The ecoartspace blog features artist profiles and interviews, as well as writings on ecological systems. We are interested in presenting work that our members are making in collaboration with scientists, and poetics including spoken word, opera, and performative work. Painting, sculpture, ceramics, photography, drawing, and printmaking are all welcome media. Speculative architecture and public art are also encourage. Submissions for posts can be sent to info@ecoartspace.org. We look forward to hearing from you!

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ecoartspace (1997-2019), LLC (2020-2024)

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  • Friday, October 04, 2024 10:13 AM | Anonymous


    Image: Bed of Nets Aviva Rahmani 1992

    Metaphors and Murder

    How Do We Come to a Dead Forest?

    Aviva Rahmani, October 1, 2024 Substack

    Ecocide is murder, whether you consider a forest sentient or calculate how many people die because their habitat is destroyed, it is a crime against humanity that ends in death. Halfway through the new aria to be performed by the soprano Alison Cheeseman at the Anita Rogers Gallery October 30, the wife of the fossil fuel executive accused of ecocide sings, "I was standing alone, naked in a dead forest." How did she end there? As she laments her cold marriage and the Earth her husband has scorched, her alter ego, played by the dancer Rishauna Zomberg, wrestles with a large blue-painted branch from the dead forest, the reality she had been oblivious to see.

    I saw the wife's nakedness as a metaphor.  The metaphor tells a story about a psychological stripping down. All the wife's defenses against grief, facing just how destructive the man she loves has been, come down even as a part of her struggles with the barren real world his destructiveness has left her to inhabit alone. It is a turning point, a time to face reality. She is just one figure among many facing the realities of climate change. The whole world has clear choices now: face the effects of climate change created by fossil fuel use or live in a forest of death. Begin to hold people responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity or let them walk away with impunity.

    Metaphor and storytelling narratives create worlds. The central metaphor in the entire Blued Trees project is blue on live and dead wood: a blue sine wave on designated sentinel trees in the forest, dead, broken blue painted branches in galleries: the threat of death and death itself made beautiful, even, as in The Blued Trees Symphony, threat and death was made into music. The world I am shaping now is the dystopic world we may leave ourselves if we cannot establish firm boundaries: naked in a dead forest. That will all take place in a gallery, the venue for an informal mock trial, in which all will be judged.

    A color can be a metaphor. The blue I use evokes the calm pleasure of blue skies and waters. The blue on the trees and branches I use is Ultramarine, a non-toxic, now synthetic pigment, once ground from Lapiz Lazuli and very costly. It was reserved for special images, such as the Madonna's robes, surely something the real Madonna could never have aspired to wear. With a touch of black, it became Yves Klein’s color. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Klein_Blue#:~:text=International%20Klein%20Blue%20(IKB)%20is%20a%20deep%20blue%20hue%20first

    Lakoff and Johnson explored the political implications of using metaphor to change a world. More systematic studies have since been conducted on the effects of metaphorical framing. Metaphors can embody the gist of a culture's values even if the world depicted is delusional, whether an image of an idealized blond Madonna, dressed in expensive garments cradling a precocious Jesus or a Richard Prince revision of the photograph that became the Marlboro man.

    In the case of the Madonna, the cultural enshrinement of falsity is remarkable: a middle eastern blonde dressed like a European noblewoman exemplifying a putative relationship between religion and aristocrats to justify the oppressions of European monarchies. Prince did something, similar, reifying a mythical paradox: that a healthy outdoor life was compatible with smoking cigarettes but then he did something different, by then taking the low art of advertising into a high art venue. Prince was part of the appropriation movement of the seventies, which began dabbling in culture-jamming, turning tropes on their heads to make socio-political points, as in B Barbara Kruger's appropriation of advertising design to make challenging cultural statements. These artists and the works of others, whose appropriations tested the limits and boundaries of copyright law were challenging the notion of who owns what and why. Since then, copyright law is again being tested and is now, a hot legal topic in the promotion of AI.

    It was in the seventies that I first became fascinated by copyright law and took my first law class. At the time, an idealistic goal of the appropriation movement was to make all cultural artifacts free to all, as a matter of common rights. Eventually, that morphed into a series systems to gain reasonable access but still protect intellectual property.

    What initially drew me into studying copyright law was outrage over how the appropriation movement was used by some to excuse cultural theft from the less powerful: younger artists and researchers, Indigenous Peoples and partners, generally, wives and girlfriends at the time.  I became committed to the idea that appropriation without attribution was both outright theft and an historical impoverishment, rubbing us of an historical understanding of how ideas develop.

    Since the seventies, a number of politicians and pundits have grasped the power of metaphor and noted the creation of mythical stories to promote policy, as Heather Cox Richardson has pointed out in how Ronald Reagan launched and leveraged the trope of the independent cowboy to promote ultra conservative values .

    Reagan's campaign, like church's promotion of a wealthy, blond Madonna en familia, untethered metaphor and regulatory logic and yet it successfully sold a conservative agenda. Extractive policies were primarily sold by relentlessly leveraging the emotional triggering that evoked 1950's movies about a delusional world of valiant white cowboys, conquering malignant Indians on an open range.  In truth, the real cowboys were often people of color. The Indians were brutally persecuted in ignominious ways and the range was only open because of genocide and ecocide. As the costly blue of the blond Madonna's robes, this was the selling of a lie. It was the opposite of truth. And yet, these tropes were remarkably successful in trading on lies to effect oppression.

    In an actual court of law, which might lead to actual policy with some idea of justice, any plaintiff’s pleas must be backed by standing. Standing is a plaintiff's right to be heard because there is an ownership relationship, recognized in the community. Theoretically, simple publishing creates copyright. In court, one way to establish standing for any ownership is evidence of community credibility. So, for example, the standing of Blued Trees in the 2018 Mock Trial was established on the basis of expert art testimony about its art historical significance.

    I have always been mindful of the stories metaphors can tell and sought verisimilitude in the corollaries. In 1992, as I was beginning Ghost Nets (1990-2000), I assembled a number of drift nets I had collected at the local town dump, and placed them on an iron bed, that had been painted gloss white. I called it the, "Bed of Nets," and said it was a metaphor for all our familiar habits and routines that like the lost drift nets in the sea, become internal ghost nets, indiscriminately trapping and killing life, drifting indestructibly through the oceans of our lives for many, many years. Ghostnets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_net were a central metaphor for the entire project and have returned to my mind, almost twenty-five years later, in Blued Trees.

    My idea in the Bed of Nets, was that we get in bed with what is familiar, literally and figuratively and it may kill us. It was such a powerful idea for me, that what drove the entire Ghost Nets project for me, was to experiment with doing what was unfamiliar for me towards restoring the former dump site into flourishing wetlands. That theme, of braving what was unfamiliar and scared me culminated fifteen years later with gaining my PhD with a hard science cross over for, "Trigger Point Theory as Aesthetic Activism."

    Eventually, I took the experiment further,  doing what scared me, I began working on an opera based on the mock trial for The Blued Trees Symphony, and most recently, performed the wife's new aria a Capela for it

    That aria will be the raw material for the event Oct. 30 at the Anita Rogers Gallery. The aria is about a relationship between a fossil fuel executive, his wife and the Earth he has despoiled but the deeper content for me is the question of what we get in bed with? What are the tolerances we accept as the Earth burns and drowns? What are the limits of our liabilities? Holding powerful people accountable for murder does not come easily for most of us.

    Eventually, I took my experimentation into my personal life in a difficult relationship, I learned to let the concrete facade of my defenses fall off me as intimacy grew, exposing new raw skin to air and light, living what the wife in my aria clung to and knowing how finally, reality will tear away her last defenses. My personal courage translates back to greater boldness in my wor.

    In the aria under production for October 30, the wife has been in bed with a world destroyer who is her love. She has not yet connected to the disconnect between her memories of love and the dead world he left her that she sees in her dreams and carries on her back. The context of the production will be an audience who will be tasked with judging accountability for each of them: the executive and the wife. Was her disconnect deliberate? Is her disconnect the same as denial and did her denial enable her husband to live long and flourish in his crimes against humanity with impunity?  Was she blinded by an idea of her husband, a narcisistic delusion? Will she be left with anything but the dead forest? Those are some of the questions I intend to find answers to from my audience October 30, in a chain of questions that lead to a dead forest, a dead planet.



  • Tuesday, October 01, 2024 11:00 AM | Anonymous


    Mineral Mountains & Azimuth. Cast pigmented jesmonite with gold, shungite and iron oxide on wooden plinths. The Mountains are inspired by geodata forms of Iron Mountain, with additional minerals imbued with healing pure pigments. Azimuth - gunter chain on pigmented wall.

    Mining for Fossils and a Better Future: Kathryn Maguire’s Geological Sculptures Voice People and The Land
    By: Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

    Kathryn Maguire gives form to location-specific minerals and, by doing so, creates gentle conversations about environmental activism and difficult histories. Through a highly collaborative and research-based approach, her pieces speak both to stories and aesthetics embedded in materiality and the land. In her recent solo show, To the Mountain, and throughout her career, Kathryn solidifies connections between the experiential landscape and what lies beneath its surface.


    To the Mountain,  2024. Leitrim Limestone carved with a trig point symbol by Seamus Dunbar.

    Kathryn, I want to start with your current and first solo show, “To the Mountain.” What has this exhibition experience brought to your practice?

    The gallery space is a test site and space for expanding and dreaming, it’s a great supported exhibition residency. I was fully immersed in the works and the space. I could spread my wings as it were. I could dream the space into being and be embedded in the work. Overall, the opportunity to create a solo show helped focus and define my practice and making. It allowed me to hone my ideas and complete conversations.  


    Underground Potential, 2022/2024, sculpture made in Jesmonite and pigments inspired by the form of Mir Mine in Russia, the deepest mine in the world, the Treasure Leitrim used the Mir Mine as an image on their posters. 

    Locality is deeply embedded in the spaces and conversations you integrate in your work. What do you hope artistic expression can uniquely achieve for your awareness work? 

    The exhibition To the Mountain had real tools of measurement used in surveyance and mapping. I wanted to make this visible. The mapping of Ireland occurred in the 1800’s when Ireland was ruled by the British Empire. Ireland was the first country to be entirely mapped in the World. The technology involved was extraordinary.

    The local history of Leitrim is in a critical position as there is a risk of Gold and Silver Mining. Regional organizations have worked tirelessly to object to the mining, as it will risk the landscape, water and people within a large area of Leitrim.

    Many geologists have said we have extracted all the metals we need; all those metals need to be reused and recycled; this would involve the circular economy model. In Ireland, there is an incentive for everyone to recycle and repurpose and it’s advertised on the radio and TV. The vision for the Programme, which is led by the EPA, is an Ireland where the circular economy ensures that everyone uses less resources and prevents waste to achieve sustainable economic growth.


    Brake Dust, 2020, Jesmonite casts explore the idea of what Air Pollution might look like if it were imagined as a sculptural object. This is the first in a series of works using crystallography to imagine the unimaginable and indecipherable. The individual casts are scaled-up models of the crystal magnetite, which is an iron ore.

    This is such important information given the contentious history that played out not far from your show and residency location at Leitrim Sculpture Center. What considerations have come up while exploring the local landscape?

    The border is no longer a charged political zone, although there are levies and taxes charged on goods since Brexit. As a result, it has become more expensive to make artwork in the South, due to shipping fees and VAT increases.

    I was very conscious of the new extractive industries that have attempted to open up Gold mining in Leitrim, they have managed to secure prospecting licenses, but have not been able to mine due to the orders being blocked or delayed. The local Save Dough Mountain group, Stop Mining Leitrim and Treasure Leitrim groups have done incredibly extensive research on the devastating damage it will cause to wildlife, the local water and people and the mountains.

    While on site, I was very aware of the groups and the tension in the area due to the threat. In 2023, the “Leitrim Under Attack,” a two-day event saw local environmental activists host “water protectors” involved in the Standing Rock protest against the Dakota Access oil pipeline in the United States. “We are here in solidarity and support of the folks in Leitrim who want to keep gold mining out of their county,” said Chas Jewett, a Lakota activist who was involved in the Standing Rock protest. “There are other ways for us to be living. We should be thinking about the seventh generation, seven generations from now and about their access to water rather than our access to gold.”

    I feel the way I positioned the artworks in the gallery was a gentle conversation about over-mining and extraction. The Underground Potential artwork is a sculpture made in Jesmonite and pigments, in the form of the Mir Mine in Russia, the deepest mine in the world, the Treasure Leitrim used the Mir Mine as an image on their posters.   


    Rock - A Library of Materials,  2022-ongoing, is an extensive examination of materials. An ancient piece of Quartz sourced from Ubley Waren, from the ‘rake’ of a Roman Lead Mine, was then moulded in silicon rubber. The mould became the form to test and cast multiple materials.

    These gentle conversations play out in many of your works through material as well (like the Jesmonite and pigments).  What factors do you take into consideration when developing your work?

    I would never prise a rock from its location, as that is wrong. As I am a member of many geological organizations (like the Irish Geological Association and the Geological Association in the UK), we go on field trips and share information. I have also extensively researched vast areas and analysed the materials that are often waste specimens left over after quarrying or earth movements.

    For example, I collaborated with the wonderful Dr. Diana Clements, who wrote Geology of London. She brought me on many field visits and gifted me plenty of microfossils. Another time, I was loaned an iron nodule and a piece of another mountain from a local stone mason and hillwalker.

     In regards to the form, sometimes I will make a mould from the rock and then make multiple new rocks; like my Rock - A Library of Materials. The large work To the Mountain, was carved specifically to enhance the amazing fossils in the stone. That stone was waste surplus from a quarry used for road material.

    The stones used in Mapping Mountains had to be from the specific mountains I was 3D printing. I felt it was really important for the stone to be from the exact location. Also, the weight of the stone was similar to the weight and density of the mountain. The limestone used in To the Mountain was from a local quarry and the rock we chose was full of fossils. It felt important to celebrate the fossils and make them visible in the materials.


    The Possibility of an Impossibility, 2014. Solid Silver cast Plane seeds taken from Gezi Park in 2013 in Istanbul amid the Gezi Riots and protests. Black vinyl disc.

    You've focused on location and history throughout your career from museums to environment and their relationships to political struggle. How has your practice developed over time to center around environmental topics?

    My love of stone and mountains has always been there as a hobby that split over into my art practice. The work Brake Dust was the beginning of a conversation about how our environment is us, and how we are geological bodies. This is an ongoing exploration of air pollution and its causes.

    In 2014, I visited Istanbul and listened to the stories of the Occupy Gezi movement and heard how Gezi Park was possibly going to be torn up for a shopping mall, and the Trees were going to be pulled down. I immediately felt a need to cast the seeds of the threatened Plane Tree seeds in silver and capture the Occupy Movement in a precious material titled The Possibility of an Impossibility. The work was inspired by David Graeber and his theory on Occupy Movements. In Istanbul, I sought information on building materials and where the rocks came from, and I was bowled over by the generosity and kinship in the geophilia and love of stone.    

    Thank you, Kathryn! This is such an exciting and insightful body of work. 




  • Tuesday, October 01, 2024 9:37 AM | Anonymous


    October 2024 e-Newsletter for subscribers is here

  • Wednesday, September 04, 2024 8:28 AM | Anonymous


    TT Journal, ISSUE 7, September 2024

    by Rosalyn Driscoll

    Twenty artists set out to explore together the nature of water and rivers. They ended up also reflecting on the perennial metaphor of time as river. The artists are members of Think About Water, a collective of artists and activists who interpret, celebrate and protect water. They wanted to make something together but also to honor each artist’s distinctive vision. They chose the format of a game played by the Surrealists called exquisite corpse: one artist drew a head, then folded the paper so their drawing could not be seen, and handed it to another artist; that artist drew the next part of the body, folded the paper, and so on through several artists and foldings. The paper was then unfolded and the whole, surreal figure appeared.

    In that spirit, the Think About Water artists created an exquisite corpse—not a human body, but the body of a river. Each artist made a section of river in their own studio in their own medium, style, vision and time, without seeing each other’s work. The artworks were then hung together in an art gallery. The assembled sequence of images snaked across the walls, suggesting a river of multiple forms and meanings.

    The Exquisite River project also reveals several aspects of time. Each artist’s process of image-making took time. Each artist drew from their individual and cultural histories to create a unique image and tell a personal story. The artworks embody the depths of time and experience each artist has woven into them. In many of these artworks, time is integral to their reference to the disruptions and degradation humans have wrought on the Earth. We are now experiencing different kinds of time in our collective awareness. Gradual changes over the centuries are now accelerating very fast. Changes are visible within our lifetimes and even within seasons. Time in the urgent need to slow climate change as quickly as possible. Time in the projections by scientists of climate effects into the near and far future. Time in the time it takes to regenerate a natural domain devastated by human abuse.  We are being forced to grasp different kinds of time, accustomed as we have been to seeing, thinking and behaving in short-term ways, oblivious to the longer-term impacts of our actions. We are living in a time that makes us simultaneously aware of geological time, evolutionary time, biological time, oceanic time, the timing of seasons, the timing of a monsoon, and the impacts of humans in our time on Earth. Using the metaphor of exquisite corpse calls into question the finite life and even the mortality of our beloved rivers. Will we help them regenerate and renew or will they diminish and die, as some already have?

    The first exhibition of Exquisite River took place at Ely Center for Contemporary Art in New Haven, Connecticut, USA, April 14 – June 2, 2024. The project is available to travel to other venues.In the gallery, the artworks were hung separately to create a flow. In the digital version they were linked into one long river. The following selection from among the twenty artworks provides different visions of rivers and of time.

    Rosalyn Driscoll, Cinefoil, 2023, aluminum foil, 25 x 34 x 2 inches

    Continue reading full article here

  • Sunday, September 01, 2024 8:37 AM | Anonymous


    September 2024 e-Newsletter for subscribers is Here




  • Saturday, August 24, 2024 9:49 AM | Anonymous


    Portrait of Johannes Lehmann from “Research and Restore: How Cornell Scientists are Conserving Earth’s Resources” in Cornell University's Medium, image by  Jason Koski, UREL

    Lasting Change Starts Just Below Our Feet: Johannes Lehmann offers rich soil to grow our planet’s thriving future through study, creativity, and implementation

    By Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

    Johannes Lehmann’s depth of research into soil’s unique contributions to climate change, and it's potentials for circular economy and sustainability expands from microbiology, to carbon sequestration, and, now, into collaborations with creative minds. He runs the Lehmann Lab at Cornell University, which specializes in implementations and applications related to soil health in both “managed and natural ecosystems” scenarios. Applying this work at the “Soil Factory” in Ithaca, NY, everyone from farmers to scientists to artists and entrepreneurs, are welcome to fertile ground for collaboration and novel solution building.

    For those interested in getting involved, here 's the website:
    https://www.thesoilfactory.org

    The Soil Factory building at Cornell University via organization's website

    Johannes, your research reveals how interwoven soil remediation and related climate policy are and how creativity can act as an avenue for scientific understanding. How do these topics interact most effectively?

    Generating or creating questions is an extremely important step in science, and a tremendously understudied and undervalued aspect. We need to look at new policies supporting climate change mitigation and adaptation, with new questions. Soil remediation and climate change mitigation are obviously related, as more organic carbon resides in soils than in all global vegetation and the atmosphere combined.


    It sounds like soil health has many implications for the future thriving of our planet! Your work as a soil scientist addresses some of this by expanding beyond microbial and geoecological analysis and entering the world of climate action plans and policy. What changes are necessary for the future of soil and ourselves?

    Recognition of the potential role of soils in climate change mitigation have increased steadily since 2015. This is good news. The way forward now comes in forms of a healthy and honest carbon market that rewards practices that promote soil health, and technology and regulation that allow cost-effective and environmentally-friendly carbon and nutrient recycling. Soil as a public good has to be discussed.

     

    Cover art for Johannes Lehmann’s et Al book on Biochar for Environmental Management, Science and Technology, And: Johannes Lehmann’s Interview with Diego Footer for the podcast “In Search of Soil” July, 2021

    Recycling, environmentally-friendly, regulation, mitigation... Sounds like sustainable practices! How does your research inform your sustainability mission for overall planet health?

    Yes, and any sustainability approach (shying away from the word ‘solution’) has to adopt a systems view,- recognizing tradeoffs and human decision making ; soil as a complex system means that non-linear responses have to be captured in our decision support systems. This also means that we have to co-create innovative soil practices and circular economy platforms at scale of implementation,- with farmers, with NGOs, with industry.


    Event documentation from The Soil Factory's multi-disciplinary meeting on Pyrosis, August 2021

    A collaborative approach! As a passionate circular economy advocate, myself, this is wonderful to hear. I would love to hear more about how a thriving future without waste may begin with our soils and soil practices.

    Yes, I do think a circular economy view is key, what that means in detail is to be examined carefully, beyond a buzzword. Nature-based solutions have to play and can play a part, but not on their own. That does not mean we should not increase our efforts and examine its potential at scale of implementation.


    Image from the Soil Factory website

    And, the potential for that implementation is dependent on those policy shifts, right? As an international spokesperson previously based in Germany and now in the US, you have worked in two culturally opposed climate cultures: one where sustainability is a fully integrated and widespread national goal and another that is in many places still skeptical of climate change and sustainability. How has your experience been working in both cultural climates? What have been some challenges? Rewards?

    Soil and any environmental health aspects have been supported to a greater extent by governments and by the broad public in Europe than in the US, for a variety of reasons. And yet, the entrepreneurial and innovative spirit of many farmers in the US are paving the way for sound soil management nonetheless.


    Image from the Soil Factory website

    That's great news and you are already contributing to this effort! You have founded a space for collaboration called “The Soil Factory” to incubate new solutions through art, science, and sustainability. What have been some highlights in this project and what do you hope for its future?

    Always a work in process, and requiring the buy-in of everyone. In-person collaboration, joint ideation, and just trying things out together. Much of the experimentation was only possible after we left the university, with intriguing lessons to be learned about undisciplining the university.

    Thank you so much for taking the time, Johannes! You have offered important insights and allowed new perspectives on this complex earth beneath our feet.

  • Monday, July 08, 2024 7:15 PM | Anonymous


    Online Course for Members

    October 19, 2024 - January 4, 2025

    DEADLINE to register  August 15, 2024

    This is our fifth course designed exclusively for ecoartspace members that will prepare artists to develop ways of thinking about sustainability in their practice, both conceptually and physically. Participants will learn how to wildcraft art materials, a practice that requires one to deepen their relationship with land, creativity, and self. Artists will also be invited to think critically about their relationship to place, materiality and voice in a time of socio-ecological destabilization. Through lectures, discussions, creation, and sharing, implications of a bioregional perspectives alongside the function of art to inform will be considered, and what a grounded and meaningful art practice can entail today.

    Course content includes: sustainability as a stand alone concept, the historical background and function of art, review of artists and concepts including practical strategies and resources, exposure to a range of natural art processes and mediums, circular systems, interbeing, establishing sustainable development needs and goals, developing alliances and an action plan to generate ones own project throughout the course.

    All classes will be held on Saturdays. The first three sessions will be held October and November from 2-4pm EST, the fourth session in December with artists presentations, and the final session in January with roundtable discussions. Participants will create a project during the course.

    This online course is taught by Anna Chapman with guest presenters (below).


     Course Schedule

    I - Intro to Art and Sustainability - 2 - 4pm ET, Saturday, October 19th

    - Sustainability as a standalone concept

    - Historical background and the function of art

    - The local and the global

    - Sustainability: an issue of materials

    - Circular systems

    - Sustainable art in the city

    - Sustainable art in under-resourced contexts

    II - Art Processes and Sustainability - 2 - 4pm ET, Saturday, October 26th

    - Visiting artist from ecoartspace (((TBD)))

    - Painting processes: paints, inks, & watercolors

    - Charcoal

    - Natural dyes 

    - Papermaking 

    - Found & recycled materials

    III - Objectives, Relationships and Alliances - 2 - 4pm ET, Saturday, November 2nd

    - Visiting artist from ecoartspace (((Leah Mata Fragua, Northern Chumash)))

    - Establishing needs

    - Establishing our own SDGs 

    - Interbeing 

    - Local relationships and alliances

    - Developing ideas around sustainability

    - Action plan (students develop a project from a choice board)

    VI - Progress Presentations- 2 - 5 pm ET, Saturday, December 7th

    - Participants share the research and progress of their projects and receive feedback from class and instructor

    V - Presentations - 2 - 5pm ET, Saturday, January 11th

    - Participants present and debrief about their projects.


    Anna Chapman is passionate about the intersection of art, education, ecology and healing. Believing that interdisciplinary approaches to art and education are necessary to meaning-making in the context of the Anthropocene, her work is inspired by post-colonial, post-human, early European, and indigenous perspectives. Through her practice, Anna aims to mobilize reconciliatory relationships to place, community, materiality, and voice, to awaken one’s innate capacity for care and creative life force. She received a BFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2012, a Masters of Arts in Art Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2022, and is currently pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts at UMass Amherst. Anna currently teaches through the Center for Art Education and Sustainability, the Continuing Education department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and at Umass Amherst. @owl_and_apple  annachapmaneducation.com


    Cost is $375 per member, membership fee can be waved if needed, three scholarships are available at 50% off. Approximately 12 participants max.

    Email info@ecoartspace.org to participate


  • Monday, July 01, 2024 7:55 AM | Anonymous


    July 2024 e-Newsletter for subscribers is here

  • Sunday, June 30, 2024 10:03 AM | Anonymous


    Left: Leonardo Martinez-Diaz at The Crow’s Nest by Vivian Doering via BMore Art

    Bridging Divides to Grow Resilience Through Expression: Leonardo Martinez-Diaz’s vision for artist’s crucial role in environmental and climate policies and politics at The Crow’s Nest, Baltimore, MD

    Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

    Leonardo Martinez-Diaz’s accomplishments in politics are inspiring, as is his dedication and deep belief in the influential power of art to create lasting impacts and change. Standing between the worlds of policy and fostering creative visionaries, Leonardo is an exemplary agent for change both on the ground and in the boardroom. Opening this fall: The Crow’s Nest in the Bromo Arts District of Baltimore, Maryland, fosters cross-disciplinary collaboration to activate the power of creativity to make the difference in environmental and community resilience. Working with ecoartspace for the opening exhibition this fall (apply here), topics of social ecology will welcome a new force in the downtown district; one that will shed important light on the power of bridging disciplinary divides to build resilience to best confront the challenges this new century brings.

    I want to start by thanking you, Leonardo, for taking the time to share with us at ecoartspace. It is inspiring to see such an influential expert and politician practicing what they preach. I wonder: how does your position allow you to act as a bridge in order to make a lasting impact both through policy and on the ground? Do these elements of your work cross-pollinate?

    My work in government has enabled me to understand what policy and politics can do to tackle global environmental challenges — and what they can’t.  For policy to become more ambitious and match the urgency the crisis requires, we need an educated citizenry that demands change. Without that push, good policy ideas stay on shelves collecting dust, or they become laws that are never implemented effectively.

    Art is a way of engaging everyone in a larger, more inclusive, and more intelligible conversation, one that can produce the informed and motivated citizens who demand better policies from government and business leaders.

    It is heartwarming to hear this stated so clearly and I share this perspective as many artists do.  What role do you think artists in particular are able to play in developing new policy, especially when related to environmental and sustainability topics?

    Artists and their work have a crucial role to play in environmental and climate policy and politics. Art can help people grasp the nature and scale of these vast challenges. Art can enable us to come to terms emotionally with them and to channel anger and frustration in productive ways. Also, art can help build support around particular policy approaches or proposals, and it can enable us to envision new worlds, to visualize alternate realities that exist beyond the narrow confines of what is politically  possible at any one time.

    You will soon open The Crow’s Nest in Baltimore, Maryland, which will foster cross-disciplinary projects between artists, scientists, policy makers, planners, activists, etc.  In a recent interview you described your aspiration for the space to create “a diverse creative community whose members can inspire one another, collaborate, experiment, and cross-pollinate ideas.” What is your vision for the kinds of projects and ideas that cross-disciplinary collaboration uniquely achieves?

    I don’t have any preconceived notions of what those working at the Crow's Nest will produce or of what will come out of this experiment in creativity.  What I hope is that the creative output will push boundaries and challenge and inspire us. The goal of the Crow’s Nest is to provide a space where creators feel free to explore and experiment and share ideas, producing original work that helps us view the world in a different way. 

    Your open mindedness to creativity is very freeing. What inspired you to advocate for this creative and diverse vision?

    After many years of working in government and nonprofits, I am convinced that we also need culture and the arts to help our country tackle the twin challenges of climate change and environmental injustice. Charts and graphs and political discourse are not enough to educate and convince people in our polarized society.  We also need to engage people’s imagination, their fears, hopes, dreams, and aspirations. The arts are a powerful way to do that.

    Does the Baltimore location and the Bromo district’s residents present especially fertile ground for this kind of inspiration and boundary pushing?

    Baltimore was a natural choice, because it is close to the center of policy and politics, but it also has a vibrant arts community and world-class cultural institutions, like the Peabody Conservatory, the Maryland Institute College of Art, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. The city also supports the arts and its arts districts. Baltimore remains a place where experimentation and risk-taking is still possible.      

    Considering potential risks, how does the changing climate and related environmental risks contribute to your considerations investing in this location? And specifically, in the resilience of the Baltimore creative community?

     Baltimore is actually a lower-risk location than other metropolitical areas, including New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. The top threats here are heat waves, high winds, and tornados.  Heat waves are what concerns me most, as they can kill more people than any other peril, and they hit the elderly and low-income communities hardest. Heat islands overlap with poor and historically-marginalized communities, which often have little green space, which lowers temperatures. I hope the art produced or exhibited at the Crow’s Nest will engage not only the global dimension of environmental challenges, but also with local aspects and their solutions.  

    Lastly, you are planning an exciting upcoming exhibition called "the ecology of freedom" in collaboration with ecoartspace on Murray Bookchin’s free nature ideas. What are your hopes for this exhibition to support and activate this goal of nature's and human's self-determination to the goals of environmental and community resilience?

    My hope is that the exhibit will allow artists and those who experience the art to explore some of Murray Bookchin’s revolutionary ideas. I hope the artworks will make some of these concepts, such as free nature and hierarchy, come alive for the viewer and enable them to relate these ideas to the struggles, challenges and solutions they see daily in their communities.

    Apply For the Upcoming Exhibition



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