sustainability – Page 2

January 15, 2024January 15, 2024, by Mary McCoy

Watershed—Grace Mitchell in conversation with Mary McCoy

HOT AIR

A landscape with a river and a blue sky

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Grace Mitchell-Eternal Return IV, Oil on panel, 30”x30”, 2022

The deep, rich colors and textures of Grace Mitchell’s oil paintings will draw you in, but it’s often the title that sets you thinking. Interweaving layers of color glow through the marsh grasses in her newest series, Watershed Assessment. You could get lost in the sheer beauty of these paintings with their glints of tidal water and shadowy mountains looming in the distance, all saturated with a moist, misty atmosphere that seems to glow with fecundity. But the title gives pause. These lush, luminous landscapes are meant to be “assessed,” and careful observation finds them full of scars and flaws.

August 4, 2023July 18, 2023, by Hovey Brock

Jean Shin the Alchemist: Turning Waste into Art

Hot Air

Jean Shin, *Home Base*, 2022. Installation at Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, MO. Photo Credit ProPhotoSTL. Courtesy of the artist and Laumeier Sculpture Park.

With her public sculptures, Jean Shin makes powerful statements about the climate crisis out of discarded and obsolete materials. She often engages communities in her materials sourcing, mixing social practice into her public sculpture practice to create platforms for discussion. Ingenious and esthetically considered, her works show novel ways to engage with the climate crisis.

May 20, 2023May 18, 2023, by Hovey Brock

Interview with Izabela Gola on ECO Solidarity

Hot Air

©ECO Solidarity 2023 designers team. Courtesy of Dalia Stoniene and WantedDesign

Izabela Gola is an artist, curator of visual arts and design, and climate activist through her cultural programs. She was born in Poland and her background is visual arts, art history, and interior design. She came to the US to study art, and graduated with an MFA Degree from Hunter College in New York. She joined the Polish Cultural Institute New York in 2016 and has collaborated with Wanted Design since 2017. Her own art practice is multidisciplinary and she says this approach is important also in her curatorial capacity. She investigates structures of memory and identity as mediated through porcelain sculpture, video, and installation art. She also co-hosts a podcast called I Art New York on Radio Free Brooklyn.

November 17, 2022December 30, 2022, by Art Spiel

Linda Kuo & Dancers Unlimited

Grantee of Brooklyn Arts Fund

Project Profile: Edible Tales

Dancers Unlimited members at Waikalua fishpond in Hawai’i. Photo credit: Jordan Medeiros

Brooklyn Arts Council announced in March 2022 an allocation of over $1.3 million to 238 Brooklyn-based artists and cultural organizations. This year marks the highest number of grantees and awardees as well as the largest amount of funding BAC has ever distributed. Art Spiel in collaboration with Brooklyn Arts Council features some artists who received a Brooklyn Arts Fund, Local Arts Support, and/or Creative Equations Fund grant in 2022.

August 4, 2022December 30, 2022, by Art Spiel

Heidi Norton – The Edges of Everything at Wave Hill

Featured Artist

Heidi Norton and Eileen Jeng Lynch, curator.

Heidi Norton’s site-specific installation at Wave Hill examines the intricate links between humans and the natural world. Inspired by Wave Hill’s grounds and the Sun Porch’s architecture. Activated by sunlight, Norton’s installation is made of sculptures and large, vibrant photographic scrolls draping from the ceiling and undulating through the space. Norton says that the configuration of scrolls encompasses landscapes of present and past, incorporating recent photos that the artist took of the gardens, as well as archival images. Norton’s work draws on her rural upbringing by New Age homesteaders. She upcycles discarded plant clippings from Wave Hill’s gardens, repurposes compost and deconstructs past work, incorporating it into new pieces—speaking to sustainability, contemplating how memories are embedded in materials and landscapes, as well as how a sense of place is recorded through time and changes in the land. Heidi Norton with her site specific installation, The Edges of Everything at Wave Hill, July 16th – August 28th, 2022. Meet the Artist recording can be found here.

May 23, 2022December 30, 2022, by Art Spiel

Fragile Rainbow: Traversing Habitats by ecoartspace

Featured Project: with curator Sue Spaid

A picture containing floor, indoor, ceiling, people

Description automatically generated — Tessa Grundon, *Invasive Species*, 2018-2021/2022, Asiatic Bittersweet root systems and border fencing, dimensions variable.

The group show Fragile Rainbow: Traversing Habitats at the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center in Brooklyn includes paintings, sculptures, videos, and installations addressing environmental issues by more than fifty artists from the New York City region who are members of ecoartspace. The title is based on Claire McConaughy’s oil painting, Fragile Rainbow, referencing both hope and loss. The show runs from May 7^th through June 4^th, 2022. Curator Sue Spaid elaborates on this large-scale group show.

February 28, 2022December 23, 2021, by Susan Hoffman Fishman

The Last Ones Standing

A picture containing floor, indoor, furniture

Description automatically generated — *Sea-Change* Installation at MARS gallery, Melbourne, Australia, 2017. Photo by Matthew Stanton

Many artists have begun making work related to the climate crisis in recent years. But Australian visual artist Penelope Davis decided to address the subject eight years ago. Originally trained as a photographer with a portfolio including mainly camera-less photographs, she turned to sculpture and the looming environmental disaster after observing her first jellyfish blooms along the Melbourne coastline. Although alarmed by what appeared to be an unnatural and terrifying phenomenon, she was also attracted aesthetically to the jellyfish’s semi-transparency and how they reflected light.

December 8, 2021November 23, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Deborah Kruger – Plumas at PRPG in Mexico City

Featured Artist

Deborak Kruger in front of Accidentals, 2020, screen-printing on recycled plastic bags, sewing, wrapping, waxed linen thread, 92 x 167 x 6″

Plumas, featuring Deborah Kruger’s recent work, is PRPG.mx’s premiere show in their newly expanded exhibition and residency space in Mexico City. In this sculptural installation, curated by Micheal Swank, Kruger focuses on the extinction of Mexican bird species, the death of Mexican indigenous languages, and the impacts of climate change on migration.

April 21, 2020April 20, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Artists on Coping: Zac Skinner

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

Zac collecting trash along the shoreline of the Hudson River, 2020, courtesy of the artist

Zac Skinner’s work explores geo-engineering, global warming, and the Anthropocene Landscape. His solo exhibitions include Rockland Center For the Arts, West Nyack, NY, Garrison Art Center, Garrison, NY, and Matteawan Gallery, Beacon, NY. Recent group exhibitions include CICA Museum, Seoul, South Korea, Spring Break Art Show, New York, NY; SITE:Brooklyn, New York, NY; WAAM, Woodstock, NY. He was recently interviewed and featured in Lowdown Magazine, Berlin, Germany. He is currently a Lecturer at Ramapo College, NJ, and SUNY New Paltz College. Skinner will have a solo exhibition at Wave Hill’s Sunroom Project Space this October through December, 2020.

November 9, 2014December 14, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

A Genuine Urge to Behold: ‘Meltdown’ by Kurt Steger

Opening night at ArtHelix, with partial view of Meltdown by Kurt Steger; photo courtesy of Vincent Romaniello

Suspended murky waterdrops on the verge of dripping from an icicle onto a sheet of paper prove to be almost hypnotic in Kurt Steger’s interactive project at ArtHelix. Utilizing elegant wooden contraptions made of a rotating large-scale low wooden table, a transportable tall crane-like sculpture, and a few low benches, Steger’s participatory performance evokes a genuine urge to behold the genesis of a fresh mark, from the first drip to the final circular tracing. The resulting drip drawings hang on the walls, mostly depicting circular forms that range from dark sepias to vibrant yellows and rusty oranges. Continue reading “A Genuine Urge to Behold: ‘Meltdown’ by Kurt Steger”