Paper in Nature

This past weekend I was part of the Art In Nature festival in Redwood Regional Park. Redwood Regional Park, which is about fifteen minutes away from where I live, is one of the places I go walking. Judy had mentioned something about being part of last year's festival and how much she enjoyed it, and so I applied and was accepted to make a piece, as a chance to honor a place that fulfills me so much. The work I exhibited was developed in the cast paper street art I did recently.

(For larger images, click on the pictures.)

The park is notable for Redwood Creek; its native rainbow trout have been cross-bred with other struggling trout populations throughout the US. Redwood Creek's trout are a genetically pure population that is under critical study in order to reveal new understandings about trout populations. With California's extreme drought the creek appears to be dried up completely; I'm not sure what this means for the population. This idea was the basis for this work I'm calling Upstream.

It was an insanely hot day, and yet they clocked around 5000 visitors to the event. For me, the best part was to sit (or lay) near my piece, and listen to the musicians play, and let their songs become a soundtrack of sorts. I didn't get to photograph many of the other works and performances, but here's a few!

Blue on the street

Last Sunday, I was part of the Sunday Streets festival in the Excelsior, which for non-San Francisco people is one of the last working-class neighborhoods in San Fran. I was invited by the Youth Art Exchange to do a short-term installation and activity.

I've had cast paper on the brain, since I'm building an installation with it for the Art and Nature Festival in September. So I decided to experiment, and ended up with cast paper street art.

The work is up for the next few weeks near the intersection of Mission and Russia. Click on the images for larger pictures.

For a street-based art-making activity, I proposed to do Gyotaku prints. I wanted something that connected to the installation. Since the street was closed, I originally started out in the street itself. For those unfamiliar with the Excelsior, typically it's one of San Francisco's foggy and chilly neighborhoods. Not last week - the sun was out in full force. In the street, ink was drying before we could print, and my crayons literally began to melt. So ended up moving onto the sidewalk, sharing shade with the Youth Art Exchange and their partner on another project, Green Art Workshops.

A gentleman by the name of Melxin Whartnaby came by during the event. He was documenting it for the Friends of the Excelsior Public Library, and shared his photos with me.

Due to the heat, the day was fairly low-key, compared to say, some of my past projects in which there was a constant stream of people. However, it reminded me of how energizing it is to make art on the street, with the public. More importantly, it affirms how much there is a need for such projects.

Green Art Workshops was also doing a participatory project. Using some silver mat board donated from SCRAP and the laser cutter from the Youth Art Exchange, they made a series of water droplets. The public was invited to write ways to save water on the drops, which were then hammered into the wall loosely. When the wind blew, the entire installation swayed. This piece will also be up for a few weeks, and is right next to mine.

Some of the suggestions were pretty intricate, as this drawing of a de-salination system.

Some tried for humor.

I owe a debt of gratitude for this experience to the Youth Art Exchange, particularly Reed Davaz McGowen.

The sun and heat took a lot out of me that day, but the event gave me a renewed energy for the studio. Since completing The Last Color, I'd been a little postpartum. That day I realized how much I've missed doing street art and public interventions. Now, with this renewed energy, I'm returning to the studio to try some experiments. As John Cage would say, I welcome what happens next.

Lucy Lippard at Mills

Sorry for such a crappy phone photo, but it was a dark auditorium. In case you didn't get it from the title of this post, I saw Lucy Lippard speak at Mills College last week. She was there to promote her new book, Undermining, and her talk gave a synopsis of the book.

In truth, as much as I admire her, I felt her talk was fairly cursory, and basically covered the same ideas that those such as myself - who fit into center of the Venn diagram of artists, environmental issues, and activists - have debated and explored and focused on for the past ten years. However, I am still thinking about her talk, so I guess it stayed with me.

I took some notes, although she read her talk at a fairly quick pace and I didn't always get everything. Much of what she said that I found interesting was when she quoted someone else, and I didn't always catch who was the source.

What I came away with:

1) Her new book, which she describes as "an extended essay with parallel narratives," focuses on the gravel pit as a metaphor as an antithesis of the city, the lowest level of the landscape, and an example of what humans are doing to the planet.

2) Pueblo Indians farm with gravel mulch to preserve water. (Just thought this fact was cool).

3) On the global margins, emptiness and negative space are more important.

4) "All art is agriculture, not industry" - Carl Andre. Artists like him focused on absence and the dematerialized rather than object.

5) Land Art for Lippard is now, as she stated, "in the rear view mirror." Now she has turned her focus to things like Land Use and Land Appropriation, and the longer she lives in the West, the more she is drawn to the peripherals, the sideshows.

6) Earthworks take their power from distance - from cities, people, and are often instruments for seeing rather than being seen.

7) Remember that places like Trinity and the Nevada Test Sites were the original Ground Zeros.

8) She discussed how photography can be a form of activism by documenting destruction and degradation, and debated when photographers capture images of such, does the beauty they create allow people to look longer at such destruction, or does it hinder the cause by making it beautiful?

9) EcoArt is a response to the destructive tendencies of Land Art, and coincidentally, has more women involved than Land Art did.

10) "It is easier to conceive of the end of the world than the end of capitalism" - didn't get who said this, but it's sooooo true.

11) "Art may not change the world, but it can be a worthy ally to those trying." - Lippard

12) "The Activist is the artist's ashes, artists rise from the ashes of obsolete art."

13) "An artist who is not an activist is a dead artist." - Ai Wei Wei, although Lippard doesn't agree that all artists are activists. Yet she feels that in this global age, everyone needs to be activist of some sort.

14) Lippard has never been to Burning Man, although she's been told that the Rainbow Gatherings are really where it's at. (But hasn't been to one of those either).

15) When asked by a student if this was a call to arms, and if so, what should be done, her response was, "I'm 78 years old. I shouldn't be telling artists what to do. You've got to rise up and do your own."

16) Social ecology and the importance of the local are necessary involvements for artists and activists.

Pulp Stencil Action

Work continues

Above, I finally organized the beater corner of the studio. Efficiently using the wall space around Dulcinea, check! Below, papermaking viewed from the loft.

Work continues on Future Tense.

So far, invasive plants that have been used are French broom (Genista monspessulana), pampas grass (Cortaderia jubata) and ice plant (Carpobrotus chilensis).

In addition to making the paper, printing continues.

I am enchanted by the fibers of the handmade paper viewed through the negative spaces in the printed image.

When I started this artist book, which technically was years ago, finishing seemed a faraway, near impossible task. Yet lately, it seems to be rolling along, and I am excited by the progression.

A form of mourning

A few weeks ago, I was teaching a class involving collage, and the students were using a bunch of old National Geographics. In one corner, a few students came across an article on the Red Panda. "Aren't they extinct?" I heard one of them ask. "Yeah, I think they are extinct," another agreed.

Yet...they aren't extinct. However, what struck me most was their nonchalance towards such an idea. They are so accustomed to such events, that they are barely worthy of note to them.

Last week I was part of a discussion (picture above) at the Spare Change Artist Space, as part of the OFFspace exhibition Brave New World, (pictured above). One of the questions Emmanuelle asked of the group was,"What is the role of art regarding climate change?"

Regarding the works in the exhibition, (such those by Alan, Alicia, and Andreanne), I responded that I felt that one role art can serve in this changing world is an outlet for mourning.

(I also feel strongly that art can suggest solutions, but that is another discussion.)

The discussion ranged more broadly than just the idea of mourning, but it was something I've been thinking about since. I'm not sure we as a species are psychologically capable for the losses that are predicted, such as the potential for mass extinctions, global warming refugees, even changes in the food supply. This is an overwhelming subject, one that many people feel helpless against, and would rather avoid. For my students, it's become something that is normal. Most of them have never even seen a Red Panda, or say, a Western Black Rhino, so why should they care?

It's cool not to care, to not be impressed, to not be moved (especially to teenagers). And when you do care...there is so much to care about. It's overwhelming.

Yet we will need to mourn. We should mourn the black rhino, the baiji, the golden toad. We should mourn the loss of diversity, things that will never been seen again, which is also to me, a loss of wonder and possibility. But I'm not sure we will know how. Extinctions and dramatic shifts have happened before, but not on the scale that is currently predicted, and not in such a measurable and documented fashion.

I'm not entirely comfortable with this role that art is taking on - it seems in part, a form of giving up. Yet, it seems a vital role that will be needed in the time to come. I think right now what I am witnessing in this trend is mourning, but also the looming knowledge that there will be more to come, if we let it.