Jeff Orlowski
Jeff Orlowski is an American filmmaker. He is best known for both directing and producing documentary Chasing Ice (2012) and Chasing Coral (2017) which directly reveals the reality of global warming.
Ian van Coller
an van Coller’s work seeks to break down the barriers imposed between art and science through collaborations with climate focused geologists studying Quelccaya Glacier in Peru. The images reflect the visible and fleeting existence of the glacier and surrounding landscape, while the scientists’ notes reflect the language of change on a geological level. Geological time is measured to a magnitude difficult to conceptualize in relation to the limited timelines of human life. Climate change has mutilated and compressed these timelines so that they begin to converge, making the timeline of the earth begin to look alarmingly like the lifespan of a generation or two. Alarm bells are sounding from scientists across disciplines, but often these alarms are contained within silos of expertise. Van Coller’s work illustrates and informs the viewer of the realities of climate change.
Giuseppe Penone
Giuseppe Penone is an Italian artist and sculptor, known for his large-scale sculptures of trees that are interested in the link between man and the natural world.
In facing of nature, Penone uses technical methods such as modeling, polishing, and branding to replace the usual rules of artistic expression, so that the works can be close to the object of performance in the nature.
Giulio
Giulio is an Italian photographer based in London and Bangkok. As twice the first prize winner of the World Press Photo Awards, he through his lens expresses how he channeled his harsh inner critic for the environmental pollution. Giulio endeavors to ascertain the existence of a relationship between environment and human, in a unique way. Through experience the environment in person, Giulio examines the manifestations of rational thought and inquiry in the environmental issues.
Although I have watched many photographs about environmental pollution, I was still shocked and attracted by his photographs when I saw his work at first sight. Giulio’s photography really stands out to his audience that he always has special entry points to convey his perspective on the issue. He captured the scenes in his project “Ganges, Death of a River”: A woman crosses a small channel of the Ganges on a submerged bridge made of waste；at the meanwhile, in another section of the river, some Hindus along the banks of the Ganges get ready to bathe in the water of the sacred river. They bathe in the Ganges, and they believe bathing in these rivers is thought to cleanse a person of all sins. He caught the critical contradiction between human activities and the environment – thousands of Hindus around the world have worshipped the river for centuries, but they pollute the sacred river without restraint that countless chemicals and trashes spill out into the Ganges.
Future Farmers
Future Farmers is an evolving collaborative team that takes on projects addressing topics such as our interaction with foodways, labor, and the built environment.
My interest in Future Farmers is two fold - first their collaborative efforts, both in working as a team and in dialogue with a larger audience. Second, in the topics they address relating to the most important questions of this century. How will we shape our food systems, how will we distribute labor, how will we interact with the space around us. While not always directly focused on sustainability, their work asks the question of how we should live.
Edward Burtynsky
Edward Burtynsky is regarded as one of the world's most accomplished contemporary photographers. He is known for his photographic depictions of global industrial landscapes.
People were starting to point to a direction in the recycling work. When Edward mentions about recycling, unsurprisingly, China is presented in front of us. As China produces tons of electronic products which are being delivered through all over the world, countless e-waste rush back China at the same time. The outside world people will never know how painful Chinese is. The costs of rapid development are enormous. The picture I choose below is my favorite and it’s also the one touched me most. As Edward talked, the woman in the photo has been through Mao, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution, and now she is sitting on her porch with this e-waste beside her. How cruel the world is to her and how cruel people are to the world.
Chris Jordan
Midway: Message from the Gyre 2009
Chris Jordan is an environmental photographer. In his on going series Running the Numbers II, Jordan has presented data of different global phenomena in large panels. These panels allow for the viewer to understand the gravitas of the situations, with an overwhelming visual. I have also shown a video of another series called Albatross. In this series he shows how much plastic is in the stomach of dead Albatrosses. Jordan’s photographs bring the concept of photo activism to life.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Christo and Jeanne-Claude were artists working collaboratively on monumental installations. Christo was born in Bulgaria and Jeanne-Claude was born in Morocco both on the date June 13th, 1935. They were best known for their large-scale environmental pieces wrapped in fabric. Jeanne-Claude stated, “We wish every true work of art, it has absolutely no purpose whatsoever: it is not a message, it is not a symbol, it is only a work of art. And like every true artist, we create those works of art for us and our collaborators.” They are best known for their pieces, Surrounded Islands (1983), The Gates (2005), and The Floating Piers (2016). Jeanne-Claude died in 2009 and Chirsto died earlier this year (2020).
Christo and Jeanne-Claude made very interesting and thought-provoking work. Their monumental creations were/are mesmerizing due to scale, material, and artistic execution. I found it interesting that Jeanne-Claude designated the motive of their artwork as “arts for arts sake.” I can understand it to be freeing, because they were creating for the beauty of the piece and for themselves. There was not a specific audience they had to pander to other than themselves. It is also interesting that the goal of their work was the previously stated, yet their work still influenced greater environmental awareness. On their website, Jeanne-Claude wrote corrections to many allegations made against them.
Chip Thomas
Chip Thomas (who goes by the name Jetsonorama) is a photographer and public/street artist who lives and works in the Navajo Nation. He is not a member of the Nation, but arrived there in 1987 as a doctor where he built relationships with many through home visits. He began photographing the community and his work evolved into large-scale, black and white wheat paste installations. Between 2012-2017 he organized the Painted Desert Project; a residency which paired artists and street vendors to build and renovate roadside stands to attract tourists (a primary source of income for many on the reservation). His work focuses on telling the stories of people and their environments and documents and brings awareness to social and ecological justice movements.
I became aware of the work of Chip Thomas through another artist, Monica Canilao, who participated in the Painted Desert Project and recently reflected on her experience collaborating on the project. I was originally struck by his large scale portraits with words scrawled across faces--the images are powerful and hard to ignore. He's not just photographing people but listening and providing a platform for people to tell their stories--whether on the images, at art shows and events or on social media. I appreciate how his practice is rooted in building relationships--between community members, artists, activists and himself.
https://www.instagram.com/jetsonorama/?hl=ko
Cai Guo Qiang
Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China, and lives and works in New York. He studied stage design at the Shanghai Drama Institute from 1981 to 1985 and attended the Institute for Contemporary Art: The National and International Studio Program at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City. His work is both scholarly and politically charged. Accomplished in a variety of media, Cai began using gunpowder in his work to foster spontaneity and confront the controlled artistic tradition and social climate in China.
In this work he projects a peaceful and perfect harmony in the natural world where different kinds of animals come together to drink from a pool.
Bronte Velez
Bronte Velez identifies as an eco-social black-latinx transdisciplinary artist and designer who "lives at the intersections of black feminist placemaking & prophetic community traditions, environmental justice and death doulaship" (leadtolife.org). They are the creative director of Lead to Life, an Oakland-rooted* collective of Black and queer artists, healers and ecologists that transform guns into ceremonial objects at the sites of state violence, particularly sites of police brutality and environmental racism (inspired by the work of Pedro Reyes). In addition, they are media director for Planting Justice, a Bay-area nursery committed to food sovereignty, community healing and economic justice and they share their words, movements, and rituals in community and through podcasts and social media.
Agnes Denes
A FOREST FOR NEW YORK - A PEACE PARK FOR MIND AND SOUL
A Project for the Edgemere Landfill, Queens, New York © 2014 Agnes Denes
Tree Mountain - A Living Time Capsule-11,000 Trees, 11,000 People, 400 Years, 1992-96, (420 x 270 x 28 meters) Ylojarvi, Finland
© Agnes Denes
Agnes Denes is a Hungarian born artist credited as the grandmother to the environmental art movement. Her work became especially predominant from the 1960’s-1980’s and continues to hold a powerful stance. Denes explores such a variety of topics in various mediums, that it is difficult to classify her under any specific art media. She is most notable for her work Wheatfield- A confrontation: Battery Park Landfill.[1] In May of 1982, Denes moved 200 truckloads of dirt and planted a wheat field where Battery Park City and the World Financial Center now stand. In August, the field produced 1,000 pounds of healthy wheat. Wheatfield represented a greater cause focusing on topics such as world commerce, food, hunger, and energy.[2] Many continuations of this project through a different lens have been completed throughout the years by Denes, once such project is A Forest for the New York: A Peace Park for Mind and Soul. The focus of this project pertains towards carbon emissions. Denes planted 100,000 trees throughout the 117-acre landfill near Queens, New York. The project aims to not only purify the air and water below, but to provide a place of refuge for peaceful contemplation. [3]
Agnes Denes is a very inspirational artist because of her scale and motives. I admire the different forms her works take, to explore beyond traditional artistic mediums such as painting and drawing. She is quoted “I went through about six or seven painting methods just to see what I didn't want to do. And then I got off the wall, and went into the environment.” The breadth of these two pieces is especially interesting. The use of plants for two different albeit connected purposes is very intriguing. It is an explorative process that shows the interconnectedness of everything in the world.
[1] Denes, Agnes, “Agnes Denes,” Agnes Denes Studio, Accessed 6 September 2020: http://www.agnesdenesstudio.com/
[2] Denes, Agnes, “Wheatfield- A Confrontation: Battery Park Landfill,” Agnes Denes Studio, Accessed 6 September 2020: http://www.agnesdenesstudio.com/works7.html
[3] Denes, Agnes, “A Forest for New York: A Peace Park for Mind and Soul,” Agnes Denes Studio, Accessed 6 September 2020: http://www.agnesdenesstudio.com/works1.html
Aida Sulova
Once Upon a Plastic Bag,
an Anti-Plastic Bag Campaign in Kyrgyzstan
Through garbage bin street art and a plastic bag clean-up initiative called "Once Upon a Plastic Bag," I wanted to encourage people to seek a clean and comfortable country for their children. I wanted to raise awareness about the rampant garbage problem in Kyrgyzstan, I found that the ugly trash cans in the city can actually serve as a nice canvas to express my concern. I made a series of large photographs of the wide open human mouth and I placed them on the sides of the garbage cans around the city. So they would remind people that what they throw into the world, eventually ends up inside us.
Aida Sulova is an American based artist in New York - She creates concepts and ideas in the development of communities and also to bring social change to the world. As a creative director she is experienced in branding , multi media production etc.
Aida S. has a project called ''Once upon a plastic bag''. I was drawn to this project on how she used creative means to generate awareness of the rampant garbage problem in Kyrgyzstan. Using trash cans as canvas to send forth the message to the community on what we throw into the world ends up inside us.
Alice Gosti
In the piece Bodies of Water, choreographer and performance artist Alice Gosti navigates the complex relationship between the city of Seattle and it's waters. This relationship is explored through a site-responsive immersive dance performance piece at the Seattle waterfront over the course of five hours.
Amanda Leigh Evans
The Living School of Art is an ongoing, neighbor-led community art project in an affordable housing apartment complex in Portland, OR
Amanda Leigh Evans is a social practice artist from Portland, OR that focuses on ways of seeing greater interdependence within natural systems. They also facilitate an alternative art school and collective called "the living school of art"
Andrea Polli
N-Point
An artwork that present a time-lapse of webcam images from from the Arctic combined with a 4 channel signification of weather at the North Pole
Andrea Polli's work takes a multimedia and very clever technological approach to works about the environment. Her works "Energy Flow" and "Particle Falls" both rely upon LED light visualizations of real-time weather and climate changes. Energy Flow installed bird-safe turbines on the Rachel Carson Bridge to power LED light visualizations of real-time weather changes in Pittsburg. Particle Falls represents shifts in air quality represented on the sides of buildings.
Andreapolli.com
Andy Goldsworthy
Title: Started Climbing, 1987
Medium: chromogenic print
Size:50 x 50 cm. (19.7 x 19.7 in.)
Andy Goldsworthy is a British artist currently living in Scotland. His works are well renowned around the environmental and land art communities, especially due to his starring role in the documentary Rivers and Tides (2001). Goldsworthy uses his hands and found tools in nature to create his site-specific works. His inspiration comes from his natural surroundings and the refection of time.
Bettina Werner
Bettina Werner World’s 1st Pioneering Salt Crystal Artist
invented the textured colorized salt technique, in the early 80's, as an Art medium, first in the History of Art. Her artworks are exhibited in Museums and Art galleries all over the world.