Eco Art · Eco-Chick

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Eco Art in Textiles: Liz Burow’s Landscape-Inspired Creations

Prairie Scene- Golden Perspective (01)
Dimensions: 9”x17”
Materials: Handmade wool felt, industrial felt, upholstery thread, machine sewn

I can’t think of a more perfect time of year to feature the landscape fabric and quilt artist Liz Burow than at this moment when summer is abruptly shifting and transforming itself into fall. Just like the cycle of the four seasons, Burow’s textiles capture an in-between, unfastened environment of transition and movement.

Prospect Park (Green)Topo Quilt
Dimensions: 22”x40”
Materials: Wool and Polyester felt, batting, upholstery thread, machine sewn

Eco Chick: Your artist statement describes how the “Topo-Quilts and Ivy Walls transform our wild landscape into interior décor.” What does that domesticating process mean to you? It seems like there are several steps of abstraction taking place since your textiles render a cartographic and architectural impression of nature (maps, blueprints, and urban plans) rather than a direct visualization of place.
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eco art, Fashion, quilt, textiles

(Re)Fashioning Fiber Exhibit on NOW at Greenspaces, NYC

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by Starre Vartan · 06/07/10

If you can’t make it to NYC, check out my visual tour of the (Re)Fashioning Fiber Exhibit

Abigail Doan curated the (Re) Fashioning Fiber exhibit (now through August 13th at Greenspaces in Manhattan) because she thought that among eco fashion and sustainable style showcases, there wasn’t enough focus on the basics- the very fibers that make up our clothes, and whose creation has a significant environmental impact.

Before clothes are sewn, the fibers are grown (cotton, hemp), manufactured (polyester, Tencel) or raised (silk, wool). And depending on the textile, they are dyed or processed and then knit, woven, or manufactured. All of this happens before it even happens into the hands of a garment worker, who cuts, sews, and creates a piece of clothing for us (hopefully at a fair wage).

Xing-Zhen Chung-Hilyard/Eko-Lab crocheted mixed media piece

By looking more closely at the fibers themselves, the artists deconstructed them in such a way as to get to the roots of what they were truly made of (a floor installation reminded one of nothing more than an unwinding ball of yarn seen from ants’-eye-view). From recycled yarns and reused ‘waste’ textiles to upcycled hoola hoops and vintage jewels and hemp, creative reuse was exemplified in each of the pieces.
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art, eco art, fibers, materials, NYC, textiles

Eve S. Mosher: Eco Art Visualizing Powerful Intentions

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by Alicia Lubowski-Jahn · 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.

art, Brooklyn, eco art, gardens, New York City

Endangered Species Print Project: Adorably Hip Eco Art

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by Stephanie Rogers · 02/07/10

They’re cute. They’re modern. They’re affordable. And, they save animals. What can’t these awesome art prints do? The Endangered Species Print Project is a range of limited edition art prints featuring animals like the Panamanian Golden Frog, the Seychelles Sheath-Tailed Bat and the Madagascar Fish Eagle, and 100% of the sales are donated to conservation organizations.

Artists Jenny Kendler and Molly Schafer (below), who bonded over a mutual love for animals at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, have been collaborating on projects that combine art and the environment since 2005. The super creative pair started the Endangered Species Print Project so they could use their talents to have a positive impact on the natural world.

In an interesting twist that highlights just how dire the plight of each endangered animal featured in the series really is, the number of prints available for each animal corresponds to the number of animals left in the wild. For example, only 45 prints of the Amur Leopard will ever be created, because only 45 still exist outside of captivity.

Animals, decor, eco art, Shopping

Eco Artist Claire Morgan: Ecological Order and Disorder

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by Alicia Lubowski-Jahn · 10/14/09

Fantastic Mr Fox, 2008.
Torn black polythene bags, taxidermied fox, nylon, acrylic, rabbit meat
2.4m (h) x 2.4m (d) x 2m (w) Exhibited at the James Hockey Gallery, UCA, Farnham, UK
Photo courtesy of Claire Morgan

Visual artist Claire Morgan, who hails from Belfast and now lives in London, stages through her sculptural installations dramatic contests between natural forces. Adventure Ecology, which named Morgan resident artist in 2008, has recognized Morgan’s art for her provocative built environments, which are expressive of both ecological order and disorder.

The armatures of a mechanistic universe are highlighted by Morgan’s materials and construction patterns that address gravity, time, and animal instincts as well as the building blocks of matter, our everyday surroundings, and elemental survival. Indeed, her taxidermied animals, her meticulously pinned botanical and zoological specimens, and her use of blood stem from an almost Victorian language of science. Still there is nothing antiquated to her modern ecosystems that seem to defy the very physical and chemical laws they highlight. Her physical constructions point to unexpected outcomes and ineffable realms, such as those of beauty, spirit, death, and mystery.

Fluid, 2009. Fresh strawberries, nylon, acrylic. variable (h) x 1.5m (d) x 1.5m (w)
Exhibited in Building With Colour at Gallery North, Newcastle, UK,
and Consumer at Palais de Tokyo, Paris
Photo credit: Kris Heath

EC: The relationship between movement and stillness is so compelling in your installations. Not only do you integrate living and inanimate materials (each with their individual velocities of action), but the compositional patterns themselves have a rhythmic musical force. Could you please comment on the temporal aspect of your artwork and on your own methodical artistic process?

art, eco art, ecology, sculpture