Using “Toxic Art” to Advocate Water Sustainability

Water sustainability can be carried out in multiple ways. John Sabraw is an artist that works with environmentalists and scientists to do research on streams polluted from abandoned coal mines in Ohio. He also works on making a fully sustainable art practice that produces eco-conscious art. His recent art pieces, called “Toxic Art”, were made from pigments created from the acid polluted mine runoff. These vibrant art pieces are not only beautiful to look at, but also brings awareness to the pollution of our world’s waters due to humans and industrialization.  Continue reading “Using “Toxic Art” to Advocate Water Sustainability”

The Importance of Technology for Sustainability and the Environment

Cities around the world, including our own New York City, have been referred to as “concrete jungles,” one of the only real associations to nature given to cities, along with having to battle with pigeons as you commute to school or work. Despite having small designated areas reserved for nature in parks, the city itself remains largely grey. Naziha Mestaoui, a light artist, has created a powerful statement through her creation of the “One Beat, One Tree,” a technological light art piece, in which she projects virtual trees onto cityscapes and a new virtual tree will bloom with every heartbeat of the viewer. In her statement regarding this magnificent art piece, she said, “‘I wanted to create an art piece using technologies to connect us to this immaterial value of nature… If we want technologies to reconnect us to nature, we just need to create it’” (Frank). Her statement represents the need to use innovations and technology to reconnect us to nature and to remind the world of the importance of our environment.

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Outside Resource: the art of Gordon Matta-Clark and New York in the 1970s

In the 1970s the artist Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) entered condemned buildings in the Bronx and, using a chainsaw, cut out parts of the architectural support. Matta-Clark considered the transitory, fugitive acts of (illegally) entering and cutting as the work of art so he documented his process with photographs that were then exhibited in galleries:

Gordon Matta-Clark, Threshole, 1972-73. Image Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/07/towards-anarchitecture-gordon-matta-clark-and-le-corbusier
Gordon Matta Clark, Bronx Floors (1972-73). MOMA. Image source: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/81396

His work doesn’t aim to create “beautiful” art but explore the politics of place and space. In her book about Matta-Clark, Object to be Destroyed Pamela M. Lee describes the relationship between artist, artistic practice, and space:

Matta-Clark reflected critically on the temporality of the build environment, a materialist recoding of an “architecture of time.” For the presence of his work within both the urban and suburban sphere emanded that it be encountered as a socialized thing; and its imminent demolition ensured that it not be elevated to the rank of transcendent art objects.

Source: Lee, Object to be Destroyed, 11.

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