Ecological Art


Ecological Art

 

Ecological art can take many forms including educating people on environmental issues, researching ecologies, creating art with natural materials, and creating projects – or designs for projects – that actually heal the natural world.

 

Beth Carruthers explores trends, issues and advances in ecological art collaborations among artists, environmental groups, communities and scientists: “EcoART collaborations frequently focus on engaging communities in not only awareness of problems (which are often all too evident), but on finding and implementing in solutions. These solutions might be bio-remedial, yet they may often be celebratory. Ritual and celebration are community building – they engage people with place and habitat. In the face of real challenges and losses, such as disappearing wild salmon, they can inform and assist communities in coping and staying solution focused. EcoART collaborations also often focus on preservation, or conservation…. Such work ranges in form from education, to community building, to direct action and intervention.”

 

from Beth Carruthers (2006). Mapping the terrain of contemporary ecoart practice and collaboration. Background paper for ART in ECOLOGY – a think tank on arts and sustainability, Vancouver, British Columbia.http://www.unesco.ca/en/activity/sciences/documents/BethCarruthersArtinEcologyResearchReportEnglish.pdf

 

The Green Museum

 

maintains an online environmental art museum at http://greenmuseum.org/

 

Ghost Nets

 

Aviva Rahmani "Ghost Nets" is nine-year art project about restoration. The original site was 2 1/2 acres of degraded habitat. The site is presently a model wetlands restoration system that re-establishes keystone linkage for 70 acres of open land.

 

The light blue line indicates the Line of Demarcation between restored uplands and unrestored granite quarry detritus. The red line indicates where spring storm erosion collapsed a 30' swathe of hillside. The green line indicates a shallow natural Wave Attenuation Barrier. The darker blue-green line indicates where a new Wave Attentuation Barrier has been created to reduce future erosion while grasses colonize and stabilize the bank. Image is located on http://www.ghostnets.com/ghostnets/visualjournal/restored2.html

 

Rahmani writes, "It took me twenty years to put technological work, environmental art and an interest in the issues that degrade people… together. When I did, I called it "Ghost Nets" because the technology of the fishing industry traps sea life as we trap each other and our environment in the denial of our interdependence. It is important to me to see the loss of salt marsh wetlands anthropomorphically and its subsequent "rescue" as metaphorical but these are not simply poetic allusions." http://www.ghostnets.com/ghostnets.html

 

 

The SongBird Project

 

 

The SongBird Project in B. C. ran from 1997- 2002. Artists worked with communities in “outreach initiatives and alliances to engage people in learning about and caring for their local environments.” One of their projects was the “Babylon Gardens Challenge” - a contest to promote songbird-friendly habitat in urban centres. In partnership with the Institute of Urban Ecology at Douglas College, SongBird offered workshops on urban habitat design for small spaces and awarded prizes for the best songbird-friendly balcony and rooftop habitat in Vancouver. See http://www.songbirdproject.ca/

 

Ecological art is explored in various places in the library including Community Art, Community Cultural Development, ecoartspace,Ecoventions, Ephemeral Art, Brownfield Redevelopment, Engaged Research and Ecological Restoration and also individual artists including Patricia Johanson, Renée Poisson, Caffyn Kelley, Betsy Damon, Diana Thompson and many others.

 

See also http://www.ecoartnetwork.org