“we need an urgent call to arms. . . to bring as much science as we possibly can to bear on the problem”
No, I didn’t make that up to make fun of using science like a blunt instrument against our problems. It came from this article about the troubles of American bee colonies, a staggering quarter of which have died (just in the last year and a half, I think, although tabulating different news articles complicates my maths, which were never very stellar anyway).
How do I know about this? Not because I was paying attention to the news, really. But someday my graphic designer/illustrator fiance wants to have an apiary. If he does, we will have a very well-pollinated garden. Supposedly every third bite of produce we eat was pollinated by bees (thank you, PBS!).
There’s also some interesting art coming out of the sad plight of the bees. Check out this website for some movie clips and podcasts (from venerable instituations like PBS’ Nature show) about bees and their disappearance, as well as photography of a fantastic-looking art exhibit.
I’ve never thought of myself as an artist who’s interested in the convergence between science and art or science and the humanities. I’m honestly not interested in close-up photography of cells or plants as art — as beautiful as it may be, it is simply not rigorously thought out, not engaging on an intellectual level. But I really respect artwork which is fully engaged with its surroundings, so if you are an ecologically aware person who does things like plant a garden in the city, abstain from manicuring your lawn in favor of letting nature take its course, or planting wildflowers so that bees or other insects have something to eat, then it’s natural for those things to show up in your artwork as you examine the world. So you can make fascinating art about science through both the way you live and the work you make, something beautiful, intellectually stimulating, and full of deep thought.
I don’t think I’ll ever smush a bee again.
And all this makes me think — earth/site art is all about going out into the world and taking what you see and making something impermanent and beautiful from exactly what’s around you. It doesn’t have to have an audience. It doesn’t even have to be recorded, although earth artists usually do take photographs. Remember Jim Denevan? Or Andy Goldsworthy? Planting wildflowers is a form of earth art. Refusing to use pesticides is a form of earth art. Planting peppers is a form of earth art. It’s all about loving the world around you, acknowledging that you affect the world you move through, and making sure that your movements are beautiful and pleasing to you, that they bring a kind of order instead of destruction, and recognizing that your entire life’s work is impermanent, that it will change into something else, as if we were never there, the moment we’re gone. It’s all about recognizing ways in which we can interact with the world that enhance both us and it, just for a little while.
SO BEAUTIFUL!
Beautiful in the sense of full of meaning, satisfying, not just pretty. Something soul-fulfilling.
Why am I not an earth artist? I’m not sure. But I have to say, it’s the kind of art that seems to me to be the most worth making, the most full of integrity, the one that really is full of belief, or an expression of belief. It’s certainly the epitome of everything I believe about art, the way it should function in an individual’s life to heighten their awareness, the way it should mimic our movement through life (finding unexpected tools to create beauty and stumbling upon something intimately beautiful, created by someone else, now and then; bringing to our attention the inherent worth of artwork and beauty and living in a beautiful way, whether anyone sees or acknowledges it or not; recognizing the impermanence of our life’s work, except in its residue, documentation, like relationships left behind when we die, leaving a faint trace; it seems so full of hope, that our efforts can make something good in the world that someone might stumble on; the purpose of the artwork seems to be to get the artist oustide him or herself and observing and interacting with the wider world).
It makes me wonder what an earth artist would look like in an urban context. . . does anyone know of someone doing earth or site art in a city?
Filed under general | Comment (0)middle-summer
Of all the challenges I would face in college, I simply didn’t expect to be so exhausted coming towards the end of all my classes. In fact, I rather doubt my vocation lately, because I have no energy to devote to being passionate or even interested in my fields of expertise.
You know what kind of art I love more and more, the more exhausted I get? Earth art. Site art. Extremely temporary art that’s just about being in the environment and experiencing it with new eyes. There’s an artist named Jim Denevan who does drawings in sand beaches at low tide. He’ll work for up to 7 hours and can walk up to 30 miles in service to his piece, which is destroyed not long after its creation by the rising water.
It’s so the opposite of what I’ve learned in class about art, and my own preservational instincts. Create something beautiful — put your whole self and energy into it, even if it lasts less than a day, because a beautiful thing is full of inherent worth, good in itself, because it brings you into full knowledge of the world around you, for maybe only one moment.
That’s the kind of art that speaks of continual renewal and refreshment in its creation, and the kind of art I’d like to make someday. . . .
Have a happy Friday. I’m going to spend mine doing things that rest and refresh me.
Filed under general | Comment (0)fleeting vacation, or: the Maine event (because who can resist a pun on Maine? Even the locals do it.)
Well, I’m back from Maine — lobstered, crab-caked, cabined, oceaned and fished out. And, although I truly enjoyed the trip, I have to also say I am relieved to be in a largely bug-free environment again. For a few days, the ceilings of our cabin were swarming with flying ants, whose prevalence made it a little hard for me to sleep with ease of mind (and also caused my flip-flops to be christened as battle-axes-without-peer-and-baptized-in-the-flames-of-combat in the war against things-with-two-many-legs).
Although I object in principle to the thought of swimming where things live — i.e. the ocean, the lake, or the river: any place which is not heavily chlorinated — I did go to the ocean and meet with my friend Liz and her boyfriend Jordan and we swam in the ocean and hung out at the beach. Even though I could not see my feet and there were super creepy amounts of seaweed and I saw a crab and some kids caught a lobster which definitely means that things were living under my very feet as we swam and possibly swimming around and contemplating taking a tiny nibble out of my calves — I swam. So. One fear faced on one day, who knows how many days and fears to go? I can do it. Also, I ate a lobster roll, which is highly delicious.
Lobsters “in the rough” (as artist Kim Villard dubbed them) require a complicated coordination to eat. But are also as delicious as their simple lobster-roll brethren. It takes a lobster 7 years to reach eating size, and the entirety of Boothbay Harbor, ME, is carpeted with colorful markers to lobster pots. Also, did you know that the largest lobster ever caught weighed 44 pounds and stretched to 41 inches long? That’s nearly 4 feet! Somewhere out there, in the ocean, there may be lobsters as tall as a 10-year-old, and weighing as much as my golden retriever.
If this monster lobster, about half the size of the largest ever caught, is estimated to be 50 years old, then that huge lobster, the nearly-four-feet-long one? It must’ve been nearly a hundred. Those Canadians, way back in ‘77, did they eat the largest, most ancient lobster? Can you stuff and mount a lobster? ’cause that would make one AWESOMELY WEIRD wall decoration.
Meeting artist Kim Villard and seeing her Maine studio (she and her husband, Phillipe, partner to create artwork, spend the summers in Maine, and the rest of the year in the south of France where he’s from) comprised another highlight of Maine. I learned about white-line woodblock printing, which uses watercolors instead of oil-based inks, many many colors, and creates prints that are one-of-a-kind. Because of the way ink is applied, the process is much more painterly, and there are variations to every piece they create. Pretty sweet. I can’t wait to try it!
Although I have to admit, after those few weeks of “go to my full time job come home eat dinner go to the studio and work until 11 p.m. go to bed get up and do it again” to finish our joint show for Cafe Beracah in Lebanon, I’m tired. I’m ready for a summer of playing around with ideas, looking into new processes or materials, sketching, and taking silly digital photographs. And less time spent on intense production.
Can it be that the summer is nearly half over? Dear goodness. Where did it go?
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