Pale Butterwort

Wetlands and bogs are under appreciated. Since the land is unusable for grazing and farming, bogs are often drained and destroyed. In reality they serve a valuable purpose and many think of these lush wet places as the kidneys of the Earth. The plants and micro-organisms that live in bogs and wetlands clean and supply water to rivers and lochs. Bogs also store carbon in the form of peat. If drained the carbon, which has been stored for thousands of years, is released into the atmosphere contributing to global warming. The destruction of wetlands and bogs leads to greater pollution, risk or flooding and loss of species. One rare and beautiful bog species in Scotland is the Pinguicula Lusitanica or Pale Butterwort. Found in West Sutherland, West Ross, Inverness-shire, Argyll and the Hebrides, the Pale Butterwort thrives on wet, open peat or mineral soil. This plant is carnivorous and eats small flies and other insects. The curled leaves trap the insects which are then broken down by the digestive enzymes in the leaves. It is striking in appearance with red veins in pale green leaves. The blossoms are pink with throats of red and yellow stripe. The Pale Butterwort is at risk due to drainage, peat-extraction, moor burning, eutrophication and trampling.

Bibliography:
Lusby, Philip and Wright, Jenny. Scottish Wild Plants: Their History, Ecology and Conservation. Mercat Press, 2001.

Scottish Primrose

The bright purple Primula Scotica or Scottish Primrose is found only in Northern Scotland and exists nowhere else in the world. It can be found on the north coast of Scotland between Cape Wrath in Sutherland and Dunbeath in Caithness and on the larger of the Orkney islands. This beautiful plant is very sensitive to environmental factors and can only live on four types of habitat: grassland, maritime heath, coastal limestone and calcareous sand dunes. It thrives on mild winters but interestingly global warming is one of the main threats to this plant. The reason is because latitudes above fifty degrees north have consistently been getting colder since the 1950’s, with stronger winds and storms. Light grazing benefits Scottish Primrose and areas in which rabbit populations have been reduced the plant disappeared or declined. Heavy grazing by sheep however also leads to declined populations. On the island of Hoy in Orkney the Scottish Wildlife Trust has a conservation project that is lightly grazing Shetland sheep on areas of land that have Scottish Primrose. On one of these sites the population has doubled. Scottish Primrose is part of Scotland’s natural heritage and it would a terrible loss if this unique plant were to become extinct.

Bibliography:
Lusby, Philip and Wright, Jenny. Scottish Wild Plants: Their History, Ecology and Conservation. Mercat Press, 2001.

Living the Disconnected Life

“Internal and external forces are at work urging us to look away from the reality of what is happening. Television, iPods, cell phones, and all the newest electronic games and gadgets engulf us with distractions and mind-numbing entertainment. The use of antidepressants, substance abuse, and suicide rates, especially among young people are dramatically on the rise. The World Health Organization reports that depression has reached epidemic proportions and is predicted to be the second leading cause of death by 2020. Nearly four million people across the globe have plugged into Second Life, a virtual world in which to live and buy property far from the global crisis of our fractured Earth. Many of us seem to be doing everything we can to shut off awareness of the real world’s plight” (Macy, 18).

During the last month I have been living the disconnected life. More specifically I have been living in the world of other peoples’ disconnection. Almost everyday I have photographed a person from my local area in a scene of his or her particular form of zoning out. I have also been talking non-stop about the project and constantly recruiting new participants. Just now I returned from Tescos photographing Kirsty as she walked through the isles in a daze. Yesterday I photographed Heather lying in a dark alley filled with trash, a bottle of beer at her lips. I listened as she talked about the anger, which led her to alcohol, the feeling of hopelessness at the state of the world and her life as a frustrated activist. Many of her friends in the movement died from substance abuse. Before Heather I photographed Ruby at her computer, a dancer she feels disconnected by the static pose of computer life. On Monday I listened as Carolyn talked about how her feelings of sadness led her to eat and to obesity. Even on the weekend at a party I was still in the realm of disconnection photographing Jo feeling lonely surrounded by people having fun. When preparing for the party and she asked me what to wear and I said wear what makes you feel most uncomfortable.

The grind of nine to five wears down Kerrigan, and Galen feels spaced out when driving, in the in-between spaces of travel. Gill feels trapped by having to shop and look professional while at the same time knowing the dirty underworld of slave labour and pollution that she supports by shopping at the cheap stores she can afford. Avalon feels small and insignificant in the city and for her the photograph within the parking garage represents the ugliness of urban life. Faced with feelings of insecurity Gabrielle turns to chocolate and smoking, a mobile phone keeping her company, while Gail turns to TV and snack food to distract herself. Are we, like Joanna Macy writes, trying to shut ourselves off from the problems of the world? Or are we just trying to survive the best we can?

It has been both emotionally intense and surprisingly engaging collaborating on this art project. I have brought attention to the places of inattention in the participant’s lives. My examining his or her disconnected moments it seems that the person begins to see the potential to do things differently or at least to bring more presence into these moments so that they feel responsibility instead of victimization.

My original intention was to photograph half new people and half people who participated in Essence. I have found however that I chose people to participate in Essence because I felt they were connected and quite aware of who they really are. Many of the people I chose are highly optimistic and have a way of lighting up the room. While these people obviously have moments of disconnection, many found it hard to think of any moments when asked. Others chose moments such as lying on the couch daydreaming, which is more tame than what I had in mind. I have therefore decided to ask more new people than Essence participants. I don’t want to force disconnection while there are people who are used to plumbing the depths of their souls and who are prepared to show truly painful or disturbing moments of disconnection. This honesty is a powerful mirror for us all.

Ecological Artists

Wherever possible I have taken the artists description directly from their website.

Agnes Denes
One of the early pioneers of both the environmental art movement and Conceptual art, Agnes Denes brings her wide ranging interests in the physical and social sciences, mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, poetry and music to her delicate drawings, books and monumental artworks around the globe. In 1982, she carried out what has become one of the best-known environmental art projects when she planted a two-acre field of wheat in a vacant lot in downtown Manhattan. Titled, Wheatfield -- A Confrontation, the artwork yielded 1,000 lbs. of wheat in the middle of New York City to comment on "human values and misplaced priorities". The harvested grain then traveled to 28 cities worldwide in "The International Art Show for the End of World Hunger" and was symbolically planted around the globe.

Ala Plastica
http://www.alaplastica.org.ar/
Linking ecological and social methods in the development of public and interventionist art projects.

Alan Sonfist
http://www.alansonfist.com/
As early as 1965 Sonfist advocated the building of monuments dedicated to the history of unpolluted air, and suggested the migration of animals should be reported as public events. He created "Time Landscape" in NYC which was eventually landmarked by the city. It has often been cited as the first urban earthwork of its kind. More recently, Sonfist has continued to create artworks within the natural landscape, inaugurating a one acre (4,000 m_) landscape project titled "The Lost Falcon of Westphalia" on Prince Richard's estate outside Cologne, Germany in 2005.

Ann Rosenthal
Her site and gallery-based installations juxtapose found objects, traditional media, and digital imaging to complicate the social and natural histories of “place.” She created "Infinity City" project with artist Stephen Moore which explores nuclear waste and the environmental devastation caused by the atomic bomb.

Aviva Ramini
Creator of Ghost Nets a 9 year bio-remedial habitat restoration on the dump at Vinalhaven Island, Maine.

Basia Irland
Based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Basia Irland describes herself as "a sculptor and installation artist, a poet and book artist, and an activist in water issues." Her thoughtful interdisciplinary projects combine beautiful craftsmanship, a fascination with research and a participative engagement with the viewer. Basia Irland received significant attention for "A Gathering of Waters: Rio Grande, Source to Sea" (1995-2000) which was accompanied by a documentary in 1999. This complex participatory project involved an extended performance staged along the path of the world's third most endangered river, the 1885-mile Rio Grande.

Betsy Damon
http://www.keepersofthewaters.org/
Director of Keepers of the Waters. The mission of Keepers of the Waters is to inspire and promote projects that combine art, science and community involvement to restore, preserve and remediate water sources.

Brandon Ballengee
The work of Brandon Ballengée bridges the gap between research biology and art. He combines a fascination with fish and amphibians with the techniques of commercial art photography. In 1996 Ballengée began collaborating with scientists to create hybrid environmental art/ ecological research projects. Since then he has had numerous exhibitions nationally and internationally in which he presents photographs and biological samples of the creatures he collects. He is involved directly with field research and uses the visual impact of science to engage the public in a discussion of broader environmental issues.

Cami Davis
Cami Davis is an artist and professor at the University of Vermont where she teaches Painting and Issues of Ecological Perception, and Art, Ecology and Community. She considers her painting and installations to be both contemplative practice and engaged activism contributing to a sustainable future. Cami co-created the community arts project, The Temenos Books, Images for Global Healing, Peace and Gratitude and the event, For Love of Earth, A Celebration of the Earth Charter. The Temenos Books introduce the Earth Charter.

Claire Morgan
http://www.claire-morgan.co.uk/page36.htm
At an early stage she developed a strong interest in the organic, in natural processes, and in the bodily connotations of natural materials. This formed the basis for her practice as an artist creating sculptural installations and continues to influence her work at present.

Common Ground UK
Common Ground is internationally recognised for playing a unique role in the arts and environmental fields, distinguished by the linking of nature with culture, focussing upon the positive investment people can make in their own localities, championing popular democratic involvement, and by inspiring celebration as a starting point for action to improve the quality of our everyday places.

Cornelia Parker
Interviewed Noam Chomsky about his environmental views displayed in Whitechapel Gallery.

David Buckland
http://www.capefarewell.com/
Founder of Cape Farewell which has brought together our leading artists, writers, scientists, educators and media for a series of expeditions into the wild and challenging High Arctic. Together they have mapped, measured and been inspired by this awesome environment and have endeavoured to bring home stories and artworks that tell how a warming planet is impacting on this wilderness.

DeLeon White Gallery
Based in Toronto Canada, the artists exhibiting at the DWG work within environmental or ecological paradigms; issues revolving around nature, culture and society are addressed by the artists through medium, technique and content. Under the Directorship of Stephen White, the DeLeon White Gallery has evolved into central cultural and community oriented gallery.

Exit Art
http://www.exitart.org
Exit Art is an independent vision of contemporary culture prepared to react immediately to important issues that affect our lives. We do experimental, historical and unique presentations of aesthetic, social, political and environmental issues. We absorb cultural differences that become prototype exhibitions. We are a center for multiple disciplines. Exit Art is a 25-year-old cultural center in New York City founded by Directors Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo.

Gavin Renwick
http://web.mac.com/g.t.renwick/iWeb/Site%2015/Introduction.html
Gavin’s work bridges art and architecture, research and practice. He has taught in and worked through architecture, interior design, fine art and museology. His work utilises practice-led methods and honors both visual research and the parity of indigenous traditional knowledge.For the last decade he has been working between Scotland and the Canadian Northwest Territories. Most recently his work in Canada has involved working for the Tlicho (formely Dogrib) Dene community of Gameti as project coordinator for Gameti Ko, an incorporated society directed by a board of elders. The aim of Gameti Ko is to utilise First Nation traditional knowledge to inform contemporary sustainable community development, including building a full-scale prototype house based on Tlicho spatial concepts and ideas of home. Gavin is currently developing a major touring exhibition that will determine what aspects of his work has relevance to Scottish rural communities, particularly in relation to new land ownership legislation.

Hamish Fulton
http://www.hamish-fulton.com/
Calling himself the “Walking Artist” he creates art from his treks often using words and numbers.

The Harrison Studio
The “Grandparents of Ecological Art” the Harrison’s create metaphorical proposals for real ecological change. Greenhouse Britain is a proposal for gracefully moving inland as the waters rise due to Global Warming.

Helix Arts
http://www.helixarts.com/pages/home.html
Helix Arts specialises in the development of projects and initiatives, including artist residencies and commissions, which explore the role and potential of the arts in a social context.

Hester Reeve
http://www.hesterreeve.com/
“Live art has become my main medium for public engagement and drawing has become the private foundation of all I create. My live art works do not have communication as their goal (that would be to admit to a full understanding of the issues at stake and I want for no such mastery or closure). Rather, I attempt to explore and expose the human-nature landscape to the point where it becomes fragile, fractious and perhaps more ‘truthful.’ Pieces are usually site-specific and are emphatically unrehearsed, once-only events. Each live action is a starting point, an arrival into a new place of experience.”

Ichi Ikeda
http://www33.ocn.ne.jp/~waters/2000-2003E.html
Japanese artist who creates art performances inspired by water.

Jackie Brookner
http://www.jackiebrookner.net/
Ecological artist from NYC working in the public domain creating remediation projects for water and natural sculptures.

Joseph Beuys
He is most famous for his ritualistic public performances and his energetic championing of the healing potential of art and the power of a universal human creativity. As well as performances, Beuys produced sculptures, environments, vitrines, 450 prints and posters, and thousands of drawings. He was also a committed teacher and concerned with ecological and political themes.

Laurie Lundquist
http://www.laurielundquist.com/
Lundquist's work is concept driven, she chooses from a wide variety of materials and methods to integrate art works into a given site. She thinks that designing artwork into municipal projects can reinforce connection to place by drawing on specific observations, local memories, and visible landmarks to underscore the identity of a given place.

Mel Chin
Alchemy, botany, and ecology are but a few of the disciplines that intersect in his work. He insinuates art into unlikely places, including destroyed homes, toxic landfills, and even popular television, investigating how art can provoke greater social awareness and responsibility. Unconventional and politically engaged, his projects also challenge the idea of the artist as the exclusive creative force behind an artwork.


Mierle Laderman Ukeles
As the Artist-in-Residence for New York City’s Department of Sanitation since 1978, Ukeles has been a force in raising awareness about the garbage, the systems and people handling garbage, and expanding the role of artists.

N55
http://www.n55.dk/
N55 are artists who design and build humorous but functional tools meant for a utopian way of life. Their vision of a democratically organized collaborating body of self-reliant individuals is described in their writing and embodied in their designs. Most of their writing takes the form of manuals. From their website you can learn how to build either a "Microdwelling,"a "Modular Boat," a "Small Fish Farm," or how to create situations and relationships like "Room," "Work," and "Kommune."

Navjot Altaf
Indian Artist from Mumbai. Created interactive and collaborative projects in which she designed water pumps and simple systems for helping women to carry water and bathe in privacy.

Nils Norman
Nils Norman’s work is informed by urban politics, traditions and histories of utopian thinking and ideas on alternative economic systems that can work within the city. For the past decade Nils Norman has been devising a series of imaginative proposals for improving urban living conditions through community-based initiatives.

Noel Hardings
http://www.noelharding.ca/
Canadian artist who has designed various green projects including a green corridor, nature bridge and sculptural constructed wetlands.

Oliver Lowenstein
http://x2.i-dat.org/fourthdoor/fourthdoor/index.html
Founder of Fourth Door Review, the unique cross-disciplinary publishing venture from Sussex, Britain. Published annually, Fourth Door Review, explores the relationships between ecology and technology, art and architecture, and new media and new music.

Patricia Johanson
http://www.patriciajohanson.com/
Johanson's designs for sewers, parks, and other functional projects not only speak to deep human needs for beauty, culture, and historical memory. She also answers to the needs of birds, insects, fish, animals, and microorganisms. Her art reclaims degraded ecologies and creates conditions that permit endangered species to thrive in the middle of urban centers.

Platform
http://www.platformlondon.org/
PLATFORM works across disciplines for social and ecological justice. It combines the transformatory power of art with the tangible goals of campaigning, the rigour of in-depth research with the vision to promote alternative futures.

RANE
http://rane.falmouth.ac.uk/home.html
The RANE research cluster, based at University College Falmouth, has been established to examine the relationship between the visual arts and ecological thinking. It actively seeks creative methods through which art can impact on our current environmental predicament. Using artistic practice the cluster aims to offer interpretations and models of thinking about the natural world that help to promote a sustainable future.

Reiko Goto-Collins and Tim Collins
For over seven years Collins and Goto were Distinguished Research Fellows at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University. It was there in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that they worked on Nine Mile Run, a site-based, community-focused art and ecological restoration project, as well as 3 Rivers 2nd Nature, a five-year art and landscape project intended to recover and restore natural resources native to the area.

Shai Zakai
http://www.eco-art.co.il/cv.asp?CL=ENG
Shai Zakai is the director and founder of "The Israeli Forum For Ecological Art" a non profit Association and Photography and Eco Art Centre, and Initiated and established several community green movements - (1996),‘Matzilim Yerukim’( Green Savers ), (1999) Environmental Forum of Mateh Yehuda regional council, and created "The First International Art & Ecology Conference in Israel" and currently - Artists' Marathon - "A dialog with the Environment".

Stephanie Flom
Founder of the Persephone Project, an eco-art project that connects the public to art and the environment by promoting gardening as a contemporary art practice and by recognizing gardeners as artists.
Recent Exhibition
“I created an installation entitled Mayflies in June: River Spirits Return for an exhibition at the Brew House Gallery in Pittsburgh of women environmental artists. For the installation I cut 147 different mayfly-inspired silhouettes.”

Superflex
http://www.superflex.dk/
A collective based in Copenhagen, Superflex are a group of freelance artist–designer–activists committed to social and economic change. They produce not art works but what they call ‘tools’ – a word that stands in for a range of productions, including an Internet TV channel (Superchannel, 2000), the production of energy resources (Supergas, 2000), free stores (Free Shop, 2003; Merchandise Shop, 2005) and projects that deal with copyright, creative commons and intellectual property (Copyshop, 2005).

Susan Leibovitz Steinman
http://www.steinmanstudio.com/
Artist Susan Leibovitz Steinman salvages materials directly from community waste streams to construct public art installations that connect common daily experiences to broader social issues. Projects include conceptual sculpture gardens that meld art, ecology and community action.

Suzanne Lacy
http://www.suzannelacy.com/ Suzanne Lacy is an internationally known artist whose work includes installations, video, and large-scale performances on social themes and urban issues. One of her best-known works to date is The Crystal Quilt (Minneapolis, 1987) a performance with 430 older women, broadcast live on Public Television.

Tony Foster
Watercolour diary of the Grand Canyon and Mount Everest with detailed information about plant species and geology. Artist has environmental conservation vision.

Uts’am/Witness
http://www.utsam-witness.ca/
Uts'am/Witness has been a precedent-and-protocol setting project that has broken new ground, forged cross cultural dialogue, empowered communities, and produced a lasting legacy for models of land-use and sovereignty for First Nations communities in BC. A unique collaboration, Uts'am/Witness has brought together members of the Squamish Nation, wilderness advocates, artists, the Roundhouse Community Centre and the general public. Uts'am/Witness completed the work it originally set out to do, which was to protect the area now known as Kwa Kwayexwelh-Aynexws, Wild Spirit Places.

WochenKlausur
http://www.wochenklausur.at/projekte/menu_en.htm
Since 1993 and on invitation from different art institutions, the artist group WochenKlausur develops concrete proposals aimed at small, but nevertheless effective improvements to socio-political deficiencies. Proceeding even further and invariably translating these proposals into action, artistic creativity is no longer seen as a formal act but as an intervention into society.

Yutaka Kobayashi
Whether he is moving soil from Okinawa to Tokyo, raising chickens in a mini ecosystem as art or planting temporary gardens in asphalt, Yutaka Kobayashi creates unexpected educational opportunities for the public. The frequently participative outreach component of his art, extends his ecological messages into the larger contexts of community, school or public park in which they are placed and help stimulate dialogue and the potential for change. A current project involves a collaboration with artists Suzanne Lacy, Leibovitz Steinman, "restoring a waterfront; designing an interpretive park with mini-wetlands, where storm water runoff from a gas station hits the river" all with the participation of the local residents of Elkhorn City, Kentucky.