“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?

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