Fjord, 2024. Organic peace silk, thread, wax, fermented mineral mud dye, natural deterioration occurring over six months, 30 x 47 Image courtesy of Jeff Cords. 

The Fragile Power of Sund: Time, Tides, and Textiles in Moira Bateman’s Solo Exhibition

Review By Laura Laptsevitch 

Moira Bateman’s Sund (Notes from the Sea), on view through March 8 at Form and Content in Minneapolis, Minnesota, presents a compelling meditation on the vulnerability of our waterways and the urgent need for their protection. This exhibition, drawing from Bateman’s summer 2024 residency in Ålvik, Norway, prompts a sobering reflection on Norway’s industrial fishing industries and the pollution of our water. Sund is topical—at a time when textiles are experiencing a resurgence in contemporary art, and environmental consciousness is more relevant than ever, Sund stands at the intersection of both, a powerful and timely moment.

Details of Seadrift 1 (left) and 2 (right), 2024, sea-weathered woven plastic fisheries “big bag” remnant recovered in Hardangerfjord, Norway, 20 x 41 inches. Images courtesy of Arts District Imageworks.

Entering the gallery, the first piece along the wall is Seadrift 1-3. Recovered in Hardangerfjord, Norway, Seadrift sets the tone for Sund. It is one of just two types of found objects present in the show. With Sund (Notes from the Sea), there is an essential desire to give voice to the landscape. Seadrift 1-3 presents a strong voice. 

These objects were recovered by Bateman in a Norwegian fjord—a deep, elongated, narrow inlet carved by glaciers filled with seawater. Leftovers of the salmon farming industry, these fragments were once a “big bag” used to transport fish feed. According to notes provided by Dr. Marte Haave, these fragments are, more than likely, several years old. A great deal of litter washes up in Norway’s fjord; plastic waste remains a problem. The bags, now Seadrift 1, 2, & 3, have been run down by sea currents and weathered by rock abrasions. What is left is the irregularly shaped plastic weave broken down into bits. 

One can’t help but look closely. I noticed the silhouette is similar to the shapes found in topographical maps—both land and water. I was not off in my estimation—Bateman’s degree in landscape ecology and landscape architecture has a hand in the choice of silhouette. With an ode to maps, the presentation of Seadrift 1-3 puts forth another connection: a reference to the scientific. 

Seadrift 1-3 are presented like specimens, arranged neatly and purposefully along the wall. One is urged to look closely; this close looking, this watchfulness, is yet another way to examine and experience the pieces of Sund. I can’t help but examine the rest of the gallery with the same careful eye. 

Sund (Notes from the Sea) at Form+Content Gallery in Minneapolis, 2025. Right: Crosscurrent, 2024, organic peace silk, thread, wax, fermented mineral mud dye, natural deterioration occurring over six months, 50 x 41 inches. Left: Just Beyond Fyksesund, 2024, organic peace silk, thread, wax, fermented mineral mud dye, pigments, 48 x 36 inches.

Following Seadrift 1-3 are Crosscurrent (right) and Just Beyond Fyksesund (left). Both are made from organic peace silk, thread, wax, and fermented mineral mud dye. Just Beyond Fyksesund, though, includes the addition of natural pigments to achieve its color. 

The object itself is equally as important as the slow, intricate process. Bateman utilizes a fabric dyeing technique to achieve the deep color, using fermented mineral mud dye, a practice that combines plant tannin's, mineral-rich mud, and microorganisms to dye cloth. Through working with mud on site in the natural waterways, the organic matter feeds the microorganisms in the mud, converting the mud’s natural iron into ferrous sulfate. It’s a delicate balance of experimenting with the dyeing processes and letting the world’s forces naturally erode the fabric. 

Crosscurrent, 2024, organic peace silk, thread, wax fermented mineral mud dye, natural deterioration occurring over six months, 50 x 41 inches. Image courtesy of Jeff Cords.

Perhaps the most striking piece in Sund (Notes from the Sea) is Crosscurrent. The way the silk is extended from the wall, floating so gracefully, with such intricate cast shadows and erosion, placing attention on the slow process of decay—I am convinced Crosscurrent could not be replicated in any other fashion. Time is a key element.  

It's powerful viewing Crosscurrent and Just Beyond Fyksesund together. Both are so different. Though each have endured the same elements for the same length of time, Just Beyond Fyksesund did not experience the same type of decay as Crosscurrent. There are no holes, no abrasions; just wrinkles, creases, and the deep hue. There’s an element of unpredictability with Bateman’s process; two fabrics can be treated in the same fashion yet experience aging so differently. Just Beyond Fyksesund stayed intact, while Crosscurrent sustained rips, cuts, and gashes. Maybe that’s the point: one way or another, through time or chance, we all experience the natural outcome of the life cycle. 

One element that stands the test of time is rock.  

Emiliania huxleyi, 2024, Plastifolie, 41 x 37 inches. Image courtesy of Form+Content Gallery.

Sund’s next piece, Emiliania huxleyi, contains the second found object—the cast of a rock recovered at Hardangerfjord. This rock is the agent that pinned Seadrift 1, or the “big bag,” in a rock crevice along the fjord at Norheimsund. With 49 individual castings, the rock has given shape to many of the individual parts of Emiliania huxleyi.

I cannot help but notice the color. The turquoise is distinct. With an overwhelming dominance of dark neutral colors, Emiliania huxleyi reminds us where we are: deep in ocean water. In this work, the hue can be credited to Plastifolie, a Norwegian plastic wrap composed of 70% recycled plastic. When layered, the blue-green color forms. The same turquoise of the Plastifolie can be seen at Hardangerfjord every few years in the spring. For just a few weeks, a type of microscopic marine algae blooms—a primary single-cell phytoplankton called Emiliania huxleyi, which gives Hardangerfjord the bright turquoise hue. 

Every element of Sund ties back to place. This is not limited to color. Even the shape of the rock, the elongated oval, is the very shape you would find examining phytoplankton under a microscope. Bateman has a knack for examining things closely—an understatement with Sund’s next piece, Seadrift 1.  

Seadrift 1, 2024, scanned and enlarged image of sea-weathered woven plastic fisheries “big bag” remnants recovered in Hardangerfjord, Norway, print on archival paper, 50 x 96 inches. Image courtesy of Form+Content Gallery.

Seadrift 1 is a scanned, enlarged image of the woven plastic material seen previously in the gallery. It pictures the sea-weathered plastic fishers, or “big bag,” printed on archival paper. Seadrift 1 commands attention. At 50 x 96 inches, Seadrift 1 has a particular presence; it cannot be ignored. There’s beauty in seeing so clearly—being engulfed in the archival print. At a high resolution, 850 ppi, I can see the smallest of details, including the razor-thin, individual hairs of the plastic. There is some irony; instead of a small bag in a big ocean, we have a big bag in a small gallery. It shows the complexity, even the beauty, of the polluted materials in our water. 

Perspective matters with Seadrift 1. At such a large scale, one could imagine that we are now the algae at Ålvik’s fjord, confronted with a vast, foreign object. As non-biodegradable plastic, it serves as a toxic force to our water. Had Bateman not recovered the object in Hardangerfjord, it would likely remain wedged in the rock and continue to interfere with the natural ecosystem. 

In Sund, one object that, conversely, serves the ecosystem is the organic peace silk. Unlike woven plastic, it is non-toxic and biodegradable, even feeding the microorganisms in the mud and water. 

Sund (Notes from the Sea) at Form+Content Gallery in Minneapolis, 2025. Right: Fjord, 2024, organic peace silk, thread, wax, fermented mineral mud dye, natural deterioration occurring over six months, 30 x 47 inches. Left: In the Night Sea at Fosse, 2024, organic peace silk, wax, green indigo, fermented mineral mud dye, natural deterioration occurring over six months, 30 x 29 inches.

 
Similar to Crosscurrent and Just Beyond Fyksesund, we see the following objects on the left side wall: Fjord (right) and In the Night Sea at Fosse (left). I find myself drawn to the weathered portions of the silk. Instantly, I noticed Fjord.  

Fjord (top image) is anthropomorphic. The way the fabric looks human, the way the holes gape open, uncanny, so wound-like, the way it aged so much like leather, the wrinkles, the creases—it summons a quiet, sober reverence. 

There is respect for Fjord and a deep compassion for the history of the silk. Perhaps the same can be said for In the Night Sea at Fosse, Crosscurrent, and Just Beyond Fyksesund. There is a slow, powerful, and irreversible change that occurs in the fabrics, an oscillation between nurture and neglect. Leaving the materials out for weeks—to take them back—cleaning, drying, straightening, stitching, and waxing; there is an element of healing. 

The fabric holds a type of presence. It takes on the essence of the place, the memory of the water. The history is held in its delicate silk fibers—the erosion serves as a channel for embodiment. I find satisfaction, even redemption, in their display.  

Sund, 2024, video and sound installation including video Sea at Songerfjord, Norway (Bateman), with Sound recording Underwater by biologist Dr. Heike Vester, Vestfjorden, Norway, including noise pollution affecting whales’ communication, navigation, and feeding. Image courtesy of Form+Content gallery.

I find a similar satisfaction in Sund. In the video and sound installation, Sund shows an upside-down 80-second loop of the sea at Sognefjord. Its sound, an underwater recording by biologist Dr. Heike Vester in Vesterfjorden, features the water’s noise pollution. Composed of textiles, found objects, and now, time-based media, Sund (Notes from the Sea) positions itself in the zeitgeist of contemporary art, a show of new mixed media. 

The noise pollution, boat engines, and seismic airgun explosions hugely affect whales' communication, navigation, and feeding. Much like Seadrift 1, there is an element of perspective. What would it feel like to exist in this water? What would it be like to see through the water? 

Detail on Left: Foss 1, 2024 (left), organic peace silk, flat silk thread, wax, fermented mineral mud dye, natural deterioration occurring over six months, 8 x 13 inches. Right: Foss 7, 2024, organic peace silk, flat silk thread, wax, fermented mineral mud dye, natural deterioration occurring over six months, 13 x 17 inches. Images courtesy of Jeff Cords.

The show ends much like it began. Foss 1-7, the final piece in the gallery, is made up of a group of small organic peace silk samples, much like the fragments of Seadrift 1-3. This work is delicate. The scale is intimate. Foss 1-7 shows diligence, confidence, and careful restraint.  

Detail: Foss 7, 2024, organic peace silk, flat silk thread, wax, fermented mineral mud dye, natural deterioration occurring over six months,13 x 17 inches. Image courtesy of Jeff Cords.

The stitches are microscopic, carefully formed from the back of the piece. Looking at Foss 7, I see the most tiny, almost unnoticeable stitches. Just as with Fjord, In the Night Sea at Fosse, Crosscurrent, and Just Beyond Fyksesund, there is a healing element within Foss 1-7—even more so with its intimate scale. The cleaning, drying, and stitching are all facets of healing; they point back to the history of textiles, and moreover, the history of women. Women, the ones who largely occupied this practice of textiles, quilting, embroidery, and weaving, are natural healers. 

Moira Bateman is more than a textile artist; she is an environmentalist, an environmental artist, and a healer.

Sund (Notes from the Sea) makes manifest the moments we forget in our history. Through the soaking of organic peace silk, Fjord, In the Night Sea at Fosse, Crosscurrent, Just Beyond Fyksesund, and Foss 1-7 provide language and shape to the delicate, wild phenomenon that is our earth and ecosystem. This work is embodiment: being in the world and being an object in the world. Bateman’s work contextualizes history. Ultimately, Sund is a witness. 

The environmental forces shaping our waters demand our attention, reflection, and action. When I look at contemporary art in 2025, I see a platform ripe for good. The United Nations has developed a set of 17 goals to improve economic, social, and environmental conditions by 2030. Looking at the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, I see Bateman and the show Sund (Notes from the Sea) fulfilling seven.

Quality Education (4) Clean Water and Sanitation (6) Decent work and economic growth, including sustainable economic growth (8) Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure, including sustainable industrialization (9) Responsible Consumption and Production (12) Climate Action (13) Life Below Water (14) Partnerships for the Goals (17). 

We like to think of Earth as invincible or impenetrable. But really, Earth and its ecosystems are as fragile and delicate as our very own lives. The ecosystem, the climate—it is a tender, coordinated dance. The earth is gentle; we must be gentle with her. Earth is more than our home—Earth is who we are; we don’t simply occupy the world—our fibers, our DNA, our being comes out of places of earth and water, and ultimately… goes back in. Why are we not cultivating, nurturing, and protecting the very environment, the very being, that nurtures us? Sund (Notes from the Sea) bears witness to this truth.

Moira Bateman in Hardangerfjord, 2024. This picture was taken during her residency at Kunstnarhuset Messen (Arthouse Messen) in Ålvik, Norway. Image courtesy of the artist. 

Laura Laptsevitch is an art educator and art historian based in the greater Minneapolis area. She holds a Master’s degree in Art History and Visual Culture from Lindenwood University and a Bachelor of Science in Art Education from the University of Wisconsin-Stout. With experience spanning K-12 classrooms, community arts programming, and museum education, Laptsevitch has led public art initiatives and contributed to community-based projects throughout the twin-cities.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

February 10, 2025

This month we recognize      Ashton  Phillips    in an interview with Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein.

Life and Agency in a Polluted World: Ashton Phillip’s choreographies in Material, Body, and Interspecies Systems

Ashton Phillips exists and creates work at intersections that blossom into expansive universes of possibility often left out and attacked by cultural norms and laws. Integrating polluted earth with decontaminating species, refuse with refuge, and experiential choreographies integrating the viewer, his work expands past materiality and into life. In our interview, Ashton discusses the power of experience as embodied through interactions between the body, earth, and cultural consciousness to empower and heal in the face of destructive forces and toxic consequences.

Ashton, you have been on such an impactful journey through your work. For example, you grew up in “Chemical Valley” West Virginia and now focus on pollution in material, identity, and land. How has your experience of the polluted environment guided your mission as an artist?

I have always felt like I was living inside of a contaminated, impure, or injured body/world. And I have always felt a certain sadness in the face of that. The other slogan for the place I grew up, besides Chemical Valley, was “Wild and Wonderful.” And it was true. That place was simultaneously wild, vibrant, lush, watery, and chemical, toxic, desiccated, dying. Just like all of us.

There was a very palpable tension to being alive—or being a living body—inside that polluted ecosystem. Something like dysphoria. My practice emerged from this dysphoric/euphoric tension. Can we see this pollution and the fear it brings—the disgust, the grief—as teachers or even friends of our own precariousness, adaptability, and interdependence? Holding it close like a hungry baby bird with a broken wing?

I do not fear the pollution anymore. I fear the people who do not see it or pretend it is not there.

 

Wow, that hits home… What a powerful statement about the consequences of embedded hypocracy. You also have a background in law advocacy as well as being a professional artist. How do these contrasting professions inform your empowerment practice?

I no longer practice law, but my relationship to my art practice is very much informed by my training and experience as a lawyer. Lawyers think facts “argue” better than rhetoric or moral appeals. And that the only facts that count are those that can be admitted into evidence.

My socially-engaged, research-based, public art practice is not that different in method, but my audience is no longer a judge or jury. I am not trying to convince the public that I am “right” about anything or “slap them on the wrist” through the law. Instead, I want people to feel something, to be confused, to make intuitive connections across time and space, to find a glimmer of desire or hope in the pits of despair, to forget the cis-hetero-normative power structures and systems of language that dominate their everyday headspace and tune in to the patterns of relation that connect us to the ground, the insect, the waste Styrofoam floating in the surf, and the bird that carries it away.

When you describe it this way, it sounds like your work is about adapting culture through various methods including sound, performance, participatory installation, and direct environmental response. What factors guide your choice of medium and approach to a work?

A big change came in grad school, when I was challenged to think critically about my “viewer” and what kind of experience I wanted for them. Was my work the “finished” art object that resulted from my experience of connection with materials and place? Or was it the experience itself? Did I want to share that experience with my “viewer” and, if so, what is the most impactful way to do that? Is my work a story about my own life and growth or is it an offering to others to engage with the world differently based on my own experience?

It worked. My first semester in grad school was liberating and cathartic. I tried every material and medium/technology that held my curiosity. I gathered materials, like words - yards of used rubber roofing, chiffon mixed with steel, clay with silicone, and concrete casts with feathers, wool, house paint, and latex tubing inside. I stacked, lashed, cast, balanced, and sewed these materials together on the floor, hanging them from the ceiling, stapling them to the wall. I avoided permanent adhesives and attachments as a kind of creative death. I wanted everything to be mobile and unfixed - to keep the parts moving, unstable, and ready to be broken down and reworked.

Instead of making separate stable works with individual titles and dates, these were improvisational choreographies of material and flow - a performance of material itself and an activation of space that included the body of the viewer in the dance. My art practice began and continues to tune out of the world of argument, bullying, screaming, moralizing, shame, and tuning into to the immediacy, pleasure - and sometimes wonder - of materials, color, the ground beneath me and the interspecies systems of life and agency all around me.

You are engaging such complex systems through your work’s materiality, interactions, and site-specificity. What does your sourcing process look like? And what considerations do you make in choosing materials that will interact with each other?

My work is relational—a way of thinking/feeling/being with a place, a creature, an unfolding ecosystem of contamination, trauma, and the possibility of metamorphosis and repair—and inviting others into that experience. I choose materials that interact with each other according to their own animacies, so that the work can include agencies, marks, and sounds reflecting these larger systems of interrelated power and subjectivity. 

For example, I started working with plastic-metabolizing mealworms and Styrofoam plastic because I was fascinated by the fact that these creatures could biodegrade plastic in their bodies without any harm to themselves, and I wanted to understand more about how this worked. This power changed so much of my thinking about the world.

An essay I wrote about my interspecies art practice was published in a special issue on Trans* Ecologies by Trans Studies Quarterly. The essay articulates my thoughts about how structuring spaces to the sensory preferences of plastic-metabolizing insects can also produce a sort of speculative refuge for trans people and others who are otherwise subject to the punishing cis/white gaze in public space.

The connections you are creating between Trans*& Queer Ecologies and interspecies collaborations sit at a really important intersection between empowerment and awareness. It makes me wonder how your mission has changed over time, and in response to how the US culture has/is developed/ing?

The more recent rise of anti-trans panic-baiting and the wholesale removal of legal protections for trans people at the State and Federal levels has also impacted my relationship to my “viewer” and my sense of purpose. I feel a responsibility to speak to the world as a trans person now and to make the trans-ness of my work more explicit. I will not be bullied into silence by these fear mongers in chief. And I hope my voice and practice can empower others to keep making, speaking, and connecting in defiance of these disturbing efforts to silence and erase us from public life.

This week, another trans artist asked me what I am doing as a teacher to hold space for trans, queer, and BIPOC students in the face of this disturbing onslaught coming from the new Presidential Administration. I told her:

I am trying to turn myself and my students toward the queerness and trans-ness of the nonhuman world, which does not give a sh*t about our laws or taxonomies.
Because the future is trans.

Ashton S. Phillips     is a socially and ecologically-engaged artist and writer working with dirt, water, pollution, plasticity, and interspecies agents of (dis)repair as primary materials, collaborators, and teachers. He brings an ecological, trauma-informed approach to his teaching, prioritizing collaboration, play, speculative (un)making, and embodied research over top-down modalities. He holds an MFA in Studio Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art; a JD from the George Washington University Law School; and a BA from the University of Maryland, where he served as the first openly trans president of the university’s LGBT student caucus. His creative and critical writing have been published by Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, Art and Cake, Cambridge University Press, and Trans Studies Quarterly. Phillips is a resident artist at Angels Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro, California, where he maintains a living colony of polystyrene-metabolizing mealworm/beetles and a plastic-fertilized garden as trans ecological praxis. When he is not making, writing, teaching, and caring for metamorphosing creatures, he serves as a creative consultant and trauma-informed art teacher for survivors of adverse-childhood experiences at the SHARK Clinic at Rancho Los Amigos Rehabilitation Hospital and curates exhibitions and performances at Monte Vista Projects in Los Angeles, California. ashtonsphillips.com

Featured images (top to bottom): ©Ashton Phillips, "“3 - Feast & Famine,” installation still, mealworms in larval, pupae, and beetle forms, partially consumed styrofoam, offertory flowers and found feather, 2021-2023; “Install 5 – Feast & Famine,” 2021-2023; “Worm Hole -A Portal for Plastic Bodies," 2024, Photo by Gemma Lopez; “Installation 6 – Feast & Famine”, 2021-2023; "Womb/Tomb/BooM – A Refuge for Plastic Bodies," 2023, live mealworms, live darkling beetles, partially consumed styrofoam, egg tempera, handsewn mosquito netting, pine, faux leather, aluminum flashing, sound equipment, synthetic fur, plywood, violet vinyl and acrylic sheet, stereo cable, contaminated dirt, carrots, and flowering weeds, 15 x 18 x 20 feet;portrait of the artist by Jill Fannon in Bmore Art Magazine (below).

Online Course for Members

NEW DATES March 15, 2025 - June 7, 2025

DEADLINE March 1, 2025

This is our sixth iteration designed exclusively for our ecoartspace members!

The Sustain(ability) & the Art Studio course prepares artists and art educators 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. We will also think critically about how one's community and ecosystem are vital allies in a time of socio-ecological destabilization.

The first half of the course includes lectures, guest artist talks, resource offerings, and group discussions, as we explore the implications of a bioregional perspective and investigate the function of art today. In the second half of the course, each student will work on their own project, informed by course content. They will receive feedback from Anna and the class before a final class presentation, open to the public.

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 one’s own project throughout the course.

All classes will be held on Saturdays. The first three sessions will be held in March from 2-4pm EST. The fourth session in May and fifth session in June from 2-5pm EST. Participants will create a project during the course and make presentations.

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

Course Schedule

I - Intro to Art and Sustainability - 2 - 4pm ET,Saturday, March 15

- Visiting artist from ecoartspace(((JohannaTörnqvist))) 

- Sustainability as a standalone concept

- Historical background and the function of art

- The local and the global

- Circular systems

- Bioregionalism / Place-Based Education

- Cultural Sustainability 

II - Art Processes and Sustainability - 2 - 4pm ET,Saturday, March 22

- Painting processes: paints, inks, & watercolors

- Charcoal

- Natural dyes 

- Papermaking 

- Found & recycled materials

III - Objectives, Relationships and Alliances - 2 - 4pm ET,Saturday, March 29

- Visiting artist from ecoartspace(((Lucia Monge)))

- Establishing needs

- Establishing your own sustainability goals 

- Interbeing 

- Local relationships and alliances

- Developing ideas around sustainability

- Action plan (students define their research project)

VI - Progress Presentations- 2 - 5 pm ET,Saturday, May 3

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

V - Presentations - 2 - 5pm ET,Saturday, June 7

- 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. Approximately 12 participants max.

Email info@ecoartspace.org to participate

Below is the recording from the Fall 2024 course participants presentations

February 2025 e-Newsletter for subscribers is here

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

January 6, 2025

This month we recognize  Leslie Labowitz Starus and her decades-long practice exploring the intersections of ecofeminism, art, and community engagement through her 40+ years project Sproutime, integrating personal history, ecological sustainability, and feminist activism.

"Labowitz Starus'art/life practice and eco-feminist project SPROUTIME (1980 -2024) has spanned four decades. Integrating personal and global survival into performances and installations, she started Sproutime by growing organic sprouts and greens, creating a micro-urban farm in her yard in Venice, California. This was followed by a series of ecologically motivated performances and installations produced in galleries across the United States. As an outgrowth of these art installations, she started her business enterprise (also called Sproutime) in 1980, growing and distributing organic food throughout the US until 2011, and maintains her sprout stand in the Santa Monica Farmers Market as her ongoing legacy. The nurturing and healing aspects of SPROUTIME counteract Labowitz Starus’s experience growing up with intergenerational trauma as a child of a holocaust survivor."

 click images for more info

Farmers Market, 1980

"Perhaps one of the more durational and robust works in Sproutime, Labowitz opened a stall at the Farmers Market in Santa Monica, an art/life performance that has been ongoing for 40 years. As an urban farmer at the beginning of the organic movement in the US, farmers markets were the only vehicle to sell the products of urban and small farmers in California. The Market was a meeting place for restaurants, produce distributors, and retail markets, all of whom then became Sproutime customers. Labowitz was one of a few women farmers and continues to appear each week, where she sells sprouts, products, and holds wheatgrass toasts. Many artists worked at the Sproutime stand over the years, including artists Dark Bob and Heidi Zin. It was the best “gig” in town."above

The Secret Garden, 1981

"This performance in Labowitz’s backyard in Venice, California, introduced the Sproutime business as a metaphor for her own healing after burnout from past public performance work on violence against women. Reading aloud a passage from the children’s book “The Secret Garden” spoke to the darkness of the soul that can be transformed in a garden; she related it to her own childhood in a family of European Holocaust survivors. The audience walked through a dark garage where Labowitz grew her sprouts and then entered the light of the garden where they were served sprout salads. Sprouts are the voice of life in a world intent on its own destruction."above

Roots, 1994

"At 18th St Arts Center, Santa Monica Leslie installed a work made up of “root mats” from sprouted greens already cut and sold. After greens are cut, the plant matter in the trays is used for compost at the growing site. In the gallery she exposed the root growth and built a sculptural form by stacking the mats on top of each other. Workers from the greenhouse brought more root mats each week. As the stack started to decompose, heat and smoke rose out of the decaying plant material. Stacks collapsed on themselves. At the end of the exhibition, the broken-down soil was taken back to finish composting."above

Sproutime is Now, 2023

"Her 20' long installation was a call out to join a movement that cherishes the earth and all life. Labowitz’s intention was to create a bridge for the students at Cal Arts between art, activism and public life. This was the largest of her installs with “root mats” from cut trays of greens. The signs took the form of yard signs and were placed among the root mats. The installation was a meditation on life and the dying process. For over two weeks, the plant material broke down, began to smell, and attracted flies and insects. At the end of the exhibition, the decomposing plant material was picked up by Metabolic Studio to add to their compost pile. Leslie was also a co-producer of the Eco-Expo team of the Earth Edition project at Cal Arts."below

Women Reclaim The Earth, 2024

Small, sunny fields of wheatgrass sprouting from growing trays alongside hand-held protest signs were included as part of the exhibition “Life on Earth: Art & Ecofeminism,” featured at The Brick in East Hollywood, California. The repurposed anti-war protest signs, handwritten by the artist, allude to a “Peace Economy,” or “movement towards peaceable policies and actions, to become aware of the environmental effects of war on our food supply and health." The buckets, seeds, trays, and wheatgrass are the actual materials the artist uses to grow organic sprouts and greens. She also led a kids superfoods workshop during Life on Earth, part of Getty'sPST ART—ART & SCIENCE COLLIDE.  below

Leslie Labowitz Starus, born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh, in 1946, relocated to California with her family and has resided in Los Angeles since 1958. She did her first early feminist performances while attending Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles and received her MFA in 1972. After graduating, that same year Labowitz Starus was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to travel to Germany to attend the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, where Joseph Beuys was a mentor. At this time, Labowitz Starus also co-founded a women’s video group with artist Ulrike Rosenbach. When she lived in Europe, she also taught performance at Bonn University 1973-75 and art at the University of Maryland campuses in Rota, Spain 1975-76 and Nuremberg, Germany 1976-77. When Labowitz returned to the United States in 1977, she started her collaborations with Suzanne Lacy. During this time, they collaborated on Three Weeks in May (1977) and other public events on violence against women, including In Mourning and In Rage (1977), an internationally known performance during the serial rape and murders of 11 women in Los Angeles by Hillside Strangler. Labowitz Starus and Lacy then formed Ariadne: A Social Art Network (1977-1982), an umbrella for public performances on violence against women that included people in media, politics, and the art community who participated in these large-scale events.  Today, she continues to mine her artistic and family archives, integrating the personal and the political in her ongoing environmental social practice.  https://leslielabowitz.com  www.againstviolence.art

Featured images (top to bottom): ©Leslie Labowitz Starus, Women Reclaim The Earth, 1979, poster; Farmers Market, 1980-ongoing, Santa Monica, California; The Secret Garden, 1981, backyard performance, Venice, California, photo by Suzanne Lacy; Roots - 1994, installation, 18th St Arts Center, Santa Monica, California; Sproutime Is Now, 2023, installation, Cal Arts, Visions2030, Earth Edition; Women Reclaim The Earth , 1979/2024, installation including photo montage on canvas, 66 x 48 inches, at The Brick, Los Angeles; portrait of the artist (below).

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Learning Curves, 2021, welded plastic debris (high density polyethylene), 7’6" x 8’2" x 10’7" feet/inches

Abundance and Destruction Find Cultural Impact: Aurora Robson’s Collaborative Approach to Intersecting the Plastic Waste Stream
By Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

Aurora Robson’s work acts as a meditative interception into the plastic waste stream, natural forms, and their relationships to her recurring childhood nightmares. Repurposing plastics from a wide range of sources, she tunes into an otherwise destructive, wasteful and abundant material resource. To build community and collective purpose, she founded Project Vortex in 2009. Project Vortex is an artist collective innovating with plastic debris, “as an effort to help broaden creative stewardship initiatives in art and academic settings” with artists, designers and architects internationally. Their collaborative exhibition, “Plasticulture: The Rise of Sustainable Practices with Polymers,” is on view at the School of Visual Arts in New York City through December 15, and presents a “rethinking and reinvention of plastic debris."

The Great Indoors, 2008, plastic debris, paint, solar powered LEDs and hardware, 44 x 44 x 18 feet

Aurora, you have described your work surrounding the intersection between your subconscious and environmental destruction as “about subjugating negativity and shifting trajectories.” Where does the personal and the political intersect for you and through your work?  

To me, the personal is political—there is no separation. As a woman, a mother and an artist, and especially in the political climate in the USA right now, every choice we make is not only vital but a gift.

Plastic pollution has an overwhelming, all encompassing, suffocating effect on all living organisms. My childhood nightmares shared these qualities.

We have been spilling a perfectly good art supply into places it has no business being. This is no different from many other self destructive products and personal choices humans have made throughout history (lead paint or cigarettes are other examples). Plastic is a petroleum-based material, a by-product of the fossil fuel industry. It is a laughable enterprise if you think about working with plastic debris for sculpture in terms of sequestering it to keep it from doing harm, but art does not need to have a literal or direct impact to be effective. Art is the basis for the development of cultural and societal norms, therefore its ultimate impact can not be measured by ordinary units of measure or on a finite timeline.

And to make this cultural impact, you have integrated junk mail, tubing, and a variety of plastic refuse to create “plastic waste interceptions.” What do your aesthetic choices intend to relay about intervening in the plastic waste stream?

Overall, I am working to reveal various false perceptions of value that have been wreaking havoc on all life forms. I like to think of my aesthetic choices as an exercise in anti-discrimination, with matter as a metaphor. There is an interplay between recognizing that matter matters, which it does to me in that I prefer to work with material that has been discarded, disregarded and discriminated against. I avoid virgin materials. In a sense, this approach makes the material immaterial. I am illustrating that it is about the “doing” and not so much the “thing,” or that value and scarcity don’t really have anything in common. 

Be Like Water, 2010, 80,000 plastic bottle caps and 9000 discarded plastic (PET) bottles collected by students at 7 public and private schools in Philadelphia, 25 x 120 x 14 feet. Funded by the City of Philadelphia Dept. of Cultural Affairs, Skybox, Curator Eileen Tognini and other private donors.

I imagine that this “doing” is also reflected in your gathering practices and process. What does this process look like?

The collecting of materials is the easiest part, it is increasingly everywhere and plastic objects are constantly morphing due to their “plasticity.”

I have many sources and approaches for collecting materials—and they are constantly proliferating. People want to sequester plastic debris because it is one of the most problematic wide spread toxic waste issues. People send me plastic debris from their homes, (bottle caps, bread tags, and all manner of objects). This really moves me as there is a thoughtful energy, which is very powerful because it transforms debris into a gift at the onset. I try to honor that act by perpetuating the motion. I also work with clean up organizations who conduct clean ups of rivers, shores, parks, road sides, etc… and use material they have collected. I have also partnered with schools, transfer stations, corporations, and recycling centers.

When possible, I love to work in urban environments with people who are collecting bottles out of the trash and gutters to take them to redemption centers for money. When I do, I facilitate a pay increase for them while making their journeys less arduous and lengthy by arranging pick up locations closer to them. 

Wow, you have such a range of sources and an (unfortunate) abundance! Do the collection sources and context affect your work process?

I always try to respond to the environment I am working in and honor it. I like to integrate local materials and ethos to add layers of relevance to the community that the work is intended to serve. Canada has very little pollution and litter compared to the US. It is always an interesting contrast to go between these countries—but often just because you can’t see the problem, doesn't mean it isn’t there. The majority of plastic, when submerged in water for any length of time, will sink. This is part of the issue that I think makes it most appropriate for artists. I think our job is to make something that is not visible, visible and to use our visionary skills to envision a sustainable and habitable world that supports life.

Through Project Vortex, you’ve extended this work process to create collective impact as well. What inspired you to begin this collective? And what has the collective work process allowed you to do?

Initially, I started Project Vortex because I was feeling increasingly hopeless about plastic pollution and about whether it would ever be utilized as an art material outside of my studio. I felt like I was alone, insane and quite small. I was worried that emotionally, I wouldn’t be able to sustain this “sustainable practice”. It was depressing to see more and more shifts towards plastic packaging and more and more artists buying new plastic objects to use in their work to talk about this, but so indirectly, with such lack of self reflection or accountability.

I needed to find other people who were working with this material without biases. People who were focused on it in order to add to the volume, richness, efficacy and diversity in the dialogue and action that all need amplification and expansion. I found that the more I looked for other artists the more I found them. It became more and more inspiring and valuable as a resource for me and for educators and the other members of the collective. Plus, through the development of this collective, more resources and opportunities could be shared and distributed within the collective, making us stronger as individuals and as a group. 

Poster for “Plasticulture: The Rise of Sustainable Practices With Polymers," through December 15, 2024, featuring Project Vortex Artists, includes works by ecoartspace members Ellen Driscoll, Natalya Khorover, Pam Longobardi and Bryan Northup).

With your current group exhibition, “Plasticulture: The Rise of Sustainable Practices with Polymers” at The School of Visual Arts Gallery in Manhattan, you showcase the fruits of this collective strength. What do you hope to inspire in both students and visitors alike in your approaches to sustainability and earth health?

Plasticulture highlights brilliant approaches to working with plastic debris with the goal being that students and visitors find inspiration, joy and hope, at a time when that is particularly important in a country with such a divided population. It is an invitation. My hope is that it is the first exhibition of its kind. It has a message that is clear, to the point, inclusive, and without a doubt, of service to life itself.

Each of the works featured embodies a different story or aspect to the plastic pollution issue that is relevant to every living creature on the planet, not just the 1% of us who enjoy the joke of a duct taped banana selling for $6.2 million. Though the exhibition only includes about a dozen of the amazing artists from Project Vortex, it is the antithesis to irreverent art that is merely about art. Despite the abysmal nature of the material that is at its focus it is powerful and uplifting. Plasticulture is about a burden that weighs on all life on earth right now. It is about what humans are doing to the ecosystem and what we can do about it. 

Thank you, Aurora, for reminding us of both our responsibility to the planet and each other through the impact of our work. 

World Map Series, 2019, Mixed media on canvas, dimensions variable

Vibrant Repercussions Resonate Around the World: Diane Burko Paints the Changing Environment in Brilliant Color from the Amazon and Beyond

Interview by Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

Diane Burko creates vibrant paintings and photographs that tell the harrowing story of our landscapes and people as the climate shifts and destructs. Based on maps, time lapse photographs, and on-site field work, she does her due-diligence to honor and truly understand the landscapes and people that are her subject. Though her focus is mainly in the Amazon, her message for collaborative activism, decolonialism, and environmental protection ring true for people throughout the world. Diane’s work truly exemplifies the intersection and power of art to speak to the spirit and foster attitudes toward change. She is currently exhibiting work in Madrid, Spain alongside other artists in the “The Greatest Emergency is the Absence of Emergency” show curated by Santiago Zabala until January 12, 2025.

Deforestation 1, 2021, mixed media on canvas, 42 x 42 inches

Diane, your work is location specific, but speaks to issues people are facing around the world. What is your approach on and off site? And how does it inform your artwork?

"Bearing witness” is an integral part of my practice - a totally crucial component. Physically experiencing & investigating a site of climate degradation, speaking with scientists and people who are from the land, experiencing these changes first-hand, is incredibly important to me. It is this practice that informs my work and provides it with authenticity & imbues it with a level of emotional intensity that I think can move people and allow them to connect with the factual as well as the aesthetic. I think this is what makes my work truly effective.

I visit places of climate degradation, take photos, notes, sketches, and most importantly, I take in the experience, really absorb it, and speak with people who study the landscape, conduct research, and live/work there. Then, I take those experiences home with me to my studio in Philadelphia, I let them marinate, and I make work. I paint, collage, manipulate organic material, and in that process, I let the canvas soak up everything I have absorbed.

Grinnell Mt. Gould #1, #2, #3, #4, 2009, oil on canvas, 88 x 200  inches overall, from Grinnell Mt. Gould series, painting of the glacier as it appeared four times in archival/USGS photographs from 1938 and 2006

Your description makes me think of the vibrancy and movement of your pre-and post-devastation landscapes, especially in your recent Amazon and Balbina series. How does time play out in your work?

I think that the motif of “pre-” and “post-” devastation in my work is a tool that brings a sober reality to many viewers. Some of these devastations happen so slowly that it is impossible to notice–summers get hotter, climate disasters more devastating, glaciers shrink–and it’s hard to grasp because we simply get used to it. I think that presenting these sites in both forms at one space and time can show viewers just what is happening, and how drastic the changes have been.

For example, I first worked within the tradition of “repeat photography” in the late 2000s, in a body of work that I showed in 2010 titled “Politics of Snow.” These works utilized glacial research and archival photographs. I focused on painting glaciers, and mountains as they’ve changed over time by contrasting them between the years. In those paintings, you see drastic changes–a disappearing landscape.

This kind of practice still informs my current work, but now I use more abstract representations of landscape and change–fields of color contrasted with borders, collaged headlines, articles, graphs, and images of devastation.

Amazon 25, 2024, mixed media on canvas, 20 x 20 inches

Your landscapes bridge multiple-dimensions and activism. Even using mapping to emphasize contrasts in the beauty and the destruction you describe. Do you consider mapping a political act? And how does it marry with art making?

Mapping is most certainly a political act! Maps play a crucial role in shaping the ways that we see the world - the colors, borders, symbols, what maps do and do not show – all that information is intentional. While they accurately display the world we live in, I want them to also imply the urgency of the climate crisis, the shrinking glaciers and rainforests, the disappearing reefs, as well as other issues. Their urgency, and their reality is important, and the use of maps in my work, especially in my World Map Series comes with the implication that we are all in this together.

Still from Diane Burko: World Map Series: From Glaciers to Reefs On Vimeo, 2019

That “we are all in this together” really resonates with the increasing call for art to be an activistic space integral to the effectiveness of climate policy and an informed public. Have you experienced public and policy shifts through art? And what seemed most effective in creating lasting change?

I certainly have, I think that, like I just mentioned, art has the capacity to empower the public, and I think many artists who are working now, and in the past have made it their goal to really reach out to the public and make empowering, informative work.

This makes me think about our efforts with FOCUS: featuring women artists in Philadelphia in 1974. And (re)FOCUS) this year, featuring black, brown, and indigenous women & gender non-conforming folks. Judy Brodsky and I, and many other talented individuals have been dedicated to these efforts, building these communities, and featuring stories that have been historically left out.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what is most effective, but it’s the sheer effort, the community building that I’ve seen and engaged in that has been most impactful in my experience. The networks of people working together, sharing their experiences with each other, and dedicating themselves to that practice of building and sharing and teaching each other is incredibly inspiring, and has compounded generationally.

Manaus/Meeting of the Waters, triptych, 2024, mixed media on canvas, 42 x 156 inches

What a fantastic reminder of how important community is while we navigate these times. And many of the conversations in these communities revolve around the repercussions of colonization and land exploitation that continue to today. What are your thoughts on the decolonial conversation in art?

Yes, my recent work is focused on the emergencies in the Amazon that have affected, and continue to affect, the landscape, and the indigenous populations of those regions, with widening ramifications for the whole planet.  The grid that is featured in this current group exhibition in Madrid deals with these issues of environmental degradation in the Amazon caused by the politics, greed, and extraction that are enacted world-wide. My goal is to continue the climate emergency conversation that impacts us all in the near future by featuring this work on an international level

These conversations about the dangers of deforestation and colonialism are at once local and global. So, traveling these works about the Amazon Rainforest to Spain (a former colonial power) is significant. It’s important that we look at these issues through multiple lenses. What happens in one space is a specific issue that has the capacity to affect the global climate. And it’s also part of a much larger pattern of colonialism and greed that affects us all, no matter where you are in the world. The destruction in the Amazon of both the landscape and the indigenous communities who steward the land represent this well. Chances are, something similar– some kind of local disruption to a natural landscape or indigenous population--is happening right under your nose.

Sharing these works and the decolonial conversation in art far and wide, is very important, especially in places that have complicated histories, and complex publics'.

Amazon Grid, Grid of 20 x 20 inch paintings on the Amazon; 2022-2024, mixed media on canvas, 60 x 120 inches

The exhibition you are referencing is in Spain and speaks of emergency prevention through artists who “rescue us in our greatest emergencies” before they become “emergencies”. What are your thoughts about your role as an artist in preventing these global climate-related emergencies?

I think that art has an incredible capacity to help “rescue us into our greatest emergencies” as Santiago Zabala has said in curating this exhibition. With all the media nowadays, it can feel impossible to keep up. Scientific data can become garbled, reports of non-stop disasters can be painful, and it can all become overwhelming to most. Many folks choose to look away in all of that overwhelm, and, well, it’s understandable.

I think art has a unique capacity to blend these emergencies with a more emotional experience, allowing viewers to open themselves to the emergency, really absorb that it is happening, and feel hope. I think that the beauty of art, its hopefulness is the perfect catalyst for change and empowerment, and empowerment is really what brings about change. The despair that I think most folks feel when watching a regular news report is not going to do that.

My work was actually featured in a research study that was then featured in this Hyperallergic article. My 2020 painting Summer Heat, was used in a study that demonstrated the way that the emotional components of art, the awe and the beauty, the visual communication can reach a broader public, and deepen their understanding of these issues in ways that classic avenues don’t.

Thank you, Diane, for your powerful work. The world needs these messages more than ever. 

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