Ecological movements in the 1990s emerged as a response to growing concern about an environmental crisis that plagues planet Earth (Bookchin, 1980; Merchant, 1992). More specifically, people are beginning to understand that "the planet" includes their own backyards. Environmental awareness has increased about toxic wastes, forest depletion, animal and plant extinction, and a multitude of other environmental woes that affect various corners of the world. Concerned about the current predicament of an unhealthy earth, special interest groups such as the Greens, Friends of the Earth, Earth Island Institute, United Nations Environment Programme, etc., have cautioned that the solution is much more complex than placing a few items in a recycling bin or donating funds to a wildlife preservation foundation.
Ecological problems are deeply connected with historic, economic, social, cultural, and political forces that influence and affect industrialization and capitalism in progressive societies. It is widely accepted that for the ecological malaise to improve, people will need to change their everyday activities that are out of balance with their environments. Contemporary ecological artists are actively involved in posing problems and finding solutions to various environmental issues through local and global advocacy.
The deteriorating physical condition of the planet and diminishing quality of life have challenged artists to seek solutions to several current environmental crises. Contemporary ecological art is a reaction to paradigms that see the landscape as solely a resource to be used and discarded. Economic systems that are based on processes of rapid production and consumption need to change. Several authors writing about industrialization's impact on the great American landscape have called into question technology's devastating influence and effect on the planets ecosystems. Leo Marx's classic book, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastorial Ideal in America, along with Henry Nash Smith's Virgin Land (1950), R.W.B. Lewis' The American Adam (1955), and W.J.T. Mitchell's Landscape and Power (1994) explore the cultural symbol of "technological utopianism."
Some artists have incorporated industrial pollutants into their art as sobering evidence of environmental desecration. For his series When the Tide Is Out the Table Is Set (1984), Buster Simpson (b. 1942) placed cast china plates at sewage outlets in Cleveland, New York, Houston, and Seattle, where they became coated with effluents. He then fired these in a kiln. The resulting colored glazes were indicative of the toxicity of the sites where they had been placed. The Los Angeles artist Kim Abeles (b. 1952) created her first "smog collectors" in 1987 by placing stencils on a surface and then allowing the particulate matter in Southern California's "heavy air" to fall upon it. When the stencils were removed, images made of smog were revealed.
The medium of photography continues to be used to document environmental devastation today, as it was during the dust bowl of the 1930s. At first glance many of the images by contemporary photographers Robert Glenn Ketchum (b. 1947) and Richard Misrach (b. 1949) appear as idyllic visions of nature; on closer inspection, however, they draw attention to the wanton desecration of the land. Ketchum's art often focuses on the destruction of forests and other wilderness areas, while Misrach is well known for his desert landscapes, such as those strewn with the debris of weapons tested by the military. Another contemporary artist, painter Neil Jenney (b. 1945), also comments simultaneously on the beauty and ruin of nature. In his painting Acid Story, sensuous and meticulously rendered tree branches prove to be diseased. Inherent in the art of Ketchum, Misrach, and Jenney is the idea that nature's overwhelming beauty can be deceptive and help to mask (enabling us to overlook) environmental problems.
Contemporary ecological artists are taking steps to heal fragile social and physical environments. In the mid sixties, Alan Sonfist conceived of natural monuments to restore ecological sustainability to areas of cities around the world by commemorating parts of their particular geography and natural history. Sonfist proposed creating historical, living artworks that highlighted nature's cycles of growth and decay. In 1978, he created, in conjunction with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, city planners, and community boards, Time Landscape: Greenwich Village Project, located between Houston and Bleecker street in Manhattan, New York.
To realize Time Landscape, the artist conducted research at the Public Library and at the Botanical Gardens, to study the indigenous vegetation of New York. His research led him to select native species of oak, sassafras, wild roses, red cedar, gray birches among others for the creation of the project. Time Landscape reclaimed an urban wasteland, a tenement site reduced to debris and weeds. Today, in its place, grows foliage that represents the processes of nature rebuilding itself. Sonfist received cooperation from local residents and the schools in the area to help plant and maintain the landscape. The survival of people depends on our understanding of the interdependence of culture with natural systems. The project's design affirmed the coexistence of both the values of nature and community life. Time Landscape was a vital part of creating community.