Sculpture · Eco-Chick

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NYFW Greenshows: Luis Valenzuela’s Wearable Sculptures

Luis Valenzuela is both a fashion designer and a visual artist, and it shows in his creative use of eco fabrics (incorporating new types of unrefined silks) paired with sculptural and draped silhouettes.

The dresses here were shown at the Greenshows as part of New York Fashion week.

Wearable art indeed.

art, eco fashion, green fashion, greenshows, Luis Valenzuela, sculpture, silk

Copenhagen’s (COP15) Amazing Green Art

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by Starre Vartan · 12/16/09

No successful movement works without important art. Where would the hippies have been without their unique (ehm, hallucinogenic) posters, 2nd wave feminism without all those novels and creative nonfiction writings, the Vietnam protests without the music, or Civil Rights without heart-wrenching photography? Not only did these pieces of art change opinions and inflame feelings at the time, all of these movements (and artistic statements) still resonate and influence today.

The plethora of art being displayed in and around the Copenhagen climate change negotiations is notable for both its volume and variety, and indicates that the movement to ensure a healthy future for the planet and it’s inhabitants is more than just a job for policymakers.

The Solar Peace Sculpture by Fred George

The people affected most by climate change are also the world’s poorest. For anyone who hopes for world peace, nothing could be more dividing (and enraging) than the world’s wealthiest continuing to pollute with greenhouse gases at the expense of those who already have so little.

Artist Fred George created this 9-foot sculpture for Copenhagen (it is a traveling model of the original 50-foot version) from used oil barrels and solar panels, which can feed into a city’s electrical grid in places where it is a permanent installation. “What a great opportunity to have a global conversation about preserving the environment and promoting alternative energy. We want people left with the vision of peace: peace with nature, peace within, peace worldwide,” says George.

art, climate change, Global Warming, holiday, sculpture

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

Oh Me Oh My! The Summer Exhibition at Art Omi

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by Alicia Lubowski-Jahn · 06/08/09

The Fields Sculpture Park
at Omi International Arts Center
1405 County Rt. 22
Ghent, New York 12075

Richard Nonas, Smoke, May 2009, wood, 1.5' x 80' x 90'. Photo: courtesy of the artist.

There’s always a bit more time to go see art exhibits in the summer, but it can be so hard when it’s nice out to contemplate spending a day inside. Luckily, there’s a way to do both at places like ART OMI, the PepsiCO sculpture park and Storm King Arts Center, where you can enjoy the summer sun AND revel in modern art too. June 13 (1-5pm, free admission) marks the opening of the Summer 2009 outdoor sculpture installation at ART/OMI.

The annual Fields Sculpture Park exhibition will feature works by a selection of international artists, including Orly Genger, Richard Nonas, Julian Opie, Margeaux Walter, and Heather and Ivan Morison.

This year’s show is curated by Bill Maynes, Kathleen Triem, and Peter Franck who have garnered works by these and other talented artists so that we might revel in the experience of sculpture under the trees. Genger and Nonas have specially created large-scale, site-specific installations. Be sure to also visit ART/OMI’s Charles B. Benenson Visitors Center & Gallery, a 4,200 square foot LEED building designed by FT Architecture+Interiors. The structure is a showcase for green design systems and a venue for ART/OMI’s other art and environment cultural offerings.

exhibition, sculpture

Still Rock N’ Roll: The Balanced Stone Art of Shane Hart

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by Starre Vartan · 10/30/08

Guest post by Alicia Lubowski-Jahn
All images by Paul Gregory Newman

Stillness and Dynamism
A photograph of the sculpture artist Shane Hart creating an installation of balanced stones conveys a profound sense of stillness amidst dynamism. His work’s mesmerizing tranquility at a moment of seemingly impossible balance inspires a parallel silence inside ourselves. Yet set against an initial impression of stasis, the artist’s own concentrated energy is absorbed in the rise and fall of the moment and other forces: a breeze, the stones’ own vibrations, and the pull of gravity. These delicate arrangements of rocks balanced against each other are always on the brink of collapsing.

The Pursuit of Balance
Hart, who began practicing stone balancing in 1995 while living in San Diego, describes many aspects of his art as a contemplation on the impermanence of life. Like the ceremonial creation and destruction of an intricate sand mandala, a lesson in detachment lies in the painstaking completion of a temporary structure. The balancing of stones (sometimes called Petromancy, Awareness Art, or Earthworks) is not an absolute, but a fleeting experience: “For me, they have already fallen,” he said, of the stones. As in the act of their balancing, rocks themselves have long been regarded in Zen philosophy as symbolic of impermanence.

Art as Connecting with Nature
Hart’s technique is unconventionally raw. Stones remain unmodified and are neither carved, nor painted, nor polished. Adhesives are also never used to maintain the structure. His art requires a shift in our understanding of the sculptural method as well as a new model for an act of transformation that still preserves the original condition of natural materials. Unlike others who make isolated sculptures, positioning them as ensembles also distinguishes Hart’s creations. Hart’s sculptural arrangements can be regarded as a method of geomancy that harmonizes and balances the energies of an environment.

Discussing how his art might provide a model for man’s relationship with nature, Hart emphasizes an ephemeral system of precarious balance: “The sculptures speak to the fact that everything is temporal — everything that looks stable, isn’t, and could come toppling down.” The moral principle of “non-harming” (“ahimsa” in Sanskrit), which is integral to yoga philosophy as well as to the zero-footprint ethos of sustainable design, is further suggested by Hart’s fragile, transient art form.

Art as Spiritual Practice
Hart’s meticulous action of stacking and balancing stones cultivates deep presence — an alignment of his breath, touch, and gesture — and he understands and adheres to it as a yoga practice, specifically, what he calls Upala (Sanskrit for “stone”) Yoga. The organic sculptures themselves appear to take on physical shapes that recall Hatha Yoga’s own embodied postures (“asanas” in Sanskrit). His cultivation of a state of awareness in the present moment is a kind of “union” or “yoking”, the literal meaning the Sanskrit word “yoga”.

Seeing Hart working barefoot, with his hands cradling the rocks, accentuates the closeness between his own exposed body and the stones. The intimacy of his skin and the earth’s covering seems to recall the Biblical verse (Genesis 3.19) “For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

Upala Yoga
Employing the spiritual practice of Upala Yoga to connect with his environment, himself, and other people offers many implications for contemporary art as well as green awareness and action. Photographs of Hart’s balanced stone sculptures and the artist’s personal statement can be found on his website (www.stonetostone.com). In addition to continuing his installations, Hart is considering teaching engagements to transmit Upala Yoga to others. His work may be regarded as a web of intense interconnection with lessons for social and ecological ethics.

geomancy, sculpture