August 21 to October 22, 2006

Using site-specific installations, photography, documented actions, public artworks, and a performance piece, this exhibition turns our attention to the diminishing natural resources and ecosystems on the planet. Bay Area and nationally renown ecoartists include: Helène Aylon, Lauren Elder, Erica Fielder, Basia Irland, Deborah Kennedy, Sant Khalsa, Judith Selby Lang, Richard Lang, Robin Lasser, Melissa Lozano, Linda MacDonald, Kathryn Miller, Beverly Naidus, Sophie Chang Saeed, and Ruth Wallen.

Opening Events:

Thursday, Sept. 7
Artist performance and panel with Melissa Lozano,
Lauren Elder, Basia Irland, and Judith Selby Lang
3–4 p.m., Maraschi Room, Fromm Hall

Opening reception
4–6 p.m., Thacher Gallery, Gleeson Library | Geschke Center

Davies Forum Lectures:

Beverly Naidus, Wednesday, Oct. 11
Helène Aylon, Wednesday, Nov. 1 (call to confirm)
7–9 p.m., Maraschi Room, Fromm Hall

Curators' Introduction

By Jo Hanson, WEAD

We live in an intricate web of existence that today is engulfed by myriad causes for concern. The environment and existence are challenged as never before. The prevailing conventions of managing earth’s resources have only multiplied error.

Yet, I believe we are edging toward The Era of Environment. All around are signs of positive change. Al Gore’s hot summer documentary is jolting a growing audience to acknowledge “the inconvenient truth” of global warming. While the federal government wallows in irresponsibility, states, counties, cities and communities are stepping in to provide leadership for environmental protections. Seventy percent of Americans want safer environments.

Though “Earthly Concerns” critiques ecological abuse, it celebrates hope and challenges us to see what

more we can do individually and collectively. The artist’s ability to imagine, to see give-and-take relationships and multiple dimensions has proved ingeniously effective when applied to social and ecological problems; the artists of “Earthly Concerns” create art to transform human violations of the earth’s life resources into positive forms and actions.

Since 1996 WEAD has celebrated a spectrum of differences under the colorful collective umbrella called ecofeminist ecoart. Today, more than 250 artists listed in Women Environmental Artists Directory (WEAD) speak in their own voices, define their own works, and map their places in the world. The WEAD board and co-curators, USF Professor Sharon Siskin and WEAD Co-founder Susan Leibovitz Steinman, believe artists have skills and talents to contribute to a just, sane, healthier world. For “Earthly Concerns,” WEAD specifically sought ecoartists who engage environmental issues as activist ethical citizens of life’s web.

Outdoors Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang shock our plastic-jaded sensibilities with a floating sculpture in the library’s fountain. Nearby Lauren Elder constructs a Styrofoam house to measure excessive waste in the cafeteria and invite our input to curb it.

In the gallery, Basia Irland makes deadly waterborne pathogens look deceptively beautiful on sari silk used to clean India’s polluted drinking water. Sant Khalsa chronicles Paving Paradise, three decades of increased degradation in her own Santa Ana River watershed. Channeling Lucille Ball, Robin Lasser’s video dramatizes bedlam in the San Francisco Dump’s unrelenting waste stream. Erica Fielder and Sophie Chang Saeed speak up for the birds, Ruth Wallen for the frogs, and Linda MacDonald for the owls.

Helène Aylon poetically reveals the body’s spiritual kinship with undervalued earth. Kathryn Miller tosses seed bombs that replenish devastated land. Borrowing 1950s advertising esthetics, Beverly Naidus critiques consumer culture and the marketing of pesticides, and then provides healing images. Deborah Kennedy asks what shoes we walk in, what books guide us. Judith Selby Lang’s clear-cut tree stumps question why we tolerate junk mail and its messages. Finally, Melissa Lozano’s words show how we perpetuate environmental racism.

Artists’ ability to inspire vision and caring is a crucial resource that empowers knowledge and motivates change. We are all stakeholders in earth’s systems of life. Ecoartists turn our attention to diminishing natural resources and ecosystems, and ask for our commitment to join them in creative response/responsibility. Transforming ordinary materials into ecological actions, they reach our hearts and minds.

Art knows infinite love songs in praise of life. Please join the singing as you cruise through the exhibition.

Artist Statements

Helène Aylon
www.harvestworks.org/creativec/frame0029.html

My inexplicable desire at the end of the 1970’s was to escape to the land itself, the mystical land that seemed to celebrate woman and evoke the nebulous auras of women of yore. I experienced the first sensual, ecstatic escape/connection to the actual land—a bigger-than-life earth consciousness, a prelude to Eco-Feminism. I photographed my infinitesimal self in the vastness of the land, “wrestling” for a secret here to be revealed. This period preceded my earth activism of the 1980’s that resulted in my creation of an Earth Ambulance. Influenced by my colleague, the late Ana Mendieta who wrestled to find her roots out of Cuba into America, emblazoning the outline of her body on the land and evoking earth-centered foremothers, I, too, stood in awe of the vast female landscape that evoked my ancient foremothers. Fast forward to 2005, 25 years later:  I had dwelled on that Biblical tale of “Lot’s Wife” who turned into a pillar of salt for looking back at the devastation from afar and was haunted by the mystery of the death of Ana Mendieta. “Wrestlers” refers first, to the patriarch Jacob who wrestled with the angel man and called that place “Beit El,” the house of God. Clearly there are no women in this house. Therefore, I juxtaposed another ancient place with a nameless woman, known as Lot’s Wife—and audaciously gave Lot’s Wife a name reminiscent of God’s holy name—“Hashem,” (The Name) and called her “Hashem shela” (The Name of Hers). I thought of her and myself as wrestlers, she by disobeying, turning to look at the devastation rather than ignore it, and me by wrestling with the chilling, cruel punishment thrown at this nameless woman for turning around.

Helène Aylon is a world-renowned artist living in New York.


Lauren Elder
www.laurenelder.com

\Containing your\DESIRES

All my pieces are rooted in direct personal relationships, personal stories and actions that affect our daily lives. It feels like the most authentic way for me to navigate in these times.

When invited to participate in this exhibit, I polled my USF art students regarding their opinions about their campus environment. Voted “BEST” were the lush, spacious, pedestrian-friendly landscapes and the stunning vistas. The “WORST” Award was a unanimous, unprompted confession of excessive waste in the cafeteria! “We use way, way too much paper and plastic. It’s just too easy.”

I followed the students’ lead and arranged a meeting with Holly Winslow, Director of Bon Appetit Food Services at USF. An extraordinarily energetic, creative and committed manager of six outlets, Holly has some stories to tell! According to her budget, $6,000 worth of disposable products end up in USF trash every 90 days or about $15,000 every academic year. Add the bill from Sunset Scavenger for garbage collection and recycling and imagine the mountain of money being shoveled into California dumps rather than university services.

My project is an invitation to contemplate the enormous resources that are consumed every time we help ourselves to a disposable cup or a disposable food box. It asks the basic question: Is this really necessary? I have met children in the Third World scavenging and begging for used water bottles to be refilled with cooking oil, kerosene, gasoline or homemade alcohol. Here, we toss them away by the millions – without a second thought.

The good news is that indestructible Styrofoam (polystyrene) containers are being banned, city-by-city, nationwide. Oakland just voted them out in June. San Francisco, estimated to use 7 million pounds each year, is set to follow suit in ’07, joining 100 other municipalities. The “immortal” white foam has found a new, improved niche as a cheap building material with high insulation values. Hurrah for Perform Wall and S.I.P.S. (Structural Insulated Panel Systems).

The mixed news is that the new corn-based plastic containers, while compostable, still require substantial amounts of petroleum for their production in the form of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. It now takes fifty gallons of fossil fuel to grow an acre of corn. (Michael Pollan, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”) Imagine a monoculture of corn as far as the eye can see. Imagine the impact of nitrogen run-off on the land and the waterways. Imagine using good old china – and washing it.

ACT GREEN! • Inexpensive, refillable mugs will be available for purchase at USF food outlets. Their use will entitle you to discounted beverage refills. • Remember lunch boxes? Carry a personal food container and water bottle, washable between refills. • Whenever possible, use the china and silverware provided by Bon Appetit food services. • Encourage your friends to reuse and to recycle in the appropriate bins. • Celebrate the passage of California AB32, the groundbreaking new measure capping greenhouse gas emissions for the state. For more information on this and other hot environmental topics, visit www.treehugger.com .

Lauren Elder is an award-winning visual artist who has been creating innovative work in the Bay Area since 1979. She currently teaches in USF’s fine arts program as well as elsewhere.


Erica Fielder
www.ericafielder-ecoartist.com

The Bird Feeder Hat: Seeding Watershed Awareness, is a concept and a series of events I developed, sought funding for and managed as six weekend activities. The two event locations, the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens and the Mendocino Art Center, attracted an international crowd of visitors during the summer. Visitors to our sites learned to define watershed1 and to understand that all things on land live in a watershed. Each person had an opportunity to find their home watershed on a map, no matter where in the world they lived. My assistants and I also gave people the chance to wear the “Bird Feeder Hat” in order to meet one of our watershed’s critters up close.

Imagine sitting quietly, in a secluded corner of a garden, with a Bird Feeder Hat on your head. Your hat brim is sprinkled with seeds and you wonder what the first bird landing to feed will feel like. The twittering and rustling in nearby shrubbery comes closer. Suddenly, with a tilt to your hat and a surprisingly loud thump, a tiny finch lands. Through the drum-like paper brim the sound of the bird pecking and hopping is magnified. You discover that the bird whispers and mumbles to itself as it feeds and then, bam, another bird lands. Although you cannot see the birds, your sense of touch, hearing, gravity, movement and smell are on high alert to this unforgettable experience.

Environmental impacts require long-term solutions. A “Bird Feeder Hat” event initiated one of the most basic solutions by encouraging a person to become an advocate for healthy systems within their own home watershed, by promoting the awareness necessary to move someone toward respectful relationships with other living things and by providing a visceral experience of these concepts he or she won’t forget.

My ultimate vision is that with such awareness and relationship, watershed-by-watershed we begin to heal, and then sustain, the health of our biosphere.

Mark Watershed: The basin, formed by surrounding hills, into which rain falls, creating streams that eventually enter the sea. This system is self-sustaining and delicately balanced. Although portions of most watersheds are developed for residential, commercial, or agricultural purposes, these lands belong to the system. Everyone lives in a watershed.

Erica Fielder is an arts educator and artist residing in Mendocino. She is the co-author of two books on environmental ethics and education for adults who with children.


Basia Irland
www.unm.edu/~basia/BIRLAND

Atlas Scroll Series

There’s hardly a river, stream, or brook that isn’t contaminated with the runoff from human misuse, whether industrial effluents, agricultural pesticides and herbicides, or worse. (The “worse” could be bacterial contamination—the river as disease vector—….) —Marq de Villiers, Canadian author (Water)

This ongoing global series explores waterborne diseases whose transmission occurs when people drink contaminated water or submerge themselves in water for bathing, swimming, ceremonial, or religious purposes. Some of the scrolls, completed while in India in 2004, were made using sari silk, partially because water can be strained through this fabric to reduce the number of organisms that cause infections. The scrolls are floated in rivers around the world and hung in drinking wells.

Natural Resources Defense Council scientists estimate that every year approximately seven million Americans become sick from contaminated tap water, which sometimes proves lethal. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the lack of clean water accounts for eighty percent of all diseases in poor nations. Two-thirds of the world’s householders must carry their water from outside the home. One in five people in the world do not have clean water. In 1996, WHOs Fact Sheet 112 noted: “Every eight seconds a child dies from a water-related disease.” A BBC reporter phrased it this way: “The number of deaths due to water-related disease is the same as twenty jumbo jets crashing each day.”

Basia Irland, an award-winning artist, is a professor at the University of New Mexico.


Deborah Kennedy
www.greenmuseum.org

In The March of Folly, Barbara Tuchman chronicles the peculiar human tendency to pursue policies directly opposed to our own self-interest even when better alternative courses are readily available. Today, our world community is proceeding on the greatest march of folly-- the way we live is devastating the natural world we rely upon to survive. "Footwear for the March of Eco-folly" creates a somewhat humorous view of the appropriate shoes for us to wear on our current march down this, unfortunately, well- worn path. If we noticed where our march is leading us would we change our course? “Nature Books for the Twenty-first Century” consists of altered books, each a meditation on the current state of our relationship to the larger natural world.

Deborah Kennedy is an installation artist who has had numerous California public art projects and exhibitions nationally and in Europe. She resides in San Jose.


Sant Khalsa
wrigis.csusb.edu/website/flash/launch.html

I have been photographing the 96-mile-long Santa Ana River, the largest coastal stream system in Southern California and its expansive watershed for nearly three decades. The images create a contemplative space where one can sense the subtle and profound connections between themselves, the natural world, and our constructed settings. These disquieting photographs address complex environmental and societal issues and reflect upon various ideas concerning our relationship with the river—as place of community, economic resource, recreational site, natural habitat, sanctuary, and both source of life and destruction.

"Paving Paradise" refers to the current state of the river and the conflicting terrain of natural riverbeds and dams, flood plains and tract home communities, riparian wetlands and concrete channels. I was first drawn to the Santa Ana because of its natural beauty -- the vast open landscape, the starkness of its often dry riverbeds and the power of its occasional rushing waters. The river remains a source for creative inspiration as I depict the critical role it plays within the region, my home since 1975.

Sant Khalsa is an artist, educator, and activist living in Southern California.


Judith Selby Lang

What you see here are eight of the some 62 million trees felled annually in the United States for the production of junk mail. The tree rings and the forest duff have been made from my gleanings from a typical day at the Forest Knolls post office, 94933. In the piece “Forest Knolls, 94933” advertisements from both the winners and the losers of the recent election campaigns have been combined with glossy catalogs for lifestyle fashions, home accessories, mountaineering gear, and deluxe garden tools; cards explaining internet services; reports about lucrative investments; and travel brochures to exotic destinations. In a tree, the rings are a record of the fluctuations of the weather and other environmental influences. These rings of junk mail will tell future generations about our desires and what we considered to be important. What will they read in and between the lines? To stop your junkmail: www.stopjunkmail.org

Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang

Floating in the library fountain are 4,600 pieces of plastic, the amount of plastic reported to be floating in 1/10 of one square mile of every ocean on this planet, Earth. The California Coastal Commission* reports that there are 46,000 pieces of visible plastic floating in every square mile of the oceans. To determine the amount of plastic in all of the oceans:

Pacific Ocean 63,800,000 square miles
Atlantic Ocean 31,530,000 square miles
Indian Ocean 28,356,300 square miles
Antarctic Ocean 5,731,000 square miles
Arctic Ocean 5,440,000 square miles

134,857,300 x 46,000 = 6,203,435,800,000 pieces of plastic

* From “The Problem with Marine Debris,” Save Our Shore Sanctuary Steward Course Reader, Pacifica Beach Coalition. For more information: www.algalita.org

Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang have independently been making and teaching art for over 25 years and joined forces in 1999.


Robin Lasser
www.robinlasser.com

As a visiting artist at the San Francisco Sanitary Fill Company from 2002–2003, Robin Lasser created a series of photographic and video works around consumerism and consumption in contemporary American culture. The “Dining in the Dump” video magnifies our insatiable appetites and compares them with the inner workings of one of the largest Sanitary Fill companies in the United States.

Robin Lasser is a Professor of Art at San Jose State University. She produces photographs, video, site-specific installations and public art working with socially and culturally significant imagery and themes. Her most extensive project, Eating Disorders in a Disordered Culture, has been published in numerous books, catalogs, newspapers and journals and has been funded by dozens of public organizations in communities across the United States and abroad. Lasser often works in a collaborative mode with other artists, writers, students, public agencies, community organizations, and international coalitions (such as her work in Egypt as a Fulbright Scholar) to produce art and promote public dialogue. She has exhibited nationally and internationally.


Melissa Lozano
people.mills.edu/mlozano/mellowpoet.html

Melissa Lozano is a writer, visual artist, and performance artist originally from San Jose, California. She writes poetry and performs in front of audiences that she will never see again so she writes stories that go untold. Melissa’s voice changes everyday as she moves through different meanings of home. Right now Mills College is home in Oakland where she experiments with textures, visual art, and performance dialogue. The piece for “Earthly Concerns” is about environmental healings via the earth that stands between the denizens, the natives, the children and how they react to unnatural disasters to their psyches.

Melissa Lozano, a student at Mills College in Oakland, performs often in the Bay Area. Her work has been published in Cantos al Sexto Sol: An Anthology of Aztlanhuac Writings (2002, Wings Press).


Linda MacDonald
www.lindamacdonald.com

California is filled with hot environmental issues: logging, endangered species, control of water, freeways, encroaching vineyards, etc. I am interested in all of these topics as sources for my artwork. In the early 90s the spotted owl became a pawn in the fight between logging jobs and wildlife habitat. Forests are declining because of logging, overcutting, fires, and encroaching development. I have created images of trees, stumps, and forests and tried to imagine what stories they have to tell. I want the public to become aware of the status of their forests and to value them. When events occur and political issues are in the forefront, I hope people will have the information they need to make responsible choices about our collective future.

Linda MacDonald lives in Willits, California and has been in numerous national and international group shows.


Kathryn Miller

I am a visual artist who works with environmental concepts, issues, and questions. I’ve always been a keen observer of the natural world and chose to pursue an undergraduate degree in biology to better understand these complex interactions. Graduate studies in biology leg me to ecology, botany, soil science, and later, art. As an artist I work in mixed media, sculpture, and photography. I also work collaboratively with other artists and people from other disciplines. Collaborations can make the work richer and more informed because it brings in new perspectives.

“Seed Bombs” was completed from 1991 to 2002. Made out of compressed soil and seeds, seed bombs were designed to be thrown into areas that are degraded, physically abused or in need of vegetation. The seeds were carefully chosen to match the native ecology of the area where they would be used. Seed bombs were free to gallery and museum visitors to take so they could help me with my project. They made an appearance on TV one night in 2002.

“The Subdivision” was completed 1991 to 1994. Subdivisions replace the ecology of an area with buildings, asphalt, concrete and non-native plantings. As a result, the wildlife and history of the place is erased. This was a site-specific re-vegetation project in the form of a subdivision. Over time it broke down to become part of the landscape, leaving only mounds of vegetation correctly matched to the local ecology. A subdivision in reverse.

“Area 52” was completed in 2003. Every substance dropped on the landscape ends up in a drainage system. Contaminated and polluted run-off increases with urbanization because vegetated land surfaces are replaced with parking lots, buildings, freeways, streets and sidewalks. These pollutants enter our aquatic systems through storm water and drainage systems like this one, and ultimately enter the ocean. Using principles of bioengineering, constructed wetlands can effectively remove pollutants associated with this run-off. The project has three tiers:

Solid waste clean up includes plastic bags, Styrofoam cups, plastic soda and water bottles and anything that is thrown into the street. Limestone blocks will de-acidify the water and neutralize problem toxic metals by making them inert. Plants and organisms perform the final cleanup before the water flows to the Los Angeles River and the ocean.

“Outdoor Classroom/Amphitheater” was made possible by a National Endowment for the Arts grant received from the New England Foundation for the Arts to work as artists-in-residence with the National Park Service, Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance. Park rangers originally used a semi-circle of logs as a classroom for their Junior Ranger program. We designed and built a rammed earth amphitheater on the site as a classroom and to mark the port of entry into the wilderness area. Plants native to the site and geologic processes are incorporated as teaching tools for the rangers. This area was extremely degraded due to oil extraction activity for many years.

The photographs, “Lawns in the Desert, ” are from a project that questioned Southern California’s insistence on maintaining thick seductive, well-watered lawns as central to the ideal landscape. Once a symbol of prestige and exclusivity, lawns are now a compulsory landscape element to any suburban or corporate image. Beneath the seamless verdant beauty however, lie significant economic, environmental and social costs. Created with Michael Honer.

Kathryn Miller is a professor of art at Pitzer College and has exhibited nationally and internationally.


Beverly Naidus
www.artsforchange.org

“Canary Notes” is a digital project that explores the environmental health crisis provoked by the unregulated chemical stew poured into our everyday lives. Through digital photographs and paintings, the stories of those who are too sick to self-advocate are inserted into the ads for pesticides and plastics from the post WWII era. Portraits of the “canaries” offer a physical and emotional presence for those who are invisible in our mainstream media. Statistics exploring the political and economical causes of this environmental crisis are juxtaposed against anatomical drawings. Playful healing images attempt to offer a tonic and suggest an activist solution to this desperate situation.

Beverly Naidus, professor of interdisciplinary art at the University of Washington, Tacoma, has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally.


Sophie Chang Saeed

A weaver bird tucks and untucks a strand of grass in his nest. I sew a twig onto the quilt only to pull it off again. Over time, we untuck and pull a little less. Forms finally emerge. One to receive life, one to give.

I started the Bird Quilt series last year. I make the quilts with dryer lint and/or other nesting materials and place them in natural environments. Each quilt weathers over time and reveals materials to birds and other wildlife for nest-making. In this theater of impermanence and transformation, the laboriously crafted work disappears and becomes part of nature. A new piece of art emerges—the nest. My ownership of the nest of the quilt expires; the quilt’s value becomes re-contextualized. The quilt, once seemingly precious and priced to market, now sustains something truly priceless.

Sophie Chang Saeed is an installation artist and sculptor living in Berkeley.


Ruth Wallen
communication.ucsd.edu/rwallen

My work is dedicated to encouraging dialogue about ecological issues. I draw from both art and science seeking to address the heart and mind, intuitive and analytical modes of thought. Much of my work centers around close investigation of place. I use stories to reestablish connections, suggest relationships and kindle new meaning. I hope to raise questions and encourage the viewer to ponder appropriate actions in light of increased understanding of the complexity of ecological interrelationships.

Ruth Wallen is faculty at Goddard College in Vermont. Her work has been shown throughout California as well as nationally.