius said. She told members of her troupe, <a href="https://moveiuscontemporaryballet.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">MOVEIUS</a>, to imagine losing a loved one as they danced.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODc5NDQ2MC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0OTEzMzg3NH0.yBTikFR-NHaW5Jr5EbK_X2enIBQSEASS-NkoIraF4vs/img.jpg?width=980" id="03cf6" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="77f81494ec524e7610a8035523a0a388" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">GLACIER: A Climate Change Ballet. </small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Rob Cannon</small></p><p>Movius premiered <em>GLACIER</em> in 2015. "I was looking for a way to translate climate change into dance," she said. "After watching several specials on the melting of polar ice caps and the different ways that ice responds to warming, I realized that you can actually translate the type of movement that ice makes in response to a warming world into dance.<br></p><p>"If you want to dance like a glacier, you have a lot of options," she said. "You could move really slowly. You could slowly disappear and try to fool the audience into thinking that you were some place, and now you're not. You could move really fast like meltwater. You could crack. You could float. There are lots of ways to translate that into movement."</p><p>Movius nearly falls into the same trap as other artists. Too many cast the steady rise in temperature as a threat to nature rather than an urgent danger for humans, one that will spark resource wars, mass migrations and political unrest. Or, worse yet, artists focus on the political controversy around climate change instead of its looming perils. Works featured at the recent <a href="https://www.globalclimateactionsummit.org/" target="_blank">Global Climate Action Summit</a> in San Francisco, for example, included a giant polar bear and a neon sign that read "Climate change is real."</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODc5NDQ1MC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTU5ODMzNTIyOH0.90W7s-NdIVmvX55zzZYhSoYKGccgeYoZR0Q43vSn7WM/img.jpg?width=980" id="cb114" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="cf3e4769edb4b0953e49fd1d39bc75f3" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">Artwork commissioned for the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, September, 2018. </small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Nexus Media</small></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODc5NDQ1Mi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMTQzNTg3NX0.Sap_uxBotSYm7qmsiVazHrZELY_wSEzZlZBMANaJJDQ/img.jpg?width=980" id="aca0a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ad900093706ab2c4223051a8b071e4da" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">Artwork commissioned for the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, September, 2018. </small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Nexus Media</small></p><p>Movius narrowly avoids these pitfalls. Yes, this is a story about nature—there is an extended scene featuring a polar bear—but <em>GLACIER</em> does more than deploy a few well-worn tropes about climate change. Dancers convey a sense of angst and agony as the world melts away.<br></p><p>"An audience member can come into the performance and leave having actually felt climate change," Movius said. "I think that's a sense of poignancy, of sadness, of watching something beautiful disappear."</p><p> <em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://nexusmedianews.com/how-to-dance-like-a-glacier-video-74c550107ed3" target="_blank">Nexus Media</a>.</em><em></em></p>
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Update: The window for photo submissions has ended. The winner will be announced this Wednesday, November 21.
EcoWatch is pleased to announce its first photo contest! Show us what in nature you are most thankful for this Thanksgiving. Whether you have a love for oceans, animals, or parks, we want to see your best photos that capture what you love about this planet.
<p>Send your photo to <a href="mailto:bautista@ecowatch.com" target="_blank">bautista@ecowatch.com</a> with the subject line "ECOWATCH PHOTO CONTEST" by November 16th with the following information for a chance to have your photo appear on EcoWatch and win a $250 Patagonia eGift Card:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><strong>1.</strong> Name</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><strong>2.</strong> Email</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><strong>3.</strong> Phone Number</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><strong>4.</strong> Photo Submission file (.jpeg file format recommended)</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><strong>5. </strong>Caption</p><p>Our judges will choose the winning photo and the winner will be announced on November 21st. One submission per person. </p><p>All submissions will be evaluated by our wonderful judges Stephen Donofrio, Gaelin Rosenwaks and Marc Bryan-Brown to decide who the winner is. </p><h3>Stephen Donofrio</h3><p>Stephen Donofrio's work spans across sectors on climate, water, and forests sustainability, branching out to include carbon finance, cap-and-trade, corporate responsibility, and forest risk free agricultural supply chain management. He launched Greenpoint Innovations in 2014 with the aim of delivering compelling insights and unforgettable stories with the integration of innovative technologies and the arts. Aside from Greenpoint Innovations, he serves as a director at Forest Trends, is a regular public speaker at global forums, and is an associate educator at Boston College and Arizona University.</p><p><strong>Website: </strong><a href="http://www.greenpointinnovations.com/" target="_blank">www.greenpointinnovations.com</a> </p><p><strong>Instagram:</strong> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/stephendonofrio/" target="_blank">@stephendonofrio</a></p><h3>Gaelin Rosenwaks
</h3><p>Gaelin Rosenwaks is a marine scientist, explorer, photographer and filmmaker. Alarmed by the changes happening in the oceans, Gaelin founded Global Ocean Exploration, Inc. to share her passion for ocean exploration, marine conservation, and fishing through powerful imagery, words and adventure. She now participates and conducts expeditions in every ocean to alert the public not only to the challenges facing the oceans, but also to what science is doing to understand these changes.</p><p><span style="background-color: initial;"><strong>Website:</strong></span><strong> </strong> <a href="http://www.gaelinrosenwaks.com/" target="_blank">www.gaelinrosenwaks.com</a></p><p><strong>Instagram: </strong>@GaelinGOExplore</p><h3>Marc Bryan-Brown</h3><p>Documentary photographer Marc Bryan-Brown has been shooting people, places and things for more than 30 years. Starting in the music industry he was Whitney Houston's personal photographer at the peak of her career. Following that he moved into travel and expedition work. He is cited by the Mountainview Museum of Computing as being on the first "online expedition" and the 1994 Friendship Flight Across Arctic Siberia where images and reports were filed from the field to a website. Marc lives in the New York Hudson Valley with his wife Florence Seery.</p><p><em>By entering this photo contest you are granting EcoWatch the right to use your photo on our site and our media channels in conjunction with this contest without the written permission of the photographer. Unless otherwise instructed, EcoWatch reserves the right to use photo submissions on our site and in our media channels aside from the contest. If you do not wish to give EcoWatch the rights to use your photo aside from the current photo contest that you are participating in, please let us know within your email submission with the text "No, I do not want to give EcoWatch the rights to use my photos in other media aside from the current photo contest that I am participating in." </em><br></p><h2>More Contest Details:</h2><p><strong>Entry Details</strong></p><ul class="ee-ul"> <li>Photo submissions must be original work taken by the contest entrant.</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"> <li>By entering this photo contest you are granting EcoWatch the right to use your photo on our site and our media channels in conjunction with this contest without the written permission of the photographer.</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"> <li>Unless otherwise instructed, EcoWatch reserves the right to use photo submissions on our site and in our media channels aside from the contest.</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"> <li>The winner's name will be announced alongside the winning photo submission.</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"> <li>Photos that have already been submitted to other contests currently ongoing or have already won prizes in other contests are not eligible.</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"> <li>Image files created through any device capable of taking still images, such as smartphones and digital still cameras, will be accepted.</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"> <li>Color and monochrome images are valid for entry.</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"><li>After judging concludes, the winners will be notified by email sent to their listed email address by November 21st. The Patagonia eGift Card will be sent to the same listed email address. </li></ul><p><strong>Disclaimers</strong></p><ul class="ee-ul"> <li>EcoWatch reserves the right to void entries that depict brand logos or other intellectual property, whether on electronic signs, posters, or in other forms, or that in its judgment are harmful to public order, go against standards of decency, or are conflicting to the goals of the contest.</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"> <li>EcoWatch is not responsible for the resolution of legal issues arising from the entrants submitted photos and will not pay any costs thereby incurred.</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"> <li>EcoWatch does not bear any costs to the entrants that incur by entering the contest.</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"> <li>Submitted entries may not be withdrawn or returned.</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"><li>EcoWatch reserves the right to suspend or postpone the receipt of any or all entries if it is judged that the contest is unable to be run effectively, smoothly, or without affecting the fairness of judging.</li></ul>
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This Exhibit Examines Nature and Environmental Justice in Three Centuries of American Art
31 October 2018
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Left: Valerie Hegarty. Photo from the Brooklyn Museum, Right: Collection Lannan Foundation © Subhankar Banerjee
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 red deserts of the West, became early symbols of a young nation and its so-called manifest destiny. In the minds of many early Americans and pioneers, the land was out there for "us" (as in, men of European decent) to celebrate—but also to conquer. The very idea of American civilization meant destroying some of those beautiful, natural vistas to build the cities, farms, and factories of the future.
<p>That is just one of the contradictions set up—and rapidly deconstructed—in a sweeping reappraisal of American art seen through the lenses of environmental justice and the emerging theory of ecocriticism now on view at the Princeton University Art Museum. First developed in the 1990s as a cultural inquiry into the nature writings of Henry David Thoreau and others, ecocriticism has expanded into the study of the ecological significance of visual art, music, architecture, and other creative fields.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODc4NjUwOC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1MTk5MDExOX0.Wv7OyuZcHgcEVSzzyDeU0-efbmhCj99eTEF3nf_9aT8/img.jpg?width=980" id="4c163" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d89adab9c56aece39e70d641adff331e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">Albert Bierstadt, Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite, ca. 1871-73</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh</small></p><p>In <em>Nature's Nation: American Art and Environment, </em>museum curator Karl Kusserow and Alan Braddock, a professor of art history and American studies at the College of William and Mary, play with the meaning of more than 100 paintings and objects from the Colonial period to the present day. With fresh research and interpretations, the exhibit peels back traditional views of early American art to raise questions about colonialism, racial and ethnic representation, pollution, and humanity's ethical responsibilities to nature.<br></p><p>The free exhibition starts off with the juxtaposition of Albert Bierstadt's <a href="http://learn.ncartmuseum.org/artwork/bridal-veil-falls-yosemite-2/" target="_blank"><em>Bridal Veil Falls</em><em>, Yosemite</em></a>, an iconic 19th-century Romantic landscape, and <a href="http://valeriehegarty.com/home.html" target="_blank">Valerie Hegarty's</a> 2007 <em>Fallen Bierstadt</em>, a facsimile of the same painting. Bierstadt, who visited Yosemite Valley in the 1860s, described it as America's Garden of Eden and depicted it as a divine creation untouched by human hands. In Hegarty's version, however, the painting has been slashed and burned, with its missing pieces sitting on the floor below. Hegarty, a visual artist based in Brooklyn, sullies Bierstadt's scene in ways similar to how humans have damaged the environment, and in so doing, she skewers the antiquated notion of nature as sublime and beyond our reach. "She literally dematerializes that vision of nature to suggest it's not necessarily the only vision," said Kusserow.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODc4NjQ5OS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwNDQ3MDE2Nn0.ITvwBz8JXhVtu41chvbFwhMDuRu23LNZP6cEXAECzvY/img.jpg?width=980" id="af5e7" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="77aaf2bdaf9126f35c2fafa268a7194e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">Valerie Hegarty, Fallen Bierstadt, 2007</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">© Valerie Hegarty. Photo from the Brooklyn Museum</small></p><p>The exhibit's intention, however, is not to deny or disparage the power of artists like Bierstadt to shape prevailing views of the environment. Bierstadt's popularity in the late 1800s helped encourage the creation of California's first state parks and the launch of modern conservationism. Take, for example, the large-format 2002 photograph <em><a href="http://www.subhankarbanerjee.org/photohtml/arctic-photo-white-02.html" target="_blank">Caribou Migration I</a></em> by Subhankar Banerjee, which captures a vast section of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as seen from an airplane overhead. Single-file lines of barely discernible female caribou cross the icy landscape on their way to calving grounds to the north.<br></p><p>The image has a quiet, peaceful quality to it but caused an uproar back in 2003 during the second Bush administration. As the Indian-born photographer was preparing a solo exhibition at the Smithsonian Institute, he became caught up in the political fight over Arctic drilling when a congresswoman displayed the caribou image on the House floor to counter claims that the refuge was a frozen wasteland. Suddenly, Banerjee's major exhibition at the government-run museum was downsized to a gallery in the basement, an act that some saw as censorship. The move galvanized activism against drilling the Arctic, and Banerjee's photograph is now an icon of the environmental movement.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODc4NjQ4Ny9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTU5ODQ1NzEwMX0.jymmajajQbELSc00E_X5U_e2x8HLeNEpKY5WtgR2AAc/img.jpg?width=980" id="5125c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="6e86b57b7bc1f37159272b6eb2307754" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">Caribou Migration I by Subhankar Banerjee</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Collection Lannan Foundation © Subhankar Banerjee</small></p><p><em>Nature's Nation</em> also zooms in on the production of some earlier American works of art, such as a chest of drawers by Philadelphia cabinetmakers circa 1761. The exhibit presents the highboy of tulip poplar, white cedar, and imported mahogany as an artifact of exploitation. As the museum commentary explains, this gleaming mahogany, meant to embellish an elite Colonial-era home, was probably harvested in Jamaica or Central America by enslaved Africans living in cruel and deplorable conditions. In a short amount of time, loggers cleared much of the region's tropical forests, along with the wildlife they supported. The land then became sugar plantations, where once again slaves suffered terrible fates.<br></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODc4NjQ3Ni9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwMjY4MTE3NX0.Ui0Q8ISUWKOvUjwST0I-q1I8GHpvEdMFzxcUrYToqK8/img.jpg?width=980" id="30eac" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="06869f7cf4ad4f0fdd2cb516fff663db" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">Probably Henry Cliffton and Thomas Carteret, high chest of drawers, ca. 1760.</small>
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Princeton University, Prospect House. Photo by Bruce M. White</small></p><p>The production origins of Morris Louis's color field paintings of the mid-20th century are also highlighted. Louis used thin washes of color in large abstract compositions like <em>Intrigue</em>, 1954, by diluting acrylic paints with gallons of turpentine. Praised for their flatness and airy immateriality, Louis's "<a href="http://morrislouis.org/paintings/gallery/veil_paintings/all" target="_blank">veil paintings</a>" are brought back to earth by an essay describing the notorious "turpentine camps" of the American South. A Depression-era photograph by Dorothea Lange accompanies the essay. <a href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8b29642/" target="_blank">The 1936 image</a> shows a mother and her barefoot children and is titled <em>Turpentine worker's family near Cordele, Alabama. Father's wages one dollar a day. This is the standard of living the turpentine trees support. </em>Needless to say, these mostly African-American laborers have, until recently, never been seen or acknowledged as playing a role in the production of museum-quality art.<br></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODc4NjQ2OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwMDU5ODk4OH0.SCiSeWf6KVab_d1nDeuBWJN4sAHLWv4oNeFkthES3pw/img.jpg?width=980" id="5ce31" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="92502c07e672dce588c551501ab9a711" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">Morris Louis, Intrigue, 1954</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Princeton University Art Museum © 1954, Morris Louis</small></p><p><em>Nature's Nation</em> argues that in the dawn of the Anthropocene period, in which humans play the predominant role in shaping the planet, we urgently need a new way of seeing the world around us—including within art and culture. "One of the great things about ecocriticism, which is the approach we take, is that it enables you to see as if through a new pair of glasses the environmental stories in any kind of work of art, not just in landscape paintings," said Kusserow. For many viewers, this mind-expanding art show at Princeton will be the first step toward that new understanding.<br></p><p>Nature's Nation: American Art and Environment <em>is on view at the Princeton University Art Museum in Princeton, New Jersey, through January 6, 2019. Admission is free.</em></p><p> <em>Reposted with permission from our media associate </em><em><a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/exhibit-examines-nature-and-environmental-justice-three-centuries-american-art" target="_blank">onEarth</a>.</em></p>
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Banksy, who infamously shredded his "Girl With Balloon" painting at an auction on Friday, has inspired people to whip up their own versions of the artwork.
The images are centered around a timely and poignant theme: climate change.
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On Sunday, the United Nations' scientific panel issued a
<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change-ipcc-report-2610866229.html" target="_self">dire report</a> that the world is barreling towards catastrophic global warming if we do not slash carbon emissions.
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We must limit warming below 1.5°C, or the planet will experience increasing wildfires, extreme drought, greater sea level rise and devastating flooding, the climate experts warned.
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</p><div id="5e1d4" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="Z6XAIA1576662678"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1049988263224717314" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Since everyone is surfing on this #banksy wave, thought we'd also make one about #climatechange #globalwarming https://t.co/GFgZ521NLW</div> — saman musacchio (@saman musacchio)<a href="https://twitter.com/musacchios/statuses/1049988263224717314">1539171684.0</a></blockquote></div>
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The long-awaited study, issued by the
<a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/" target="_blank">Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change</a> (IPCC), is a urgent call on governments to move towards greener policies and sustainable technologies.
</p><p style="">
<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coal">Coal</a>, the most polluting
<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/fossil-fuels" target="_self">fossil fuel</a>, must be phased out by 2050, the scientists said.
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</p><div id="f927a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="O3TMER1576662678"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1049624381767454721" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Corporations and the future of our planet ... #Banksy #Banksyauction #banksysothebys #GlobalWarming #climatechange… https://t.co/AgNsXCQVl5</div> — stephff cartoonist (@stephff cartoonist)<a href="https://twitter.com/stephffart/statuses/1049624381767454721">1539084928.0</a></blockquote></div>
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Meanwhile, some politicians dismissed the landmark report, which was authored by 91 researchers from 40 countries and cited more than 6,000 scientific resources.
</p><p style="">
Australia's deputy prime minister Michael McCormack said the nation will "absolutely" <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/ipcc-report-2018-australia-2611176911.html" target="_blank">continue</a> to use and exploit its coal reserves regardless of what the IPCC report says.
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<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/trump" target="_self">President Donald Trump</a>, who intends to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, was skeptical of the report.
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"It was given to me. And I want to look at who drew it. You know, which group drew it. I can give you reports that are fabulous and I can give you reports that aren't so good," Trump told reporters on Tuesday from the South Lawn at the White House.
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</p><div id="53a87" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="A5LDUF1576662678"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1049414569565642752" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">OK. I don't know who to credit for this, but it's brilliant. #climate #climatechange #IPCCReport #IPCC
(If someone… https://t.co/AFHsmC2yfJ</div> — Peter Gleick (@Peter Gleick)<a href="https://twitter.com/PeterGleick/statuses/1049414569565642752">1539034905.0</a></blockquote></div>
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Banksy himself has created climate-related art. In 2009, the famous street artist spray-painted the words "I DON'T BELIEVE IN GLOBAL WARMING" on a wall beside a canal in London.
</p><p>
His message came after the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen that was widely considered a failure for not producing a binding agreement to tackle climate change, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/dec/21/banksy-copenhagen-regents-canal" target="_blank">Guardian</a> reported then.
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<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODcwODQ0NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyNTE1OTI1MX0._6wJrtI0ufYVips5-tEffxEWeKSyuCdUdHkmIbJjbvA/img.jpg?width=980" id="a3fe1" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="3daa0b5ad7a0a455e72b98b5374f6145" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit..."><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dullhunk/" target="_blank" title="Go to Duncan Hull 🐝's photostream">Duncan Hull</a> / Flickr / CC BY 2.0</small>
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