Creating new environmental artist-institutions, personae, creating new field guides and rewriting established scripts, queering nature, campy interventions
“Where are the books? The poems? The plays? The goddamn operas?” he wrote in an op-ed for Grist. “Compare it to, say, the horror of AIDS … which has produced a staggering outpouring of art that, in turn, has had real political effect.” For future generations looking back on the present, “the single most significant item will doubtless be the sudden spiking temperature. But they’ll have a hell of a time figuring out what it meant to us.”
What can art and artists actually do?
Chicago-based curator and early supporter of environmental art Stephanie Smith cautioned that a glut of superficially righteous exhibitions could give hits of easy virtue to viewers and museums alike –
“If sustainability or climate change become art trends du jour, we risk providing a palliative to ourselves and to our audiences without contributing much to artistic production, nuanced debate or lasting social change”
How are artists representing the environment?
Representing nature as the sublime and untouched – Thomas Cole
How are contemporary artists re-imagining our place in the natural world, and proposing alternative relationships with our environment?
Imagining alternative relationships – Mary Mattingly, Future Farmers
Just over a mile up the Bronx River from Hunts Point, Mary Mattingly has docked her newest floating project, Swale, a garden on a 130-by-40-foot steel barge. After discovering it is illegal to forage or even grow food in public parks in New York City, Mattingly conceived of producing a forest of edible plants on the water, to circumvent those laws and let people gather food for free.
Bartol is interested in reciprocal relationships to land, and asks – “How do (I and other settlers) actually relate to land, and to what it’s already communicating?
She is exploring “extractive capitalism” while simultaneously “entangled with and benefitting from it.”
Artists transforming our experience of time/scale of our lives relative to the world – John Cage, Katie Patterson
From the Declaration of Responsibilities and Guarantee of Rights and Freedoms, Public Studio, 2018, Toronto.
Was really surprised to find two different books with Liberace LOL. I these books are all from the Scottish History and Food sections on the second floor. I was really curious about representation and abstraction with the books and how a lack of text can be just as powerful a tool. In trying to connect the first and last book, I worked to assemble books to tell a story of Liberace cooking, something going wrong, and then him dying and becoming a ghost.
I tried to illustrate this idea through colour and book size juxtaposition. The first is happy, floral (also about geography) as if he’s happily performing. The next two are exactly the same size but different shades and quality, as if to represent the cooking has begun but something goes sour. The large red book is much bigger and louder in my mind, representing an explosion. The black to me represents a kind of stasis..the white book following is haggard, brighter, and same length as the black, representing a kind of harmoniousness.
Looking at it a week later, I agree that the story doesn’t really come across through…However, fun warm up and I enjoyed getting to surf through the stacks!
I branched out from the second floor and looked at titles from the military, social studies, and women & gender studies stacks on the third floor.
I think at this point, I got too focused on the text and creating a poem. I was feeling reminiscent and cumbersome while making this. I was thinking about some kind of tumultuous affair between two enemies/lovers. Loved finding two different, yet connected texts that had to do with dance. I was also very curious about the use of punctuation….do you read it as the end of a sentence? or can it just be ignored. In the case, I tried to use the punctuation to illicit a break in the sentence.
Seeing how the stacks tilts from weight distribution is making me think I should look at smaller stacks.
I ran out of time at the library and sought to play around from the books in my apartment. These…don’t really have much connection to nature but I had fun coming up with different arrangements. In this stack, I was thinking of myself….First week of classes are always a bit chaotic and I was finding myself running late, having tech problems, and apologizing a lot….Feeling like Wendy Master of Art, The Disaster Artist. This to me reads like an omnipresent voice giving some kind of prophetic or spiritual advice. Not bad advice for sure. I’m curious by the shape of the stack – how it descends and returns to place at the last book.
At the top is “13 ways to kill your community” and 13 books below describing just that. I loved the mix and contrast between the fonts and subject matter. As I built this stack, I began thinking of this more from a writing perspective and less of a visual or material perspective. I used to write satire part-time and so to me, the stack took on more of a script.
While assembling the stack, I was thinking a lot about the fonts could work with and against each other . I began thinking through the voices of two characters that would be on a “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson” sketch. I was imagining two men filming some kind of Alex Jones-ish propaganda ad. The first guy is really mad, listing off progressive things that would contribute to a community’s decline. The camera would flip to the second guy, and carrying the same energy, he would list off things that just make him mad; “GRAPE FRUIT” “DUTY FREE AT THE AIRPORT” “LARRY GORMAN that sonofaBItch”.
I thought it would be funny to add a (fittingly New Brunswick centred) cookbook underneath a book about publicized family conflict as if to stick a quaint, nostalgic, maybe even satirical PR bandaid over them.
I also don’t consider NB as a great food hub so the idea of a New Brunswick centred cookbook from from members of a rich, white, loyalist family who probably have hired cooks is funny to me. Like something out of Succession.
From: Sunrise & Sunset at Praiano combines Lewitt’s minimal formalism with organic imagery. Lewitt presents photographs of the sky taken on the coast of Praiano, Italy over ocean waters. Though the images themselves are unruly in a literal sense—the sky does not adhere to imposed structures of logic—Lewitt integrates them into his familiar systems and organization . There are four images per page, neatly arranged in a square grid, reminiscent of Lewitt’s former publications comprising only lines and other drawn elements. Sol Lewitt, 1980.
Collaborative Artist Book Assignment:
See ongoing deadlines for work in progress, design workshops and final templates on class schedule.
Together with the class we will create the content for, and design and publish an original artist book on the motifs of “The Wind”, “The Weather” and “The Water”.
The artist book for our class will emphasize image over text and be an artwork in its own right. It can be any length or size available on Blurb.com under a budget of $30.
Throughout the term we will be collecting images from class exercises, field trips, assignments and research. You can also capture new images and spontaneous moments related to the themes. Post high resolution images on your blog pages, and prepare to share them, and potentially have them used in spreads along with other images in our final book.
In class we will participate in a book publishing workshop, and see a collection of artist books, in addition to the works of other artists on the theme.
Assignment: ARTIST PRESENTATIONS
Shawna Dempsey and Lori Milan, Lesbian Parks and Services
DURATION: 5-10 MINUTES (presentations will be strictly timed)
Present the work of a contemporary artist working with environmental themes and materials.
You must present images and/or video to illustrate the work of the artist. Describe three of the artist’s works in detail (or ONE major project), from past works to more recent projects.
Discuss the themes, ideas, and media at play in the works, and the artist’s unique methods of producing and presenting artworks. Select works that specifically deal with themes from nature and the environment, weather/climate, or other relevant topics.
All of the works should be presented as a concise post on the course blog. Use images and embedded videos as needed. You may cut and paste descriptive segments, but this must be indicated and sources should be linked/credited.
Presentations will be evaluated for:
Evidence of intensive research, depth of engagement
Understanding of ideas, artistic strategies and external contexts at play in the work
THE WIND/THE WEATHER/THE WATER: Collaborative book project- see ongoing deadlines in schedule. Students will post works and images on the themes on blog page – throughout the term.
“The Sorted Books project began in 1993, and it has has taken place on many different sites over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized book collections. The process is the same in every case: I sort through a collection of books, pull particular titles, and eventually group the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves, often shown on the shelves of the library they came from. Taken as a whole, the clusters are a cross-section of that library’s holdings that reflect that particular library’s focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies. They sometimes also function as a portrait of the particular book owner. The Sorted Books project is an ongoing project which I add to almost each year, and there there are hundreds of images in the ongoing archive to date.”
Pictured above: What is Art? C-prints, each 12.5 x 19 inches, 1996/2008The series Sorting Shark from the Sorted Books project Pictured above: A Day at the Beach C-prints, each 12.5 x 19 inches, 2001
The series Kansas Cut-Up from the Sorted Books project Pictured above: Only Yesterday C-prints, each 12.5 x 19 inches, 2014
Dave Dyment:
ONE BILLION YEARS [PAST AND FUTURE], 2012 A collection of books pertaining to the past and future, arranged chronologically from One Billion Years Ago to The Next Billion Years.
Nina Katchadourian discusses a new Sorted Books project in William S Burroughs’ library.
What are some of the strategies Katchadourian, Dyment and Park used to select and order books in their final works? What were their decisions based on, and how do the final compositions expand the meaning of each individual book, or come together to have a new and surprising meaning about the library, the family, about language and books, or about anything else?
Book Stacks Assignment:
Make 3 of your own Sorted Books stacks – use your own personal library or visit another personal or public library.
Consider using books to create new images, suprising compositions in language, and forms out of a stack of books. You might respond to words, colours, images, forms, and more in your stacks. Line things up with intention, and illuminate your stacks to take high quality images.
Be respectful of library patrons and staff when collecting books and taking photographs, and return books to trolleys/follow rules please.
Create a composition, with as many books as you may need, and photograph it. Look for concise messages, play with words and concepts with what is at hand. Consider other features of the books – scale, material, colours, and context in the library in your stacks. Avoid clichés and easy statements – be open to accidents and funny surprises, experiment with different titles in relation to one another in different ways. Your stack might be a portrait of a person, a quippy commentary about a historical moment, an ironic collision of surprising titles… be prepared to talk about your choices and how they might be readable to a wider audience.
Include THREE FINAL images, a short description of your stacks, and your process of creating the compositions on your blog page.
I wanted to produce a selection of business cards to “search” for my parents. My intent was to provide other outside individuals with the odd experience of adoption. I personally am detached from the topic and wanted to present this through a cold and impersonal business card. I wanted to balance this with an image of myself as a baby and signed every card with my signature to humanize the idea of adoption. Below I have added the images I was able to produce. After the piece was finalized, I realized I was not quite emotionally ready to release the product out in the real world but I am holding on to the cards for future projects.
Nature Videos
During the exploration period of the Arboretum, Ana, Kenzie and I came across a large swamp and we knew that we wanted to do something with the swamp. During this time we also took a number of videos on our phone exploring different concepts. My final idea that I landed on was walking in the swamp and calling a friend. It was a fun challenge because the swamp was very unpredictable, once you stepped in you began to sink so I thought that it made an enjoyable product. I was hoping that the audio would have picked up better unfortunately I didn’t think to use a proper mic or anything so I ended up getting a lot of white noise in the background and my voice is a bit quiet.
Here are a few videos that we took on our phones when we explored the Arboretum. The first video we came across a great entanglement of trees and I was curious what it would be like if someone stood in the middle sort of “blending” in with nature. The second video was more of a fun play on the runway, we found a really nice clearing among a field of tall grass.
Nina Katchadourian
Nina is an interdisciplinary artist, this includes video, performance, sound, sculpture, photography and much more. She was born in California in 1968 then ent on to graduate Brown University with a double Bachelors of Arts. Then she received her Masters of Fine Arts from the University of California.
The first piece I looked at which fascinated me was “Survive the Savage Sea” which was based on the story of Dougal Robertson. He was sailing with his family in 1972 when the boat was attacked by a pod of killer whales. The family only had 2 minutes to grab all of their belongings and jump into a lifeboat before their boat went down. They all survived 38 days on the ocean against 20ft waves, circling sharks, thirst and starvation. Nina came across the riveting story of “Survive the Savage Sea” at the age of 7 and has consistently read the novel throughout her life. To convey the story Nina starts with the whale and its full scale stretching across the gallery depicted in a painted cutout. She made sure that the size and everything was accurate, collaborating with marine biologists and even sent the whale cutout to Robertson. and then on the ground is an outline of the dinghy that is the approximate size of the one the Robertson’s survived on. She also provides drawings of how the family slept on the dinghy, essentially were like human sardines. Dougal Robertson recalls hunting sea creatures for sustenance and delves into further description of the experience. He remembers the fights with his parents, the hunger but also the beauty of the wide sky. This prompted Nina to create wire sculptures of the creatures they caught: sea turtles, dorado and flying fish. They float against the blue of the gallery and are reminiscent of a skeleton and a memory. She commits the show to knowledge teaching people how to survive at sea but the ultimate focus is on human empathy. When Nina was interviewed she states “The Robertson story bears resemblance to how we’ve all been living this year, isolated from each other in our own little shipwrecks. But it’s also about the incredible invention, resourcefulness and creativity they bring to their predicament. They have an optimism I find striking – they just keep at it.” I
Another piece I adored was Natural Cross Dressing. She was inspired by caterpillar eating a birch tree outside of her window and she thought that these wiggly creatures would make perfect moustaches. She discusses the difficulties of getting the bugs to remain in one spot on her face so she used honey on her upper lip to keep them from wandering. She wanted to get the point across that in society crossdressing is seen as unnatural so she uses completely natural materials to crossdress.
She has so many fascinating pieces and I thoroughly enjoyed looking more into the works that she does. Nina approaches art in such a creative and playful way that is inspiring.
Week 2, Walk in the Arboretum
The circular things that I found.
Some weedy photos and plants that I found interesting either in appearance or location
Here are my photos of the sky
And then finally here are photos of others taking their photos
Week 1, Book Stacking
Here is my revised book stacking photos. I attempted to keep it simple and create a question and answer.
Initially before the library trip I was thinking largely of creating maps and imagery through the spines of the books, however once arriving at the library I realized the large number of books necessary to produce the images I wanted. I really struggled coming up with ideas for this project so I thought I would turn to Nina Katchadourian’s artworks and I came to really appreciate the simplicity of her works as well as her quick quippy sentences. To incorporate weather, I did some research by watching one of the documentaries and learned of the consequences that climate change is having on the environment. In some ways this reminded me of the Icarus complex, it feels as though we are heading too close to the sun and as the saying goes “don’t fly too close to the sun or you’ll get burned.” My second photo was in similar spirit to the first. I always found it interesting how there are so many rich billionaires that are flying out into space and there has been so much research done on what other planets are inhabitable rather than putting more resources into saving our planet. So I wanted to attempt to create a short sentence surrounding space travel.
For the third photo I was inspired by art history. I am currently taking an art history course and as I was perusing the library I came across a huge section of William Turner books and I thought of looking through the art history section for other artists that had notable landscape paintings and then I organized them in order of movement. It was interesting looking at the selection of books that the library had and it was a test of memory for myself trying to remember the order of the art movements. I appreciated the process of this because the end result became a colourful artwork. I also opened to books and the spines laid out on each other created sculptural shapes.
I ended up doing one more experiment. As I was looking at my own bookshelf for inspiration I became very interested in how people organize their personal library. So I went around to my friends and family members and requested photos of any bookshelves around their house. I believe that it is telling of a person and their life as to where they put their books and what books that they own.
A few weeks ago, while giving a tour of the U of G campus, I ended up getting lost in the library. As I searched for the exit, I ended up in the basement of the library – a place I always found myself too nervous to enter previously. I wandered the space and curiously approached the bookshelves. The basement is home to lots of government publications and periodicals with topics ranging from natural resources to psychological journals to food consumption. I found this collection extremely interesting due to the richness of its history, as well as the feeling of loneliness that accompanied it. The sign-out cards hint that most of this collection of literature has not been touched in years – decades even. For these reasons, I chose to isolate the basement of the library as my first focus for the bookstack assignment.
My process started with finding an area that would be suitable for photos, while also not bothering any students who may be working in the space. After I found a spot to set up, I browsed several shelves of text and picked out titles that I thought sounded interesting. I found it much easier to work with books that had short titles compared to longer titles, so as I returned to the shelves to pick out more books I tried to focus on titles one to three words long.
For the weather component, I found titles that were organized based on season. I find it interesting how seasons and weather are a telling sign of the passage of time, yet also highlight the cyclical nature of time itself. Even the university uses seasons to express the passage of time from one semester to another, while also bringing to light the cyclical nature of a school setting.
The equipment that I used to take my photos included a DSLR camera borrowed from the university, as well as a ringlight that I brought from home. It was fun to play around with the camera settings and lighting, and I think in the end I got several usable photos. I am not very experienced with photography, but as I started to get used to the camera settings I found that my images came out much better than I anticipated. There is certainly a huge learning curve when it comes to using a DSLR in comparison to a simple point-and-shoot camera, but the payoff is very evident.
Stack #1 – Wordplay/Poetry
lighting and exposure was a challenge early on
My first book stack was an attempt at a rhyming poem (?). I chose these books from a large stack of titles I gathered, and just sort of rearranged them until the stack felt readable. I like how the colours ended up being on the cool side, with the exception of the word EVIDENCE. I do find the small text makes this composition difficult to read without zooming in, though.
Stack #2 – Framing
Playing around with lighting and framing
For this composition, I wanted to play around with the lighting and framing to see how these aspects play into or complement a bookstack. How does dramatic lighting communicate the stack when compared to normal lighting? Then, using other books on either side of the stack I attempted to create the illusion of a naturally occurring bookstack – merely found that way on a library shelf. It was fun to play around with these aspects of my photos, but less fun to move all the books around.
Stack #3 – Mood/Atmosphere/Lighting
How does lighting affect mood?
The title ‘My City Was Gone’ was too haunting in this lonely library basement for me to not pick up. I was trying to avoid a cliche reference to the pandemic and was worried that this stack would read as corny. However, my classmates showed a positive reaction when I presented the images in class, and now I really like them and think they are my most successful shots. I experimented with the lighting and ended up with some very dramatic shots. I am really thankful that I brought lighting because I do not think that my library bookstacks would have been as successful without it.
Library/Camera Comparison – Personal Bookshelf
Stack A – What’s in a Name
This stack is only composed of titles that include a character’s name. Read from top to bottom, the first letter of each name spells out F-A-K-E, as all of these characters are fictitious.
Stack B – Wordplay
This composition was made with the intention of communicating the ‘last words’ as an individual’s final performance.
Stack C – Forecast Pattern
This final composition was made taking inspiration from weather forecast patterns. Using blue/grey book covers to communicate cloudy weather and orange/red book covers to communicate sunny weather, I illustrated a 5-day weather forecast pattern. This was compared to the crochet forecast blankets that have been made by artisans. The titles in this stack are not meant to be important, however, this intention can get lost if a viewer does not already know the meaning behind the stack. In my reshoot, I took this into consideration and made some adjustments to how this stack was shot.
Re-shoot with DSLR
After I was left unsatisfied with the photos of my personal books, I signed out a DSLR and got to work reshooting these stacks.
What’s in a Name
Famous Last Words
Weather Patterns
While I love the quality of the DSLR photos, I do find them to be a little bit yellow. I think with some editing this could be fixed. I used different positioning and angles for the last bookstack to bring attention away from the titles and focused on the colours. I think this change solved the issue that my first attempt at this stack faced.
Most Successful Shots
Walk in the Arboretum
During the walk in the Arboretum, I really wanted to challenge myself to take high-quality images with my phone camera. I had tried to use the app ProShot for the bookstacks assignment but opted for a DSLR when my photos constantly came out blurry and overexposed. I dedicated this outing to learning how to overcome and correct the issues I was facing, and just hoped that I would come out with something to show for it.
Diane teaching us about weeds
Round Things
Sky
The sky just before it started to rain.
Weeds
White balance – cloudy vs sunny settings
Taking photos of weeds was my favourite part of the walk. I ended up losing the group fairly quickly as I got distracted taking photos of all the weeds and plants around. I think this experience helped me a lot to experiment with the manual phone camera app and proved to myself that I can take high-quality images just using my phone camera. (Although I do still think DSLRs are irreplaceable to an extent.)
ARTIST ASSIGNMENT
JENNY KENDLER
b. 1980, New York City
Jenny Kendler is an ecological artist and activist who is credited with work that focuses on climate change and biodiversity loss. She is passionate about otherness and the de-centring of humans in a more-than-human world – a common theme in the work she produces. Kendler tends to make sculptural representations of thought-provoking ecological subject matter using materials that are reclaimed and repurposed. She has also used organic mediums like bones and fossilized genetic material of endangered species in her work and prompts discussion surrounding extinction and what we currently stand to lose.
Amber Archive (2018-ongoing)
Amber Archive is a project that started in 2018 and is still in progress. The piece is composed of amber nodules that contain a piece of genetic material (fur, leaf, bone, scale, feather, insect wing) of a species that is currently endangered. The piece acts as an analog genetic time capsule that will preserve the DNA of a species for millennia, and outlast cryobanks that rely on energy.
Forget Me Not (2020)
Forget Me Not is a piece that uses a decorated vintage boombox inspired by “Sailor’s Valentines” – elaborate mosaics made using colourful seashells, a popular gift from those returning from sea voyages in the 18th and 19th centuries. “Think of me, when far away” and “forget me not” were popular messages. Kendler’s Forget Me Not is her love letter to the sea as it slowly acidifies due to climate change and the burning of fossil fuels. The boombox plays a tape labelled “soothing ocean sounds” in which the sound of ocean acidification can be heard. Really being played is the sound of the artist’s baby teeth as they dissolve in acid.
1985 moratorium on commercial whaling was finally enacted, but only 5% of humpbacks remained
populations since recovering, but other threats such as commercial shipping noise, fossil fuel seismic exploration and military sonar
Humpback’s unique sonic culture and future survival of species are jeopardized by the acoustic pollution of our oceans.
bells clappers are Miocene Epoch fossilized ear bones: tympanic bullae from an ancient species of rorqual whale related to modern humpbacks
the part of the ear which once received sound, now creates a new fragile resonance, a mournful echo, a ghost knell-suggesting a message from these long extinct whales to today’s endangered whales
Conus textile is a species of marine snail with a beautiful patterned shell known as the Textile Cone or Cloth of Gold Cone
they are infact predatory, venomous mollusks with toxins deadly to huans
collage of digital images of the shell’s patterns to create a textile
presented atop a burial mound of sand, likeness of a shroud
whose death are we to lament? – the patterns of Conus textile recall cellular automata
Conway’s Game of Life or Wolfram’s Rule 30
computational models said to prove that complex design and intelligent organization can arise in the absence of a “designer”
Heirloom (in private collection)
Hackberries
amorphous hydrated silicon oxide – technically a precious gemstone opal
seeds also contain high concentration of carbon-14, making them useful for archeological radiocarbon dating – a valuable technology used by archeologists and paleobotanists to date prehistoric sites – which may be endangered due to the ancient carbon released into the atmosphere where we burn fossil fuels
fear in science community that radiocarbon dating will no longer be viable as early as 2030 – yet another infrequently mentioned threat of climate change
Mending Wall (2021-2024)
collaborative project with the public, Kendler and the Field Museum’s Pandemic Collections Team, with support from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE)
drawing on the American vernacular form of the stone wall – Mending Wall offers a space to honor our collective grief – and share individual hopes and fears in the moment of intersecting crises
global pandemic, gun violence epidemic, the worsening climate crisis, and interrelated struggle for racial justice
piece inspired by Robert Frost’s classic poem, Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea novels and the artist’s childhood visit to the Wailing Wall
25 ft fragment of dry-stacked stone wall made of reclaimed Chicago cobble stone
surrounding wall is natural area of perennial plants and organic stone seating to provide space for contemplation and appreciation of the natural world
wall as something that keeps us apart, as well as how we the people can constitute form, building city stone by stone
public invited to leave a message from this moment of crisis to be archived by the Pandemic Collections team at the Field Museum
Public events held in the space, including guided meditations, dance performances, poetry readings and mending workshops
