Browsing all posts by Alicia Lubowski-Jahn
Glassphemy!: A Creative Recycling Center For Glass and More
06/07/10

Glass broken at Glassphemy is recycled. Image by Chris Mottalini.
David Belt, Creative Director of Macro Sea, is the man who last summer in Brooklyn conjured swimming pools out of dumpsters.
Belt and the team of creative developers at Macro Sea have brought their ingenuity to the fore again with a creative recycling center for glass and, more effusively, human aggression. The visceral energy of type-A New Yorkers invited to hurl and smash truck-loads of empty glass beer bottles from Brooklyn’s breweries make for one massive opportunity to let it all out, I mean, really let it go full-throttle!

Tossing the Bottles. Image by Chris Mottalini
Participants, who are invited to both hurl the glass and be under its direct line of fire, are given the chance to be on both ends of the spectrum of the cathartic glass throwdown. Inside the recycling cage—an artifice of bullet-proof glass and steel circuited with light sensors—colorful bottles whizz through the air, shatter with a glorious fanfare of noise and illumination, and then cascade into an evanescent silence and darkness like a glorious fireworks display.
Check out what goes down at Glassphemy! Video by Alicia Lubowski-Jahn.
Indeed, behind the gritty business of emotional outpouring or the shattered glass of a city street, GLASSPHEMY! reveals the astonishing beauty of fragility and breakage.

Lamps filled with glass recycled on site.
Christie’s Green Auction: Ted Danson, Doutzen Kroes, Almudena Fernández, Willie Garson and More Bid for Earth Day
04/27/10

Lot 13: Damien Hirst, All you need is Jealousy, 2010
Christie’s Green Auction: A Bid to Save the Earth lit up NYC on the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day with a megawattage push to raise funds for four leading American environmental agencies.

Stefanía Fernández of Venezuela, Miss Universe 2009, and Kristen Dalton of North Carolina, Miss USA 2009
The environmental not-for-profits Natural Resources Defense Council, Oceana, Conservation International, and Central Park Conservancy will be the recipients of the proceeds raised by the April 22, 2010 live auction as well as an April 8-May 6, 2010 online silent auction.

Willie Garson, Actor from Sex and the City
Christie’s CEO, Ed Dolman, jovially boasted that the fine art auction house, founded in 1762, is one of the oldest institutions to be active in recycling! Kidding aside, Christie’s together with leaders in the worlds of art, business, and fashion, and celebrities came together to emphasize the importance of bridging art and science.
Chug-a Chug-a Choo Choo: EcoLux Shop Pops Up at Grand Central Terminal, NYC
04/20/10
No commuter wants to add more time to traveling to and fro. But if there ever was a time to get stuck in transit (aside from an ash-cloud shutdown by an Icelandic volcano), then give it up for Earth Day’s 40th Anniversary at Grand Central Terminal.
Grand Central Terminal’s pink-marble Vanderbilt Hall gets a splash of green style as TheGreenShows EcoLux sets up an eco fashion, jewelry, and beauty boutique for EarthFair, Monday, April 19 through Sunday, April 25 (10:00am–7:00pm).
Eve S. Mosher: Eco Art Visualizing Powerful Intentions
03/08/10

48 Hours of Sao Paolo – Time’s Square, what are we not seeing? ▪ (proposal, 2008)
If seeing is believing, Eve S. Mosher is helping us to stretch our imagination to conceive our world as it might be in a future whose outcome we determine. Among her public art projects, she has visualized a Times Square unplugged from its high voltage current. Referencing the time component of the ever-pulsing energy of the eponymous city square, a time-out would open up new perspectives, what Mosher describes as: “to see what exactly are we missing by seeing the ads and not the space between, behind and around them.”

▪ Insert ____ Here ▪ (2008) – Insert *BIOSWALE/FILTRATION* Here – 062
Mosher also highlights time in her numerous other urban projects, where we are reminded of the intimate connection of the past and the future in our present. Neighborhood signs, for example, recommending “insert___here” suggest the promise of filling in the blanks in altering our communities through proposed insertions like green roofs, bike lines, solar panels, and a local/organic farmer’s stand. She has also retraced the sea level of New York City, projecting a drastically elevated future waterline of a metropolis increasingly flooded as a result of climate change.

▪ HighWaterLine ▪ (2007) – Passing through DUMBO, with the Brooklyn Bridge in the background
Seeding the City is Mosher’s most recent community project and it too expresses states of potential and becoming. Small plots of green tagged by vibrant green flags are sprouting on rooftops throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan. As Mosher herself describes, this initiative is about the power of potential: “Each installation is a seed of potential – potential for community action, potential for more green roof, potential for change!”

Seeding the City – “Cityscape”
Mosher, who is in residence at Wave Hill through March, will be participating in a panel discussion on art and environment on Sunday, March 7th at 2pm (with Susan Benarcik and Anne-Katrin Speiss, moderated by Mierle Laderman Ukeles) and in an open studio event on March 21st.

▪ Insert ____ Here ▪ (2008) – Insert *LOCAL/ORGANIC FARMER’S STAND* Here – 068
All images by Eve Mosher.
What’s on Your Plate? The Film About Food Politics from a Kid’s Perspective
02/09/10
Planet Green is serving up some food for thought as it premiered the exciting documentary What’s On Your Plate? on February 6 at 10pm (airs again on February 11 at 11pm). Part of the Reel Impact environmental documentary series, director and producer Catherine Gund has captured the discovery journey of two eleven-year-old New York City kids, Sadie and Safiyah, to uncover sustainable food systems and a path to self nourishment.
The essential question of “What’s on Your Plate?” is answered through the girls’ exploration of the sources of their food through to its consumption. In addition to learning to make non-wasteful and healthful choices for themselves and the environment, the tweens also discover the community benefits of choosing food from local organic farms, greenmarkets, and community supported agriculture (CSA).
“What’s On Your Plate” is exactly the film we need now.
– Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto and The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Congratulations, Sadie and Safiyah! It is great to have you take us through the food cycle. As somebody said: “You are what you eat.” Thank you for helping us get it right. You will definitely capture the imagination of your peers and generations beyond.
– Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the United Nations
Although several documentaries, including Super Size Me (2004), Fast Food Nation, (2006) and Food, Inc. (2008), have exposed the dangers of the mainstream American diet for the well-being of our bodies and the earth, What’s on Your Plate? is speaking directly to children, parents, and the public school system. The powerful message of the kids’ compassionate determination to improve our food chain stirs us to make more sustainable choices for them, ourselves, our neighbors, and our earth.

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