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Art & Ecology


Art & Ecology

Photoessays: Art and the Earth



"The object of our game with nature is not to win,but to keep on playing."
- Anonymous

Photoessays: Art and the Earth survey art created to represent the interdependency of people within their environment. People make things special in the practice of their everyday lives using materials that are available around them. Mythic metaphors of plants, animals, and a geography of place can be found in most cultures throughout the world. Studying the ecological value of place in human life is one way to understand how people shape the earth and in the process are affected by their creative endeavors to control, design, and interact within their environment.




Introduction

Dr. Don Krug provides an overview of the concepts explored in the five following sections.

Terms and Definitions

Earth, environment, ecology, and education are four terms that are helpful for studying how art and ecology are interconnected. In this section Dr. Don Krug provides a look at how each term has been defined, applied to education, and implemented within the context of contemporary ecological art.

Art and Everyday Life

Dr. E. Louis Lankford surveys how people have interacted with their locales to make art in the practice of their everyday lives. Text and images illustrate the rich aesthetic wonders found in our own backyards.

Earthly Matters

Suzanne Seriff organized the award winning exhibition Recycled Reseen: Folk Art from the Global Scrap Heap. She investigates environmental conditions of various cultures around the world and how different cultural groups use industrial cast-offs to make art.

Orientations to the Land

Drawing from the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Jenny Siegenthaler discusses how some 19th and early 20th century American artists' orientations to the land and ideas of landscape reflected the increasing urbanization and industrialization of America.

Changing Views About Art & the Earth

Dr. Don Krug and Jenny Siegenthaler look critically at a history of the present with regards to new genre public art. They survey some ideas about earthwork and land art of the 60s, 70s, and 80s and contemporary ecological art of the early 1980s and 90s.







© 2006 greenmuseum.org