WEB LINKS (Links updated 8.08)
The following list provides links to ecological artists, projects, organizations, and resources that may offer teachers and students useful information and inspiration for developing their own ecological art projects.
ARTISTS
Mel Chin (on Art:21)
The Art:21 site profiles artist Mel Chin and offers two short video features on his Revival Field project, in which he restored the ecology of a hazardous waste landfill site by planting jimsonweed and other transformative plants that eliminated toxic substances from the soil.
Andy Goldsworthy
Andy Goldsworthy creates temporary installations in natural surroundings, using leaves, stones, dirt, snow, and oher natural materials found on site. Also, see Goldsworthy’s pages on the Cass Sculpture Foundation site.
Lynne Hull
Lynne Hull’s sculptures and environmental installations, which she calls “trans-species art,” are designed to restore wildlife habitat damaged by human encroachment and encourage people to reassess their relationship with other species.
Patricia Johanson
Patricia Johanson designs large-scale environmental projects that reclaim impacted ecosystems. In the early 1980s, for example, Johanson worked with a group of engineers, city planners, scientists and local citizens to transform Fair Park Lagoon in Dallas, Texas from a dangerous, polluted body of water into a public place teeming with life, including animals, plants, and people.
Buster Simpson
Lewis “Buster” Simpson's art is about increasing public awareness of the environment, often by using “quick fix” solutions to major global problems (like acid rain or deforestation).
Susan Leibovitz Steinman
Susan Leibovitz Steinman uses materials salvaged directly from community waste streams to construct public art installations that explore the links between local daily life and environmental issues.
Mierle Laderman Ukeles
Mierle Laderman Ukeles has served as artist-in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation since 1979 where she is currently involved in redesigning and reclaiming the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island, the largest garbage landfill in North America.
Reduce/Reuse/Reexamine
Reduce/Reuse/Reexamine, a 2004 exhibition at Wave Hill Glyndor Gallery in Bronx, NY, featured the work of seventeen contemporary artists who use conceptual methods to explore issues of consumption, waste generation and removal, and who reinvigorate discarded materials.
Nancy Judd - Recycle Runway
A collection of elegant recycled garments that raise environmental consciousness and create excitement about sustainability.
Earthly Matter: From the Global Scrap Heaps by Suzanne Seriff
Examples of recycling genius on an individual or community level can be found all over the world, from bread wrapper rugs in America to tin can travel trunks in Africa.
Pop!Casts - Chris Jordan
Photographer Chris Jordan explains images from his Running the Numbers series and speaks passionately about the issue of waste.
PROJECTS
AMD&ART
AMD&ART is a sequential, three-site project that blends innovative science, responsive landscape design, community history, and active citizen participation to create public spaces in which to explore, learn, reflect, and recreate. Working in Southwestern Pennsylvania, a region crippled by the shifting fortunes of coal in a global economy, AMD&ART works with communities to reclaim a heritage that orange streams have long stained and to work together toward a stronger future.
California Wash: A Memorial – Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison
California Wash is a mixed-media installation constructed on the site of a storm drain and is intended to draw attention to the natural history and drainage of the once wild California coastline that now flows through the culverts beneath the streets of Santa Monica. Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, a collaborative husband and wife artist team based in Southern California, developed this public art project in 1996. Since the early 1970s, the Harrisons have worked together on a number of ecological projects that have used “survival” as a motif and that have highlighted the co-evolution of cultural diversity and biodiversity. Their work involves extensive research on large-scale ecosystems and has included reclamation pieces, anthropological studies, growth systems, and environmental impact studies. They often use drawing, photography, transformed maps, and collage in relationship to written text, as well as live performance, to form their works. To learn more about the Harrisons read Pioneer eco-artists spin web of nature, culture and ideas by Mary Thomas (2002).
Ghost Nets
Ghost Nets was a nine-year environmental art project by Aviva Rahmani that concluded in 2000. The project took place on the exposed east side of Vinalhaven Island, a fishing village, 13 miles off mid-coast Maine. There were several layers of reclamation: personal, conceptual and literal. This web site concerns itself with tracking the literal, physical reclamation, and outreaching the ideas developed in the original project.
7000 Oaks Project – Joseph Beuys
7000 Oaks is an urban forest renewal project that Joseph Beuys started in Kassel, Germany in1982 as part of a global mission to effect environmental and social change. This page shows an extension of the 7000 Oaks Project by the Dia Center in New York City after the artist’s death.
Green Map System
The Green Map System is a globally connected, locally adaptable eco-cultural project in which participants create community maps that identify and promote their community's environmental assets. The site contains examples of student-made maps and a classroom guide.
ORGANIZATIONS
Ecoartspace
Ecoartspace is a nonprofit organization working internationally with individuals and organizations that are interested in using art as a tool to create radical approaches to restoring the earth. Their Web site offers a wealth of images and information on environmental art projects and environmental education initiatives involving schools.
EnviroLink
The EnviroLink Network is a non-profit organization that has been providing access to thousands of online environmental resources since 1991.
Environment Canada
This science-based government department helps Canadians live and prosper in an environment that is properly protected and conserved. Includes a wide range of resources and links on environmental issues.
Greenmuseum.org
The Green Museum is a nonprofit, online museum of environmental art dedicated to advancing creative efforts to improve our relationship with the natural world. Includes links to featured artists, news items, links, and more.
National Council for Science and the Environment
The NCSE (in Washington DC) sponsors this site that includes a wide range of information and resources on the environment.
The Sockeye Arts
Sockeye Arts is a art, education and science organization directed by Gregg Schlange.
Tunza
In February 2003, the Governing Council of UNEP adopted a long-term strategy for engaging young people in environmental activities and in the work of UNEP. The strategy was entitled the TUNZA Youth Strategy.
READINGS
Ecovention by Sue Spaid
The term ecovention (ecology + invention) was coined in 1999 to describe an artist-initiated project that employs an inventive strategy to physically transform an ecosystem. This site offers an illustrated summary of a book and exhibition by the same title that juxtaposes interesting ecological facts alongside case studies of projects artists have realized while collaborating with scientists and community members.
Earth Day Resources
Earthday Network
The Earth Day Network is an alliance of 5,000 groups in 184 countries working to promote a healthy environment and a peaceful, just, sustainable world. This site includes a variety of resources to help people organize Earth Day events and to make a lasting difference for a better world.
Earth Day – The Wilderness Society
This site for teachers and students is sponsored by The Wilderness Society and offers a variety of information, classroom resources, and activities related to the environment.
Earth Day at Kids Domain
This site includes a wide range of informational resources and activities for kids related to ecology and the earth.
50 Ways to Help the Planet
Tips on reducing your carbon footprint.
CURRICULUM RESOURCES
Bill Moyers Reports: Earth On Edge
This 2001 PBS program followed journalist Bill Moyers as he traveled around the globe to report on the impact of the human species on Earth, probing two of the most critical questions of the new century: What is happening to Earth's capacity to support the human species and civilization? And, what can we do about it? The program presents the findings of scientists who are studying the health of our world, as well as stories of ordinary people working to restore the health and well-being of ecosystems around the world. This website consists of a number of related resources that teachers and students can use for research in the classroom.
Education for Sustainable Development Toolkit
This site includes articles, activities, and other resources to help teachers integrate sustainability into the curriculum.
IMAGES OF THE EARTH
Earth From Space
The NASA Space Shuttle Earth Observations Photography searchable database of over 400,000 images.
NASA Photo Gallery
Includes 1000s of images of earth and other cosmic phenomenon.
Visible Earth
A searchable database of images, visualizations, and animations of the earth from NASA.
