Art and our world Archive

The Art of Domestic Microfarming

Jenna Spevack and one of her microfarmsJenna Spevack is an artist and designer and an art professor at City University of New York. She is also an environmental advocate, with an art exhibition titled 8 Extraordinary Greens.

The gallery show consists of a series of furniture objects converted into what Spevack calls domestic microfarms. “My art studio landlord collects objects from junkyards,” Spevack explained to Organic Connections. “I’ve taken these salvaged objects and turned them into little microfarms—outfitting them with lights and a sub-irrigated planter that I developed.” The objects include bookcases, tables and other items, neatly fitted with planters sprouting the likes of beets, chard, arugula, cress and kale.

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Putting an Environmental Message in “Ski Porn”

by Rae Tyson, via The Daily Climate,

David Mossop and Sherpas Cinemas are transforming ski flicks, turning the usual plot-less, context-less jumble of skiing images into a message about environmental destruction, mass consumption and climate change.A critically acclaimed film combining action, free-style skiing and a climate impact message debuted this fall. Representing the leading edge of a new wave of ski films, All.I.Can juxtaposes "ski-porn"—plot-less montages of expert skiers flying down and off impossibly steep mountainsides—against images of environmental destruction and mass consumption. Reviewers say the movie, available on DVD and to be released on iTunes on Nov. 14, could change the genre permanently.

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A Glacier in the Desert—Making the Impossible Possible

SunGlacier Arist impression Building a glacier in the desert. It seems impossible, but artist Ap Verheggen, together with experts from Cofely Refrigeration, successfully conducted the first tests to prove different.

Verheggen, known from previous arctic projects that drew attention worldwide, in cooperation with Cofely Refrigeration, specialist in cooling technique, proved that it is possible to generate a glacier in a desert in a ‘climate simulation’. They discovered that it is possible to create ice in extreme dry and hot conditions. By using solar energy in the most optimal way it can even be done without adding water. This is an important step in realizing an new art project: SunGlacier.

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Dr. Dirt: Creating Clean Scenes in Gritty Cities

by Greg Hanscom, via Grist.org,

 Broadway Tunnel in San Francisco, April 2009. Photo: MooseStreet artist Paul Curtis, better known as "Moose," was having some difficulty with the police. The officers had just arrested him for creating designs on a wall in South London. But it was complicated -- as things often are when Moose is involved.

You see, Moose doesn't use spray paint or wallpaper paste -- the usual tools of this trade. Instead, he wields scrub brushes, old socks, cleaning fluid, and, when he's living large, a high-pressure hose. He creates images by cleaning shapes into filthy urban surfaces such as retaining walls, signs, and tunnels.

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The Boston Tree Party: Covering the City with Trees

by Lily Mihalik, via Grist.org,

Lisa GrossLisa Gross is an artist and urban food activist who heads up a budding coalition called the Boston Tree Party. The group organizes the planting of pairs of heirloom apple trees around the city of Boston in the hopes of ultimately forming a patchwork of free fruit and community engagement.

Inspired by what she calls the City of Apples, Gross has worked with delegations of tree stewards all around the city to transform Boston's public spaces, as well as the social and environmental health of its residents. An artist with an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts, Gross runs an umbrella nonprofit called Hybrid Vigor Projects. She's also the founder and head of Boston's Urban Homesteaders' League.

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Calling all artists: The climate movement needs you!

by Brendan Smith, Joe Uehlein, via Grist.org,

People from the Delta del Ebro region in Spain joined together under the direction of Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada to form a giant depiction of a girl named Gal•la, bringing attention to how future generations will pay the price for climate change. "Gal•la" was part of the 350 EARTH project by 350.org, which had satellites photograph large public art installations around the planet. Photo by Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada Throughout history, artists have joined forces with political movements to battle injustice and demand a better and more beautiful world. Picasso's "Guernica" captured the horrors of the German bombing of civilians in 1937. "Solidarity Forever," "We Shall Overcome," and "Give Peace a Chance" expressed the optimism and power of the labor, civil rights, and peace movements. Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People" embodied the utopian fervor of the French Revolution. Shepard Fairey's Obama "Hope" silkscreen during the 2008 election captured America's yearning for a more visionary politics.

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GreenAid’s Guerrilla Gumball-Machine Gardening

The entirely fun, mad concept of guerrilla gardening involves planting gardens on someone else’s land. The term was coined in the 1970s, and at that time involved the use of “seed grenades”—containers (actually condoms) filled with local wildflower seeds, water and fertilizer—which were tossed over fences onto empty lots in New York City in order to beautify neighborhoods.

Today, two young innovators, Daniel Phillips and Kim Karlsrud, who run an interdisciplinary design studio in Los Angeles called COMMONStudio, have combined the concepts of seedbombs and guerrilla gardening with a seemingly unlikely mechanical invention: the gumball machine. The project is called GreenAid, and its popularity is rapidly catching on.

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Powers of Ten

Charles and Ray Eames were American designers who made major contributions to modern architecture and furniture design.

This short film, "Powers of Ten", written and directed by Ray and Charles Eames was made in 1968 and depicts the relative scale of the Universe in factors of ten. In 1998, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

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Natalie Jeremijenko: Environmental art + science

Natalie Jeremijenko: Environmental art + science

Meet Natalie Jeremijenko, a new media artist who works at the intersection of contemporary art, science and engineering. But this is no ordinary artist, by any stretch. She was recently named one of the 40 most influential designers by I.D. magazine, and her background includes studies in biochemistry, physics, neuroscience and precision engineering. Her projects—which explore sociotechnical change—have been exhibited by several museums and galleries, including the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the Whitney, and the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt. A 1999 Rockefeller Fellow, she currently has an exhibition at New York’s Neuberger Museum of Art entitled “Connected Environments.”

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Photographer Pete Oxford: Truly Making a Difference

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” So goes the old adage, but in this day and age when we are deluged with photographs ranging widely in quality, the idea can get rather lost. We might tend to lose sight of the fact that there are people out there like nature photographer Pete Oxford—who is truly making a difference.

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Bringing Conservation into Focus, Photographers with Meaning and Purpose

Lemur“Bringing Conservation into Focus” is their motto—and it’s something the International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP) does extremely well. Consisting of the who’s who of conservation photography, this group wields its power to help educate the world community on ecological issues and to further conservation goals. Member photographers work with the top conservation organizations, including Conservation International, the International Wilderness Leadership Foundation and The Nature Conservancy among many others.

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Dennis Frates, Focusing on Nature

Dennis Frates has one of those jobs the rest of us can only dream about. From his home surrounded by breathtaking scenery in Wilsonville, Oregon, he strikes out on photographic excursions throughout the West, including his latest favorite: the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

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Chris Jordan, the art of consumerism

When you stand back at a distance, our consumerism doesn’t look so bad,” Chris Jordan says. “In fact, it looks pretty good. We get all these cool, beautiful things—snazzy cell phones, new BMWs, and much more. But when you walk up close and look at the details, when you zoom all the way in, it looks like something very different.”

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