BIOLOGICAL STRATEGIES AT THE SERVICE OF DESIGN, Carla

Langella
With the definition of hybrid design, a project planning approach is intended so that it
may borrow the complexities embedded in the logic, in the codes and the principles of the
biological world and insert these into the culture of the project itself. In hybrid design the
complex qualities drawn from the biological world are transferred to the design of
products and innovative services as if it were a sort of new genetic code.
To obtain this objective the most recent achievements in biological science and their
correlated theoretical speculations are taken as a reference point, with the will to
overcome the common basis of aesthetical and formal metaphors and face a more
difficult path of scientific substance, based on a specific methodology put into use and
verified through theoretical and planned research.
The current biological knowledge has revealed that biological systems don't always
function in an exact way, but rather it is their complexity that allows them to survive
despite changes in external or internal conditions. These complexities are borrowed by
Hybrid Design through the transferral of biological strategies into design itself, in order
to un-reveal new fields of conceptual and operative experimentation
Cycles of Nature
To adopt codes, principles and logic drawn from biology into design means not only to be
inspired by how nature creates its products, but most of all how it develops them, makes
them grow and keeps them alive. In this way there is an evolution of the bio-inspired
planned paradigm that is no longer based on the question: how does nature develop
biological systems but adds: how does nature make them grow and keep them alive?.
From the answer to these questions the main principles targeted at the closure of the
cycles of useful resources for the design and the development of artefacts compatible
with biological cycles can be drawn, which regulate the lives of men and the natural
environment in a zero emission or cradle to cradle view. The concept of a cycle is
actually connected to that of a biological time cycle. Natural processes happen in cycles,
the refusals of certain systems become resources for others. The durability of materials
must be in proportion to the durability of the life of the products where they are used. To
learn to design projects in nature also means to learn how to apply cycle patterns that are
closed and belong to biological processes.
There is a substantial difference between the way man produces and the way nature
produces. Man develops his own artefacts, takes primary materials from nature and
transforms them in order to obtain products that, when their function has terminated,
become waste, mostly unusable waste that accumulates in the environment and damages
it.
Nature, on the other hand, takes primary materials, transforms them and creates its own

products that grow, reproduce and at the end of their life return to biological cycles and
are integrated into them. In nature everything is reused and recycled. According to the
biological metaphors used by bio-inspired design, every product, or system of products,
can be compared to an organism where every part, even if with different life cycles, is
connected to each other through complex relationships. Often the different components of
a product are characterised by their different durability and different obsolescence times.
The choice of materials to be used and the eventual ad hoc design of some of these must,
therefore, keep in mind the necessity to prepare for the different technical elements
connected to different life cycles.
In prefiguring these cycles it is necessary to dedicate the utmost attention to their
environmental impact and their durability, which must be compatible with the estimate, in
relation to their specificity in their appliance. In particular, it is indispensable to preevaluate the environmental performance of all the materials and components in the
phases that come straight after their dismissal, such as re-usage, recycling and new
possible cycles of life.
The attention toward temporal cycles of material induces the use of recyclable materials,
which come from renewable primary materials or biodegradable materials that can be
composted, for products that have very short life cycles, like packaging systems or socalled disposable products, like the moscardino developed by Matteo Ragni and
Giulio Iachetti for Pandora Design. In these cases the capacity that the material has in
being disposed into the environment avoids increasing volumes of solid deposited waste.
Autonomy
In design the concept of autonomy can be interpreted and transferred as an autonomy
from maintenance operations, from cleaning, restoration and substitution, which are
precious qualities as they avoid the environmental impacts connected to them. Main
principles targeted toward the autonomy of artefacts can be drawn from biological
systems throughout their life cycle in energy terms, and at the end of the cycles and
resources. Environmentally-friendly design can learn from nature: for example, the most
adapt strategies in order to use renewable energy resources, or to recycle un-renewable
energy resources, to reuse waste products, up until the most complex strategies such as
those based on the capacity of self-monitoring or self-healing.
Many biological systems are capable of modifying their own characteristics in function of
the change in external factors, so that they may survive despite such changes. This is
what happens in the phenomenon of self-healing many plants and animals posses. In
living organisms, for example, a wound generates a self-healing mechanism.
In the human body, when a wound is inflicted, there is an immediate flux of liquids
corresponding to the direct area of the body involved, that activates a series of physical
reactions capable of closing up the wound. By using analogous strategies, some
researchers from the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology from the
University of Illinois, coordinated by Scott White, have developed "self-healing

polymers", composite polymers capable of repairing themselves (1), that could be used,
wherever there is a small rupture, in the design of various types or products in order to
avoid the entire substitution or dismissal of the whole damaged object. Microcapsules are
integrated into these composites that open and release a resin that instantly polymerises
the rupture and closes the fracture in the matrix (2). The research in the field of new
materials and the evolution of new production technologies offer increasing opportunities
in terms of energy autonomy like photovoltaic technologies in very fine and flexible
films, that allow for the autonomy of electrical appliances of all shapes and sizes.
Self-organization and adaptation.
The concept of self-organisation has crossed many disciplines and so has adopted various
definitions. According to complexity theorists, self-organisation seems to be one of the
most important principles in the capacity for evolution, as it is translated into a capacity
to generate potentially successful structures in the natural selection. The systems capable
of organising themselves spontaneously increase their own probability of further
evolution. The self-organised characteristics are also more easily remodelled, and so are
more flexible. In order to survive the change in external or internal conditions, organisms
tend to modify themselves and evolve over time, so that they may use their own resources
in the most efficient way possible. The concept of self-organisation has been transferred
onto various disciplinary fields.
In design, the transferral of concepts of self-organisation and adaptability onto artefacts
means to intervene and make the relationship between the essence of the material and its
performance more complex. The adaptability of a product can be intended as the capacity
to modify its own characteristics according to the mutation of external conditions, so it
could be translated as a flexibility of performance or multi-functionality. The French
designer Mathieu Lehanneur, who obtained the Carte Blanche VIA 2006 by designing the
"Elements" collection, made up of elements for the home, capable of self-adapting
dynamically to the variations of external conditions, in order to create comfortable
conditions. Objects that modify their performance in relation to stimuli from their use or
from the environment.
The concept of self-organisation is important from the point of view of being eco-friendly
in terms of saving material and energy resources. A system is made to be adaptable by
forecasting possible changes that it must adapt to, even if this regards a mere part of it. In
this way it is possible to extend the useful life of a product considerably. Design products
must therefore be adaptable and upgradable in relation to the variations of the
technological scenarios, of the economical environment and the conditions and user
requirements. The planned and developed objects must be flexible, modular and
reconfigurable be it from a performance point of view to a dimensional and aesthetical
point of view; these are more likely to last longer and therefore can be used for a longer
period of time and so gain a considerable environmental advantage connected to saving
material and energy resources necessary for its maintenance or substitution for the
longest time possible.

The Holographic Principle

The holographic principle of complexity, which living organisms are based on, foresees
that: not only is a part a fraction of the whole, but the whole is included in that part (3).
The cell, for example, is part of the organism, which also contains the genetic information
of the whole.
Based on the biological metaphor, the artefacts can be interpreted as organisms, where
each part, each element, participates in a global planning strategy extended to infinite
levels that go from nanometres to macro-metres.
Hybrid design adopts a bio-mimetic metaphor, where in the design of artefacts these are
considered as organisms, where each element, according to the holographic principle, to
all the scales, from those of the materials to the macroscopic ones, participate in a
common global concept. In the design field for eco-friendly products, this approach can
offer a methodological structure where eco-friendly and bio-inspired strategies are
reflected in all the dimensions and all the phases of the life cycle of the product, as a sort
of genetic code capable of creating a system coherence for the project which can be
very useful in obtaining the best possible result in terms of minimisation of
environmental impact.
Redundancy and Multi-functionality
Biological systems posses a quality defined as redundancy, which allows them to
survive despite the most unpredictable and dangerous events, responding to these through
the use of elements or characteristics that are apparently superfluous, whose existence
proves vital only when there is a necessity for them. Often design strategies oriented
toward environmentally friendly products tend toward a certain minimisation. The
concept of redundancy seems therefore to be the antithesis of this kind of approach. But
in some cases, redundancy constitutes an efficient solution in order to avoid wasting
resources. For example, the use of protective films applied to highly perishable surfaces
or surfaces that are in constant use, like flooring in places where there is the frequent
passage of people or equipment, make the conservation of components or parts of
buildings last longer, which would otherwise require continuous replacement with
consequential environmental relapses.
Redundancy can also be functional. In nature the majority of elements are multifunctional
because the environmental conditions change from moment to moment and the biological
systems must be ready to respond with one of their possible functions. Some insects, for
example, have different pairs of legs; each one has a different function. Multifunctionality is a consolidated tendency in contemporary design, life rhythms are
increasingly frenetic and their constant changes require that products for daily use be
transformable, mutable, capable of adapting to changes in necessities and external
conditions.
Multi-functional or redundant objects and components can adapt more easily to different

applications from the point of view of performance, and therefore are capable of
surviving for longer.
Devices that incorporate different functions like electro-chromic glass, that combine glass
and sun screen in one unique object, or electroluminescent and photo luminescent
materials that combine different elements necessary to create a lamp such as a light
source, electrical cables, switches, stand and diffusers in one material system.
To integrate functions into one unique product means to save, in economical terms as
well as environmental terms, material and energy resources necessary to create the
different products that are to e substituted

Notes
(1) S.R. White, N.R. Sottos, P.H. Geubelle, J.S. Moore, M.R. Kessler, S.R. Sriram, E.N.
Brown, S. Viswanathan: "Autonomic healing of polymer composites", Nature. 2001 409,
794-797.
(2) Brown, E.N., White, S.R. and Sottos, N.R. "Retardation and repair of fatigue cracks in
a microcapsule toughened epoxy composite-Part II: In situ self-healing". Composite
Science and Technology, Special Anniversary Issue. 2005: 65, 2474-2480.
(3) Morin E., Le Moigne J.L. (1999). L'Intelligence de la Complexit . L'Harmattan.
Paris.
above copied from: http://www.digicult.it/digimag/article.asp?id=1381

EARTH SENSITIVE, John Grande

(2000)
In developing a nature-specific dialogue that is interactive, rooted in actual experience in
a given place and time, with nature the essential material and ingredient of the process,
artists are ultimately developing a new language of expression. The emphasis is holistic,
bio-regional and mutualist. Above all, it displays a respect for our integral connectedness
to the environment. The earth is a living breathing organism whose elements - climate,
geography, geology, other life forms - are an inviolable part of the human creative
process. The inflexible stereotypes of art history, outmoded notions of avant-gardism and
modernist aesthetics in general are the legacy of an era where progress was defined in
purely economic terms. The land is no longer just a subject we represent through art. An
essential freedom comes from identifying with the life process itself as art. It is one
chance we have to ensure a viable art of the future. The imperial stereotypes of an art

based in formal language, the segregation of humanity from nature, the platitudes that
accompany the art object and nature subject have now passed into the catacombs of our
museums and art galleries. Let us leave that labyrinth behind and celebrate nature whose
presence is very much there, very much here. Essential for our psychological and
physical sustenance, nature is here in your garden, there in your forest, can be found in a
city park. A resurgence of ritual and respect for the cyclical process of life, an earth
sensitive vision reaffirms nature is the art of which we are a part. The challenge is to
break out of the limited conception that humanity is the centre of earth-based activity, to
broaden our perspective, realize that other species, organisms, animals and plants are
equally earth sensitive, the biogenitors of ecological diversity. They may even perceive
the earth and us in ways we could never conceive.
From a native point of view, landscape cannot be characterized as either wilderness (i.e. a
place in which human activity is not naturally present) or a scene (i.,e. a representation of
a site) or a framed subject that embodies an idea of nature. The line between human
culture and the culture of nature are indivisible. The Mtabetchouane Centre for History
and Archaeology on the south shore of Lac St.-Jean in northern Quebec, with its replica
of a Hudson's Bay trading post, is a place where on July 16th, 1647, the Jesuit founder
Jean Dequen, a native of Amiens in France, arrived by boat from Tadoussac. Mike
MacDonald, a self taught artist of mixed descent (Micmac, Beothuk, Irish, Portuguese,
Scottish) whose nature works explore ways of healing cultural and biospecific
differences, found a variety of introduced and indigenous species of plants growing in the
surrounds of this historic site, a traditional native meeting place for centuries in precontact times. During the summer of 1996, he gathered and transplanted species of
Native medicinal plants that included sweetgrass, northern sage, native onions, Iroquois
ceremonial tobacco, Virginia tobacco, evening primrose, milkweed, Joe-Pyeweed, and
Dyers camomile. These indigenous plants with medicinal properties were planted directly
around the museum's walls to create a butterfly garden. Naturally growing varieties of
viperine, wood strawberry, and hawthorn trees introduced by European settlers centuries
ago, plants that have outlasted the early settlement buildings and continued to flourish in
the wild were likewise "discovered" by MacDonald whose role was more that of an
ethnobotanist than artist. Rock assemblages shaped to form footprints (an allusion to Jean
Dequen's original "discovery" of this site in 1647) placed in the garden enabled visitors to
move through the site without damaging the plants.
MacDonald's thesis that most plants that attract butterflies have medicinal, healing
properties has resulted in subsequent reconfigurations of the butterfly garden that are a
source of inspiration and healing, and painlessly beautiful. MacDonald's latest butterfly
garden installed amid the ruins of Our Lady of the Prairie Church at the St. Norbert Arts
Centre this summer, brought living colour to this site of a former Trappist Monastery,
south of Winnipeg, in Manitoba. This heart-shaped garden was replanted with blue and
white flowers, the colours used in the Catholic Marian Garden tradition. The place
became a work of contemplation and healing, where past Judeo-Christian traditions
brought over from the Old world were brought into perspective by a native intervention.
An empty plinth overlooking the garden marks the spot where a statue once stood. The
10th in a cycle of 12 related works Patria (Homeland) by the world renowned

environmental writer, educator and composer R. Murray Shafer will be performed there.
The cycle relates the journey of two principal characters through the labyrinth of different
cultures and social situations.
Located on the Pacific Flyway and the Fraser River Basin, the City of Vancouver has a
particular environmental legacy and opportunity. To raise consciousness of songbird
populations in city and country, and provide positive enhancement programs for songbird
habitats in urban centres, artists Beth Carruthers and Nelson Gray, conceived of
Vancouver's SongBird project after hearing the clear song of a robin rising above the
background cacophony of industrial noise. Biologists, landscape architects, musicians,
artists, planners, sustainability consultants and community groups assisted with the
project, as did the Douglas College Institute of Urban Ecology and the Roundhouse
Community Centre. Environmental concerns were expressed by specialists and city
dwellers in the Living City Forum (1998 & 1999), and nature walks encouraged an
awareness of urban bird habitats. FLAP (the Fatal Light Awareness Program) likewise
made citizens aware of how millions of birds are killed annually in North America by
collisions with office and home buildings that are unnecessarily lit up at night.
A broader than usual spectrum of the public has thus become involved in re-imagining
the Georgia Basin's place in the world environmental spectrum and Vancouver has
become a "songbird friendly" model for other North American cities. The core annual
event of the SongBird project is the Spring Dawn Chorus Festival held in May. Begun in
England 13 years ago these gatherings of people who await the songbird's dawn chorus
are now celebrated around the world. The Babylon Gardens Initiative presented at the
Roundhouse Community Centre, aimed at introducing to the public ways of encouraging
bird populations in the city. Citizens were taught how to build feeders, nesting boxes,
introduce ivy, trellises and bird baths into their home environments thus providing
temporary food, habitat and water supplies for birds on balconies, rooftops, in window
boxes and gardens. The Gardens of Babylon Balcony Challenge has now run for 3 years
and winners are recognized for their positive bird friendly environmental interventions.
The Nest, a structure woven out of willows and dried grasses by French artist and
landscape architecture student Claire Bedat with assistance from public volunteers was
installed outside the Roundhouse Community Centre in the fall of 1998 to celebrate
humanity's connection to home, community and songbirds. As Claire Bedat says: "The
making was in its essence a very intuitive rendering, as dedicated as a bird, I used each
part of my body to shape and build the Nest. A nest is supposedly round, round like life,
round like the body of a bird. Unconsciously I was participating in the making of a
shelter, a refuge, the house of my body (...) Growth is often assimilated to change, I
changed during the making of this project and feel emotionally empowered and bounded
to a greater cause: preserving biodiversity on Earth."
Alan Sonfist, a pioneer of eco-sensitive projects in the 1960s and 1970s, for which his
Time Landscape (1965) in Soho New York is perhaps the best known. For this project
Sonfist introduced pre-contact plants, trees and vegetation to a site in New York. As
Sonfist states: "One would observe, within each of the environmental sculptures, the
struggle of life and death, as well as the human interaction in a historical forest. That's

what the 19th century concepts were about. That is really what I am involved in, and
what my thought process is trying to create. The natural cycles as opposed to doing an
ecological model from a scientific point of view, or using pure history."
In the Mojave Desert at the main park in La Quinta, California, Sonfist completed a
seven mile nature trail (1998) in a region of California otherwise encumbered by the
introduction of non-native, northern species of trees and plants that consume unnecessary
amounts of water. California bio-history is like bio-history anywhere, involves a layering
of living species in the cyclical theatre of nature in time. ghost flower, bee balm, blazing
star, desert star, cream cup, woolly daisy, Indian paintbrush, yellow cup, desert sienna,
Devil's claw. The flux and flow of elements causes nature to reinvent itself in a myriad of
ways. Sonfist's project involves reassessing each fragment of time, realize this nature
layering takes place in a continuum, not one fixed moment. The locals who live near the
site, seemed to favour non-natural nordic landscapes with maple trees, and grass lawns.
Foreign plant and tree species are planted, landscaped into our cities and suburbs because
they bring an "exotic flavour" to a place. How different is this from changing the channel
on your TV in an endless search for "novelty"? Artificial environments, in this case in a
desert region, require heavy watering, and are a desperate attempt to reduce biocultural
diversity. Since the local indigenous plant species have been introduced to the region, the
initially negative response, has been replaced by an enthusiasm about how beautiful and
diverse the spectrum of flower arrangements Sonfist has brought to the place actually are.
Sonfist's nature trail has become a visual laboratory of environmental understanding. The
work has stimulated thought and controversy as well as providing a cathartic living
environment for the people who live there. Plans are on for sculptors to introduce
artworks along the trail at a later date.
For the Coast Salish Squamish nation on the West Coast of British Columbia whose
numbers dwindled from 60,000 to a low of 150 after intitial contact with the white man,
the world is conceived as a forest. The community of trees that grow in a forest is like a
community of peoples whose health and history are inextricably linked together. Artist
and activist Nancy Bleck and carver Aaron Nelson-Moody (Tawx'sin Yexwulla) have
embarked on an intriguing project called Cedar People. The first stage of the project
involves Nelson-Moody's carved rendition of the Society of Women in Stewardship of
the Land, a "society within a society", raised from birth to act as leaders who look after
the land. As Nelson-Moody states "There is no equivalent in non-Native society, as the
women were as much medicinal doctors as they were environmental lawyers, as much
libraries as they were land managers." A traditional ceremony has already been held to
bless the log, and invitees witnessed the first stage of the transformation of this cedar
wood into Slyn'i (cedar woman). Being the first of many such Welcome Figure carvings,
it will be raised in a sacred site in the upper Squamish wilderness region this August.
Culturally modified markings on the outside bark of ancient cedar trees can be found in
such sites that indicate these places have been visited for thousands of years. Using
traditional native tools, Nelson-Moody has created a twelve by three foot carving whose
installation will be witnessed by the Coast Salish Squamish people and non-natives. The
traditional society of women this work is dedicated to, are likewise "witnesses" who have
participated through ceremony as "keepers of history". Other welcome figures will be

made elsewhere, in collaboration with local carvers and participants - on site in Quebec,
Germany, and Australia - locals carving traditions and motifs will be part of these
initiatives.
In 1992 at Mru in the Oise region of France, Jean-Paul Ganem created his first
"agricultural composition" and this was soon followed by others in the Vende,
Champagne, and Midi-Pyrnes of France and the 150 hectare Mirabel airport project
in Montreal, Canada (1996). This summer, Jean-Paul Ganem has been involved in a large
scale environmental sensibilization and community participation project titled Le Jardin
des Capteurs. Created in collaboration with the Cirque du Soleil and Jour-Terre Quebec
Le Jardin des Capteurs occupies a 2.5 hectare waste area adjacent to the Cirque du
Soleil's permanent headquarters in the north of Montreal. The site referred to as the
Miron Quarry, contains human waste excrement up to 100 feet in depth. Gas emission
pipes (up to 400 feet below the surface), sporadically dot the surface of the land like
periscopes. Operated by Gazmont Plant nearby, the gas pipe emissions provide natural
gas/methane power for 10,000 homes. Ganem's art project involves youth from the St.
Michel region of Montreal and volunteers from Montreal's Botanical Gardens. Thus
beautified, Ganem's site intervention changes public perception of garbage and waste
dumps, not only for the volunteers, but equally for those who visit the place or see it from
the air. An end of the world wasteland becomes a beautiful rendition of the circus Big Top
with colourful wedge-like land marks and overlapping circular motifs in varying
dimensions. All this is made of living plant and flower species: red and yellow Cosmos,
pink and red petunias, colza, beard-grass, wild heliotrope and buckwheat.. The colourful
land markings and motifs overlap, with varying circular dimensions and shapes. An
undulating path makes its way through the planting... Directional markers point to the
more formidable areas of the Miron Quarry/Dump that will, over the coming years, be
landscaped and transformed into a more substantial city park with a hill at its centre. Next
year perennials will replace the present planting. Le Jardin des Capteurs introduces the
notion that sites for human waste, the detritus of our urban consumer society can be
recycled and beautified as sites, just as the goods and waste that end up there can be.
Approaching such initiatives from the aesthetic and design perspective Belgian artist Bob
Verschueren is an artist who specializes in making vegetal art out of vegetal matter. His
most impressive works include the Wind Paintings which are nothing less than
spectacular. The Wind Paintings comprise lines of natural pigment that are dispersed by
wind action. It was the unpredictability of the result that initially attracted Verschueren to
this kind of art making. The experience came about after Verschueren quit traditional
painting and found himself "no longer confronted by the limits of this horrible rectangle.
The subject extended beyond any traditional aesthetic framework. A battle lost before you
start one could say! One could not measure a work, one does not know what comprises
the last grain of pigment, where it will go..." Vershueren lays variously coloured pigments
in lines along stretches of sand for his Wind Paintings. Nature does the rest. The action of
wind on the pigment turns the land surface into the canvas for these artworks.
German artist Mario Reis makes "nature watercolours" by placing a base material in
flowing water and allowing the mineral and vegetal sediment transported in the water to

accumulate on its surface. Water is the paintbrush that moves and dispaces the sediment
and colour on these square canvases. Reis finds these configurations of silt, sand and
sediment drawn from rivers all over North America in places as varied as the Yukon,
British Columbia, Idaho, Ohio, New Hampshire, Nevada, Michigan, Alaska, Wyoming
and Kansas to be as confounding in their variety of hues, shades, textures as any old
fashioned artwork and much more challenging. Reis' likewise enacts such works in
Mexico, Europe, Africa, and Japan. They are a powerful reflection on natural diversity.
His approach is rigorous and truly global in scope.
The growth of an interactive approach to working with environment implies an
acceptance of ourselves, as much as nature. These artists' actions carry a narrative on
human history within their work, but circumvent artistic conventions of reproduction,
containment and mimesis. Nature and art are less critically segregated, life takes
precedence over the art. Links are established between human culture and the culture of
nature. With each successive experimentation this new language of expression that
involves understanding our place in nature become better understood. Elements from
nature are the paint and nature is the canvas. Artists are the catalysts. There is no subject
or object. This earth sensitive language of expression is tactile, physical and plays
visually with various organic and inorganic elements in a given site. The creative growth
experience is interactive. As we enhance our understanding of nature's place in our
society, our civilization, our personal lives, so we better understand that our society's
future will inevitably involve understanding and respecting nature's processes. Nature's
endemic role as source and provider is what will enable us to achieve sustainability for all
forms of life the earth in the future.
John K. Grande
- previously published in Public Art Review (Vol. 12, No. 1, Issue 23) Fall Winter 2000
issue
Writer and art critic John Grande's reviews and feature articles have been published
extensively in Artforum, Vice Versa, Sculpture, Art Papers, British Journal of
Photography, Espace Sculpture, Public Art Review, Vie des Arts, Art On Paper, The
Globe & Mail, Circa & Canadian Forum. The author of Balance: Art and Nature (Black
Rose Books, 1994), Intertwining: Landscape, Technology, Issues, Artists (Black Rose
Books, 1998) and Jouer avec le feu: Armand Vaillancourt: Sculpteur engag (Montreal:
Lanctot, 2001). John Grande has published numerous catalogue essays on selected artists
and has taught art history at Bishops University. He co-authored Judy Garfin: Natural
Disguise (Vehicule Press, Montreal, 1998) and Nils-Udo: Art with Nature (Wienand
Verlag, Koln, Germany 2000) and his latest book is David Sorensen: Abstraction From
Here to Now (Centre culturel Yvonne L. Bombardier, Valcourt, 2001) Mr. Grande's Art
Nature Dialogues will be published by SUNY Press in 2003.
2009 greenmuseum.org
above from: http://greenmuseum.org/generic_content.php?ct_id=109

The Aesthetics of Junkyards and Roadside Clutter, Thomas Leddy

ABSTRACT
A little more than thirty years ago, Allen Carlson argued that although the concept of
"Camp" would seem to allow for the aesthetic redemption of roadside clutter and
junkyards, it does not.[1] He opposes those who claim that if one takes the right attitude
to roadside clutter it can be seen as aesthetic. In this essay I argue that that there is
nothing wrong with this, although I will not base my argument on the idea of Camp
sensibility.
KEY WORDS
aesthetics, Allen Carlson, junk, junkyards, Camp, clutter, environmentalism, Susan
Sontag, thick appreciation, thin appreciation
1. The Aesthetics of Waste
Several years ago my sister, a painter, took me to a junkyard she was quite excited about.
"Bring your camera," she said. She had been purchasing items there to add to her
paintings as assemblage elements. We went and had a great time. When I fi[rst started
writing this paper it struck me that I would be sad to hear that the junkyard was gone.
Recently my sister informed me that is in fact gone, and I actually was saddened. Carlson
argues that my aesthetically positive response to this junkyard would be inappropriate,
and that it is almost inconceivable that I would be saddened by its disappearance. He
thinks that I could appreciate the junkyard in what he calls a "thin" formalist sense, but
not in a "thick" knowledge-based sense, and that my advocating the aesthetic value of
junkyards is unethical since I am thereby indirectly advocating many negative values,
especially anti-environmentalist ones. Yet I am quite sympathetic to environmentalism
and, although I am sad to see the junkyard gone, I would probably be happy enough if, in
the unlikely event, I found later that it was replaced by a lovely meadow. But one person's
roadside trash is another's treasure, and I wouldn't be surprised if Carlson would insist
that my junkyard must go. Thus, I must deny his premise that junkyards and roadside
clutter generally are not aesthetically pleasing, if by that he means (and I think he does)
that they are never appropriately aesthetically pleasing."
Denying this premise is tricky since the word 'clutter' has a negative connotation. People
who, like myself, sometimes favor clutter might be better described as favoring what
others consider clutter. Still, part of the aesthetic fascination with clutter, for those who
like it, is that it is not neat. As I have argued elsewhere, messiness can sometimes be a
positive aesthetic quality.[2] In short, I think that we should allow for the possibility of
aesthetically appreciating roadside clutter and junkyards, and even for the possibility of

being saddened if a favorite junkyard were to be removed.

It is not that I favor preserving of eyesores. But I do favor appreciating and even
sometimes preserving some things that others consider eyesores. This parallels the fact
that I find my own working-class neighborhood endlessly fascinating visually, although
much of what I appreciate and photograph there would be considered clutter by others.
The middle-class neighborhood next door is delightful to walk in; all of the front yards
are very tasteful. But they are, photographically, pretty uninteresting by comparison. That
is, there are many photography buffs like myself who take more pleasure in cluttered or
visually unusual front yards than in the "tasteful" ones found in more middleclass
environments.
How is it possible that clutter and junkyards can be legitimately appreciated? Modern
artist made it possible: the works of Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Edward
Kienholtz, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Allan Kaprow, Bruce Conner, Joseph Cornell,
Alberto Burri, John Chamberlain, the Arte Povera artists, and many others. A recent
example would be Richard Misrach, who takes gorgeous photos of waste sites in natural
settings, for example, "Bomb, Destroyed Vehicles and Lone Rock, Bravo 20 Bombing
Range, Nevada," 1987. In another recent example, contemporary painter Altoon Sultan
takes roadside objects in rural environments that might often be seen as unsightly and
transforms them into things of beauty.
The aesthetics of junk has not been lost those who are in the business of waste
management and recycling. Norcal Waste System, for example, has an artist-in-residence
program in which artists are encouraged to incorporate junk and waste into their creative
process.[3] Seventy-eight artists have participated since 1990. It is doubtful that Camp
sensibility played much of a role in this. Most of this work, rather, is an extension of the
concepts of collage and assemblage developed in the early part of the 20th century. There
have been other motives as well for artistic interest in garbage. Rauschenberg, for
example, was interested in a critique of the merely pretty and the decorative. [4] And
some of the artists at the Norcal site are interested in issues of recycling and
environmentalism.
Carlson is very aware of the influence of contemporary art on our appreciation of
junkyards, although he puts his point in terms of the concept of Camp. As he says, "Camp
has developed hand in hand with certain avant garde art movements, some of which often
imitate such things as billboards and tin cans, and others of which occasionally utilize
junk and trash as a medium."[5] He thinks that these art objects can sometimes escape his
condemnation of junk without in any way legitimating aesthetic appreciation of the
junkyard. But is this really possible?
In the article which originally inspired Carlsons theory, Monroe Beardsley refers to a
cartoon in which a junkman proclaims that his pile is not an eyesore because of its
similarities to some works by Picasso. Beardsley argues that this gives rise to what he
calls "the dilemma of aesthetic education."[6] The dilemma is between two ways of
directing taste: one that is reformist towards an ideal of beauty, while the other

aestheticizes everything, taking the aesthetic point of view whenever possible. The first is
more traditional. It is associated with programs of beautification in which highways are
shielded from junkyards and billboards. But he observes that the second might sometimes
be appropriate when the intensity of the regional qualities of the object "partly depends
on its symbolic import." In such circumstances an ordinary object can be expressive. As
he puts it "Suddenly, a whole new field of aesthetic gratification opens up. Trivial objects,
the accidental, the neglected, the meretricious and vulgar, all take on new excitement.
The automobile graveyard and the weed-filled garden are seen to have their own wild and
grotesque expressiveness as well as symbolic import."[7] He thinks that although at first
we find litter, junkyards, and so forth unsightly, but they may be perceptually
transformed. However, he sees the second way as "defeatist" as it does not aim to
eliminate the junkyard. Moreover, he observes, a "weighty tradition" argues that
sometimes there are moral objections to taking an aesthetic point of view, as in
aestheticization of Auschwitz. Nonetheless, he thinks that "there is nothingthat is per se
wrong to consider from the aesthetic point of view."[8]
Just before bringing up the case of the junkyard owner, Beardsley mentions the concept
of Camp that was developed in the late 1960s by Susan Sontag.[9] Sontag argued that
Camp, a certain way of seeing, can transform our experience of things we generally do
not find aesthetically pleasing, for example kitsch.[10]
This attitude, however, is hardly limited to Camp. It is equally true for Dadaist, Surrealist,
and Postmodern sensibilities. Moreover, Camp is a specialized sensibility that is only
indirectly related to aesthetic appreciation of junkyards. (Beardsley seems to realize this,
but Carlson does not.) Sontag associates Camp with "artifice and exaggeration." It is a
sensibility that "converts the serious into the frivolous." Basically it is an urban and gay
thing. (Sontag calls it "androgynous," and although she does not identify it with gay
culture, she observes an affinity. Also, when she refers to junk she seems mainly to be
thinking of things to be found in junk stores rather than to junkyards or roadside clutter.)
Camp is associated with the glitzy and the glamorous. In the last line of her essay Sontag
that the ultimate Camp statement: "it's good because it's awful." Yet this does not seem to
apply to appreciation of junkyards and roadside clutter. Rauschenberg's work, for
example, seems unrelated to Camp.[11] Nothing he says, for example, implies that he
thought garbage was good because it was awful!
2. Sensibility and Aesthetic Appreciation
The interest in junk as a medium for art was widespread in early 1960s. Arman (Armand
Pierre Fernadez) a French artist, produced a show in 1960 called "Plein" ("The Filled") in
which he completely filled a gallery with garbage. Even before that, in 1959, he produced
found-object sculptures called "Poubelles" ("Garbage Cans") which were glass cases
filled with cast-offs of friends.[12] Relocating to New York City in 1961, he continued
his interest in garbage, making realistic bronzes of it in the 1970s. He saw himself as
attacking the culture of consumption and waste.[13]
Although Sontag is right that having a certain sensibility is important, something more

traditional and broader than Camp, like disinterested perception, the aesthetic attitude, or
Beardsley's own "aesthetic point of view" would probably be sufficient for appreciating
junk. Carlson recognizes this, but avoids discussing the point as he thinks that the concept
of the aesthetic attitude, and presumably the "aesthetic point of view," are questionable.
[14] However, even if the aesthetic attitude idea has been expressed awkwardly in the
past, there is surely nothing wrong with the notion that someone who appreciates
junkyards aesthetically looks at them in a different way or attends to different features
than someone who's interest is, for example, purely financial. When a junkyard owner
appreciates his property for the money it brings in, this is not aesthetic appreciation.
Country Vermonters often appreciate their junk piles as collections of possibly useful
materials: junk cars, for example, as sources of spare parts. This too would not be
aesthetic appreciation.
Part of Carlson's argument against roadside clutter is that it is not natural, that roadsides
that appear in "nature" (i.e. the relatively pristine nature that conservationists,
environmentalists, and many poets love) should not have such unnatural things as junk
and clutter alongside. Yet, if his argument is that the non-natural in natural environments
should be excluded from appreciation, then it should be extended to Frank Lloyd Wright's
Fallingwater. Perhaps Carlson does not so extend it because he finds Wright's work
attractive. If so, then the issue really has nothing to do with what is natural: it is entirely a
matter of taste. Carlson is aware that the argument based on what is natural is weak. As
he observes, "artists and craftsmen make objects more aesthetically pleasing simply by
making them less natural," for example, when a cabinet maker polishes his or her wood.
Also, defining "natural" in such a way as to exclude what humans do is problematic given
that humans are products of nature.
Carlson therefore turns to a stronger argument based on the distinction between thin and
thick senses of "aesthetically pleasing." The thin sense refers to physical appearance,
whereas the thick sense goes beyond the physical to refer to "qualities and values which
the object expresses and conveys to the viewer."[15] To illustrate the distinction, he
quotes John Hospers: "When we contemplate a starry night or a mountain lake we see it
not merely as an arrangement of pleasing colors, shapes, and volumes, but as expressive
of many things in life, drenched with the fused association of many scenes and emotions
from memory and experience." Yet exactly the same thing can be said about a junkyard,
i.e. that it is expressive of many things in life, has many associations, etc. Indeed, when
Beardsley introduced the second horn of the dilemma he did so by describing the
aesthetic experience of an automobile graveyard as one in which the objects are taken as
symbolic and expressive.
At first it seems that Carlson simply assumes that appreciation of a junkyard must be thin
rather than thick, that it must be somehow purely a matter of attending to physical
qualities, which Hospers, at least, seems to understand in terms of the qualities that
formalists like in art. Yet, it is not clear that we ever see things aesthetically purely as
physical and without other cultural associations. If so, the very distinction between thick
and thin is problematic. At best one could speak of appreciation being relatively thin or
thick.

Carlson thinks that a junkyard could not be perceived aesthetically thickly for then it
would have to be perceived as expressive in a special and unacceptable way: "[T]he
quality must be associated with the object in such a way that it is felt or perceived to be a
quality of the object itself." I take this to mean that there cannot be any consciously
imaginative seeing involved in this perception. Just as earlier I argued that there are no
examples of pure thin appreciation, I argue here that there are no examples of purely
unimaginative perception. Humans are naturally imaginative: they not only see, but "see
as," and they often do so at the same time. It is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish
between what is seen in the object perceived because it is felt actually to be there, and
what is imaginatively projected onto the object. The distinction only works at the
extreme, as in imaginatively projecting a camel shape onto a cloud, where the expressive
quality of the cloud in this case has nothing to do with the cloud's actual nature. The word
for imaginative projection in science is "hypothesis" which, as we know, is necessary for
scientific knowledge. Seeing something as or under a scientific concept can involve an
imaginative projection that goes contrary to conventional ways of seeing or
understanding. Similarly, seeing expressive qualities in an object may well go contrary to
what one feels is clearly a quality within the object itself. Imaginatively seeing something
is seeing it in terms of its potentiality or in terms of its possibility, and these are the
features of a thing that give it, phenomenologically speaking, life.
Carlson asks what life values are expressed through aesthetic appreciation of clutter and
junk. I have no problem with this My problem arises when he argues that the values
expressed by a junkyard must be "waste, disregard, carelessness, and exploitation." I
suggest, rather, that the values affirmed in aesthetic appreciation of a junkyard are, or at
least could be, those of non-conformity; recognition that messiness can sometimes be
valuable; a belief that the margins of our world have their own unique interest; and
perhaps nostalgia for things of another era that have achieved a certain patina through
rust and decay. An important value affirmed is that old discarded things can come alive
again visually if looked at or treated in the right way. In this way, the aesthetics of junk
may be closely related to the aesthetics of antiques. In short, Carlsons thick perception of
junkyards is just one of many.
3. Do Life-Values Affect Aesthetic Appreciation?
The negative values Carlson mentions may seem to be the values expressed in junkyards
to someone who does not appreciate junkyards aesthetically, or to someone who
appreciates junkyards for formalist reasons but who feels bad about it ethically. The
problem, perhaps, goes back to Sontag, who saw Camp as emphasizing texture and style
as opposed to content. Sontag seems to have taken an overly formalist approach to
appreciation of junk. Her neglect of content left a vacuum, and Carlson rushed in with his
idea that the content is waste and disregard. Carlson admits that a junkyard could also
express the value of hard work, but insists that this would not erase the other values
expressed. Note that junkyard owners themselves would hardly see themselves as
expressing the values Carlson attributes to them.

Still, even if the life-values of some of the people who produce roadside clutter are waste
and disregard, these are not necessarily the life-values of those who appreciate it
aesthetically. Moreover, the life-values of some who produce what others consider
roadside clutter are not at all of this sort: I am thinking of people who live in the desert
and who prefer to surround themselves with worn-out cars, appliances, and other junk,
but arranged in an interesting way. Further, what something is expressive of, when that
thing is not consciously produced as an expression (and a junkyard is seldom consciously
produced as an expression of anything), is hardly a matter of fact. Carlson, himself,
admits at the end of his essay that he cannot be certain what life values these objects
express, [16] which seems inconsistent with his earlier claim that they must express
values of waste, etc..
Another way to approach junk that is both thick and positive can be found in a blog by
Andy Green: "A real study and use of Junk will recognize that bottles and burnt cars are
testimonies to anonymous men; that rusted washing machines are monuments to
domestic and economic struggles; that all derelict objects are imbued with particular
resonance in particular locations that can bring new (sometimes troubled) meanings to
life." [17] Green goes on: " These Junk-sites mark the intersections of our personal
histories, underlying interests, conscious and unconscious desires. They may look dirty or
offensive to some, but junk is really a slide show of our deep humanity, as well as our
flaws." Green further writes: "It is possible that junk can allow us to confront the more
dangerous 'wild' aspects of our social environments, as well [as] offering a more
constructive way of approaching our connection to each other across a divided social
landscape."
Green's approach to junk is socially engaged. Although aesthetic, it is not aestheticist or
Camp. Perhaps moving beyond Rauschenberg, Green denies interest in "dumping a rusty
washing machine on the floor of the Tate and calling it a clever critique of consumer
based societies." As he puts it, " Those kinds of statements soon become far too general,
lose their force of argument, their specific context, and lapse into aesthetic clich all too
easily: an 'aesthetics' of junk that has lost a meaningful relationship to a living
landscape."
Carlson thinks it is empirically uncontroversial that we cannot appreciate a junkyard in
the thick sense. But the claim would only be uncontroversial if the expressed qualities
must be the ones that Carlson describes. We could appreciate junk in a thick sense if we
took it to have the expressive properties I or Green have mentioned.
Carlson further believes that appreciation of the effect means condoning the cause. Thus,
on his view, if I appreciate a junkyard I must be condoning values of waste and
exploitation. And yet this is not the case in our appreciation of Versailles. As Kant once
observed, in appreciating Versailles we are not condoning all the values that went into its
making, for example absolute monarchism.[18] One could say that from a moral
perspective the palace of Versailles is expressive of waste and exploitation. (Rousseau
certainly thought so.) But I think we can still experience it as beautiful. Moreover, even if
we do not accept Kant's notion of disinterested perception we can see that a thick

appreciation does not require taking on all of the moral baggage of origins.
It has been suggested by an anonymous reader of an earlier version of this paper that our
ability to appreciate Versailles is a function of historical distance and that we could not as
easily appreciate a more recent palace built on a foundation of injustice. This may be true
to some extent, but note that Kant himself was not significantly temporally distant from
the creation of whatever palaces or representations of palaces he may have seen. There is
nothing to keep us from aesthetically appreciating recent products with questionable
ethical histories, nor is it clear that forbidding appreciation of morally questionable
buildings produces any ethical good that can counterbalance the aesthetic loss.
At the end of his essay Carlson turns to the issue of artist appropriation of junkyard
materials. He first makes the dubious suggestion that Duchamp was expressing the
negative values of waste, etc., when he displayed Fountain. He then suggests, more
plausibly, that when an artist is successful in using junk in his or her art, as Picasso was in
his Bull's Head, the result is only made possible when the junk is recycled in such a way
that the expressive properties of the junkyard are erased. This may work for some uses of
junk in art. But consider Robert Venturi, Steve Izenour, and Denise Scott Brown's
influential idea that we can learn from Las Vegas. In 1964 Peter Blake wrote a book
called God's Own Junkyard: The Planned Deterioration of America's Landscape, in which
he spoke of neon signs as roadside clutter.[19] In 1977 Venturi, Izenour, and Brown
transformed our understanding of neon signs and "the strip" through their postmodernist
redefinition of architecture inspired by the time they spent in Las Vegas.
4. The Ethics of Aesthetic Appreciation
In response to Carlson, Yuriko Saito takes a somewhat different approach to roadside
litter, junkyards and clutter.[20] She holds that Carlson's argument against roadside
clutter is not aesthetic but ethical. She writes that "As an aesthetic argument, the
reference to the ethically undesirable expressive qualities of littering, power lines, and
strip-mining does not make a good justification against them."[21] For example, the
aesthetic qualities of the natural environment and the expressive qualities of the strip
mine might both be reinforced by their mutual contrast.
At this point in her article Saito takes a different tack, arguing that although contrast is
important in a painting or a play, with respect to environments, we normally appreciate
unity and consider contrast to be a demerit. We appreciate both natural and man-made
environments in terms of their overall ambience or character, which can be spoiled if
mixed. She admits that this argument would fail to show that a unified environment such
as a Las Vegas-like city would aesthetically fail as a replacement of natural scenery, but
suggests that the ambiance of Las Vegas is one of vulgar, loud commercialism that is not
really enjoyable. This seems the wrong approach as, although it is not enjoyable to her
and to me, it is clearly enjoyable to the thousands who choose to visit. Her solution is to
affirm Carlson's argument against roadside clutter not as aesthetic but as ethical, but with
aesthetic implications. Abusive treatment of the natural environment would always, on
this view, destroy its aesthetic value.

However, Saito's argument could be equally directed against Las Vegas itself and towards
my favorite junkyard simply because she does not find them enjoyable or thinks they are
examples of abusive treatment. And this same argument could equally be directed against
Fallingwater or any humanly constructed environment since they all involved replacing
natural scenes with human ones, and there is always someone who doesn't enjoy them.
In contrast to Carlson and Saito, and in line with the position I have presented here, Paul
Ziff argues that "anything that can be viewed is a fit object of aesthetic attention."[22]
The only limits are one's power to create the appropriate frame or context for what one
sees. Ziff describes what he oddly calls an antiaesthetic approach to litter. As he puts it,
"The antiaesthetic approach is to alter one's view to see the original litter not as litter but
as an object for aesthetic attentionOne can look upon the disorder of litter as a form of
order a beautiful randomness a precise display of imprecision."[23] By 'antiaesthetic' he
seems to mean not non-aesthetic but "contrary to traditional aesthetics." He then suggests
that looking at the work of abstract expressionist painters Jackson Pollock and Mark
Tobey might help one to appreciate litter. Perhaps Monet and Braque would be helpful
too, as he says: "Garbage strewn about is apt to be as delicately variegated in hue and
value as the subtlest Monet. Discarded beer cans create striking cubist patterns."[24]
There are, of course, distinctions between junkyards, roadside clutter, garbage dumps,
and oil spills.[25] Junkyards, for example, are often intended to contain items for re-use.
It might be argued that, because of this, Carlson was wrong in his thick description of
junkyards. It might further be argued that he would have been right if he had given a
similar thick description of roadside litter, garbage dumps, or oil spills. I admit that some
things are more difficult to appreciate aesthetically than junkyards; a major oil spill
would be an excellent example. Nor should we be in any way required to try to appreciate
such things. At the same time, nothing says that they cannot be appreciated. There have
been artworks that have focused on the aesthetic properties of similar phenomena: Robert
Smithson's Asphalt Rundown (1969) would be one example. My main point is that there
is no one right thick description of a junkyard, roadside clutter, a garbage dump, or even
an oil spill.
5. Conclusion
It might be argued that my approach relies on artworks and not on immediate experience
of the environments described. My view of this is that artists are particularly sensitive
observers of our world and that they capture aesthetic features in their works that we
might not normally notice. For example, a photographer may typically think, "wow, that
looks interesting" before photographing a junkyard. (I take "interesting" here to be an
aesthetic property. ) Photographer Robert Adams, recently featured in the television
series, Art 21, photographs clear-cut forests. Although he disapproves of the aesthetic
devastation caused by clear-cutting, he still finds beauty in certain aspects of what he
photographs.
Some would argue that aesthetic appreciation of junkyards or any other sites that would

entail harming the environment would be no different from aesthetically appreciating

representations of the horrors of Auschwitz, and that both are blameworthy. But as Ziff
helpfully observes, there are some things that disgust us so much that we cannot
aesthetically appreciate them, although it may be that others can. I do not deny that there
could be a case for moral censure for aesthetic appreciation of representations of the
horrors of the holocaust that focused on qualities of, for example, grace and charm. Still,
there is no problem with aesthetically appreciating something that one also considers to
be horrifying or inhuman. If there were, then the Greek tragedies would have been
impossible. Finding something tragic is a kind of aesthetic appreciation. Consider also
that we can appreciate a forest that has been devastated by fire or mud-slide. There is
something sublime in such instances of natural destruction. Appreciation of the results of
human devastation, for example an oil spill, may not be so different.
Nor do I think that it is required that we be aesthetically disgusted by whatever disgusts
us ethically.[26] I suspect that those who would require this believe, like Plato, that
aesthetic appreciation of representations of evil will lead to carrying out acts of evil, but it
has never been clear that this is the case. I have heard that sunsets are more beautiful in
smoggy conditions. However, we should not be required to stop appreciating their beauty
because of that. After all, aesthetic appreciation of something does not require a
commitment to its continued existence. I would be willing to sacrifice some measure of
beauty in sunsets so that fewer people would suffer from debilitating lung disease. I
would not be willing to sacrifice my appreciation of the beauty of current smog-related
sunsets simply because someone thinks it immoral for me to do so, as my appreciation is
not hurting anyone. Of course, once I learn that the sunset has been enhanced by smog
conditions, my appreciation of it might changeI might see it as a sad beauty, and so too
with my junkyard if I found it was a major source of pollution. What may be taken as a
sign of uncaring on the part of the person who created the pollution or the roadside trash
is not thereby required to be seen, in a thick way, as an expression of uncaringness.
It might finally be argued that the roadside is a commons and that different aesthetic
standards are applicable to a commons than to private home or public art gallery. The
average citizen, so the argument goes, should not have to put up with whatever the avantgarde aesthete might happen to appreciate. For example, people have been known to
discard plastic bottles filled with urine onto the roadside in Oregon.[27] Most people find
this disgusting, and although a photograph of such a thing may be pleasing to a
contemporary art-lover, depending on how the photograph is taken, this would be no
reason to condone the continued presence of such bottles. The idea of different aesthetic
standards for the commons hearkens back to the debate over Richard Serras Tilted Arc,
in which it was sometimes argued that the public should not be made the victim of avantgarde aesthetic standards that they do not share. The argument had some merit, and in the
end it did not seem unreasonable that the work was removed because it was displeasing
for many who lived and worked in the area. Of course the plastic bottle of urine that I
have seen in a photograph was presumably not placed on the roadside as an aesthetic
statement, avant-garde or otherwise, and no artist claims responsibility for it. So the case
may seem more open and shut than the Richard Serra case.

I will concede that different aesthetic standards might be appropriate for the commons;
something like "majority rules" may be more appropriate than the rule of the Humean
good judge in the commons, at least some of the time. This is tricky since we do not want
to say that the public can never be educated. The majority opposed Maya Lins Vietnam
War Memorial at first but eventually came to embrace it. On the other hand, it doesnt
make much sense to talk of educating people into appreciating plastic bottles filled with
urine. Rules like "no trash on the roadside, especially no plastic bottles filled with urine"
are perfectly acceptable, even to those who might find such things sometimes
aesthetically interesting. Nor is it unreasonable for people to find these objects
displeasing. After all, we have deeply ingrained attitudes against aesthetic display of
human waste, attitudes that although they might be challenged in an art gallery, probably
should not be challenged publicly. On that other hand, I do not think anyone is morally
required to find a photograph of a plastic bottle of urine disgusting, or required not to find
it aesthetically pleasing. This is true even though most of us would find it disgusting that
someone should impose their urine on us in this way. It is also true that even though a
photograph might evoke that disgust, it is still possible for such a photograph to be good
and even beautiful. The same goes for the actual scene photographed, i.e. that it makes a
photographically interesting scene. In fact, I think the photograph I have seen is in fact a
good and interesting photograph largely because of its expressive as well as its formal
properties. It might then be asked what does it mean for me to say the photograph is
good. Unlike Kant, I do not demand or even expect that everyone find it good. What the
phrase means is simply that I would be surprised if people with similar training in the
contemporary visual arts would not be able to see the photograph, or the scene
photographed, as I do.
Where the commons end and the private realm begins is another matter, and it is often
hotly contested. City ordinances often make demands about how one ought to decorate
ones front yard. For instance, there is a rule in my city against parking a car on the lawn.
On the other hand, some people in my neighborhood value the aesthetic appearance of
their cars and would prefer to display them in this half private/half public place. I tend to
support more freedom for self-expression in such cases. I also tend to value graffiti art
(but not mere graffiti tagging) over many manifestations of conventional but boring
"good taste" that dominate our urban and suburban landscapes.
In conclusion, Carlson's distinction between thick and thin concepts fails to resolve
Beardsley's dilemma of aesthetic education. It would only do so if there was only one
possible, quite negative, thick description of aesthetic experience of junkyards, and I have
shown this to be implausible. Beardsley himself believes the dilemma is irresolvable, and
I basically agree. The best we can do is attempt to balance the competing interests of
those who wish to beautify road scenes through eliminating what they consider to be
unsightly, and those who value quite different aesthetic effects. The debate, in the end, is
really quite similar to that between architectural conservatives in San Francisco who wish
to limit building design to pre-modernist styles and those who believe the city can find a
place for modernist architecture. I have not sought to defend all junkyards and roadside
clutter, but simply to clear a space for a form of aesthetic appreciation that is freer, more

imaginative, and more in tune with important discoveries of modernist art than is allowed
by current morality-centered views in aesthetics.
ENDNOTES
[1] Carlson, Allen, "Environmental Aesthetics and the Dilemma of Aesthetic Education,"
The Journal of Aesthetic Education 10 (1976): 69-82. Carlson speaks here of the
movement to clean up the environment, eliminating clutter because it is an eyesore.
Carlson continues to use the distinction between thin and thick concepts central to this
paper in his more recent "On Aesthetically Appreciating Human Environments,"
Philosophy and Geography 4:1 (2001) 9-24.
[2] "Everyday Surface Aesthetic Qualities: 'Neat,' 'Messy,' 'Clean,' 'Dirty'," Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53:3 (1995) 259-268. Reprinted in The Aesthetics of Human
Environments, eds. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (Ontario: Broadview Press, 2007).
[3] www.sunsetscavenger.com/AIR/artists.htm, accessed Aug. 15, 2007. On this site
Sudhu Tewari says that all of his artworks and musical instruments are made from
recycled garbage.
[4] See John Scanlan, On Garbage (London: Reaktion Books, 2005.) especially his
Chapter 3, "Garbage Aesthetics."
[5] Carlson, Allen, "Environmental Aesthetics and the Dilemma of Aesthetic Education,"
72.
[6] Beardsley, Monroe , "The Aesthetic Point of View," (1970) in his The Aesthetic Point
of View (Cornell University Press, 1982).
[7] Ibid., p. 32.
[8] Ibid., p. 34.
[9] Sontag, Susan , "Notes on 'Camp,'" in Against Interpretation (New York: Dell
Publications, 1969).
[10] Perhaps he associates Camp with the extremes of aestheticization because Sontag
spoke of incarnating "aesthetics over morality," Against Interpretation, p. 32.
[11] In the 1950s he would collect discarded commonplace objects on his street in New
York City and attach them to his works, calling the results "combines."
[12] http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_11_93/ai_n15950859 accessed Aug.
23, 2007.

[13] www.artnetgallery.com/Arman.htm accessed Aug. 23, 2007. When he arrived in

New York City, he met Marcel Duchamp with whom he played chess. The Villager,
75:23, Oct. 26 - Nov. 01, 2005, Obituary, "Arman, 76, Tribeca artist whose medium was
garbage."
[14] Jerome Stolnitz defended the aesthetic attitude in his Aesthetics and the Philosophy
of Art Criticism (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), pp. 40-42.
[15] Carlson, Allen, "Environmental Aesthetics and the Dilemma of Aesthetic
Education," The Journal of Aesthetic Education 10 (1976): 75.
[16] Carlson, Allen, "Environmental Aesthetics and the Dilemma of Aesthetic
Education," 81.
[17] Taken from Pete Ashton's Blog at http://peteashton.com/2005/08/wasteland/ written
Aug. 24, 2005, accessed Aug. 15, 2007. By writing Pete Ashton I have since discovered
that Andy Zoop is a pseudonym for a friend of Ashton's named Andy Green.
[18] Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Judgement tr. James Creed Meredith (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1952). Kant does not mention Versailles directly, but he mentions a
palace and in the same paragraph he also mentions Rousseau's criticism of "the vanity of
the great who spend the sweat of the people on such superfluous things." P. 43.
[19] Venturi, Robert, Steven Izenour, and Denise Scott Brown, Learning from Las Vegas:
The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, rev. ed.,
1977; originally published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964).
[20] Yuriko Saito, "Is There a Correct Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature?" Journal of
Aesthetic Education, Vol. 18, No. 4. (Winter, 1984), pp. 35-46.
[21] Ibid., p 42.
[22] Ziff, Paul, "Anything Viewed," in Aesthetics, eds. Susan L. Feagin and Patrick
Maynard (Oxford University Press, 1997) orig. 1984.
[23] The grammatical oddness of Ziff's sentence is intentional on his part.
[24] Ibid., p. 28.
[25] It might be interesting to develop a general theory about such aesthetic phenomena,
although I am suspicious of any theory that would posit some sort of continuum in which
the various items have a fixed place, e.g. junkyards on one side because they contain
useful items, and Auschwitz on the extreme other side because images of it could never
be aesthetically appreciated without moral harm. Such a view would seem simplistic and
would be contrary to the case-by-case approach recommended by Beardsley and myself.
[26] In a very interesting article Marcia Muelder Eaton argues otherwise. "Kantian and

Contextual Beauty," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 57, No. 1. (Winter,
1999), pp. 11-15. Eaton's line is like that of Carlson, her take on Kant being similar to
Carlson's "thin" concept: it is just a matter of pleasure in surface qualities vs. ethical
evaluation of something in terms of its deep ecological meaning. My argument has been
that this is a false dichotomy and that there are other thick concepts under which such
things as purple loose strife (the invasive plant species Eaton's friend forbids her and us
to appreciate) can be appreciated aesthetically. She does think the purple loose strife
could be called "beautiful" but only in a special "Kantian" formalist sense of the term,
one that is rarely used and that ultimately does not matter. One advantage that muchmaligned formalism has is that it is not committed to the idea of "one true contextualist
story" but allows for seeing things in different ways, for re-contextualization. I agree with
Eaton that beliefs and moral values do make a difference in aesthetic perception
sometimes to some people, but I do not think this supports the idea that we ought not to
appreciate purple loose strife.
[27] I owe this example as well as the connection to Tilted Arc to Flo Liebowitz, who
commented on an earlier version of this paper at the Pacific Division meeting of the
American Society for Aesthetics. Flo's husband took the photograph of the bottle with
urine which she showed during the session.
Thomas Leddy
San Jose State University
Tle403@aol.com
Published May 17, 2008
above copied from: http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?
articleID=511

Pictures on the Land: Dutchess County "Farm Again" crop art, Steven
Durland
(This story appeared in High Performance #68, Winter 1994.)
"Green Apple with Worm," an 18-acre crop art work by Barton Orchards. Photograph by
Ward Miller.
Farmers are in trouble in Dutchess County, a rural area about 100 miles north of New
York City. "Dutchess County is rated as one of the dozen most threatened farming areas
in the country," notes Norman Greig, a fruit and dairy farmer from Red Hook. "We've
gone from hundreds of dairy farms to less than 50 in a span of [30] years."

Dismayed by the fact that so many of his neighbors were selling their farms and moving
on, Greig decided that something needed to be done. So in 1993, inspired by an article
he'd clipped out of the NY Times in 1987 about Kansas crop artist Stan Herd (see HP
#40, Winter 1987), Greig approached the local Farm Bureau, Dutchess County Tourism,
the Cooperative Extension Service and the Dutchess County Planning Commission with a
bold plan. He proposed to try to interest as many area farmers as possible in creating their
own crop art pieces. The goal would be to draw attention to farmers' issues, and let
people know that farming is still a viable concern.
The response was gratifying. "There was really no money available," says Greig, "but the
Farm Bureau got behind the program and helped us connect with the farmers. Tourism
produced the brochure and acted as a clearinghouse for press and the public. Cooperative
Extension acted as a technical consultant for the individual projects and Planning helped
coordinate all the groups." Twenty farmers responded to the plan in the Spring and 14
actually got all the way through to completion on their individual crop art projects by Fall
1994. About three-quarters of them created their own designs, the rest worked with
artists.
Some of the works were best viewed from the air. Others could be seen from nearby
roads. Greig himself created a two-acre maze carved into his field (pictured opposite) that
could be walked through on the ground or viewed as a graphic image from the air. Barton
Orchards produced a petroglyphic image of a green apple with a worm in it over 18 acres
(above). Most designs were thematic to the farms that participated. Stony Kill Farm, a
beef and crop farm, did a 1/4-acre "Stony Kill Grazing Cow" while Moody Hill Farm
Market created a 1/4-acre "Floral Field" and the five-acre "Mixed Vegetables." F.W
Battenfeld and Son, a Christmas tree and wholesale florist farm, produced a two-acre
"Battenfeld's Christmas Tree."
The works were on view at various times from June through October, depending on the
growing season of the field. Dutchess County Tourism provided directions and tours to
the various artworks and even arranged for viewings in airplanes, open cockpit bi-planes
and hot-air balloons.
I raised the question of why they chose art rather than more traditional lobbying vehicles.
Greig considered it a natural response. "I think farmers are artists, whether they realize it
or not," he said. "It's a similar commitment and a similar aesthetic and that's what keeps
farmers coming back." And why landscape-scale crop art? Greig pointed out that all you
have to do is look at an aerial view of farmland to see that it's already a work of art, so
crop art just calls attention to the fact.
Once the project had started, Greig contacted Herd to see if he would be willing to act as
a resource. It turned out that Herd was about to begin working on a one-acre piece in
Manhattan. "He was used to working in farm country where neighbors come and help,"
said Greig, "but there was no help in New York City. So I ended up bringing topsoil and
equipment down from my farm 100 miles north and helping him complete the piece." In
return Herd became a valuable consultant for the Dutchess County farmers.

The crop art project actually accomplished more than just calling attention to Dutchess
County farmers, it brought tourists to view the work as well. "Agri-tourism is an
important new concept," said Gina Benjamin of Dutchess County Tourism. She explained
that in addition to the art visitors can enjoy the County's fresh produce stands, pick-yourown farms and award-winning wineries.
Greig also talked about the shift from wholesale farming to retail farming. "In 1985 I was
approximately 90% wholesale, but I knew that if I wanted to stay I had to become retail.
Now we're 80% retail."
One of the primary causes driving this change is the state's property taxes. "Property
taxes are assessed on what's called 'highest and best use'," notes Greig, "and the State of
New York views farmland as just vacant land waiting to someday have a house on it."
This means the taxes farmers pay are exorbitant compared to their income. Greig pointed
to a recent study that compared similar farms in Massachusetts and New York. The
Massachusetts farm paid $1800 annually in property taxes, the New York farm $25,000.
"That's a living for somebody," he noted ruefully.
Was the project a success? "It was daunting at first, but we got a lot of publicity about it,"
said Greig, "and we got the word out that Dutchess County is still a farm county." But he
also noted that it is not a one-year project. "The goal is to create a sustainable agriculture
in the future. Anything we can do to connect farmers to the public is an ongoing project
that will take years. Then we will be able to continue to farm here."
The project seems to have generated its own momentum. The formal unveiling of Crop
Art last fall also launched a comprehensive eight-step economic development initiative
called Farm Again, that aims to strengthen the relationship between Dutchess County
farms and tourism.
Will they do it again next year? "Crop art is like any other crop," said Greig. "When
you've done it once you discover how it happens and you overcome some of the
problems. I think some of the farmers will continue to do these whether or not we
formally continue the program." Benjamin was even more optimistic: "It will just get
bigger and better for next year."
From an art standpoint, one can't help but note the precedents, especially the Minimal and
Conceptual Earth Artists of the late '60s and '70sSmithson, Oppenheim, Holt, Morris
and others, many of whom did at least some of their creating in New York State. But
these farmers don't seem to share the art "self-conciousness" of this recent avant-garde.
Herd is a contemporary influence, but perhaps what they all share is a mytho-poetic
respond to land the process of birth, growth, harvest and hybernation that has
inspired artists and farmers since the beginning of time to celebration and expression.
They are creating art as part of the process of creating sustenance. "There's nothing new
about crop art," notes Greig. "It goes back hundreds and even thousands of years."

Steven Durland is the editor of High Performance magazine.

This story originally appeared in High Performance #68, Winter 1994
above copied from:
http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles/1999/12/pictures_on_the.php

Art, Ecology, and Community

Creative and Green: Art, Ecology, and Community
by Sarah E. Graddy
Chapter 2: Art in Land and Water Remediation
Remediation is the treatment or cleaning of a contaminated site to mitigate or
reverse the damages on the environment and humans, and is generally
considered the domain of scientists. Others look at polluted places as physical
chances for a paradigm shift in how we deal with our environmental mistakes.
The landscape architect Herman Prigann, explaining what he means by
"ecological aesthetics," writes that "Destroyed landscapes are activity fields
available for creative remodeling" (website). He sees in polluted, exploited, and
abandoned sites possibilities for remediation not only scientifically, but also
aesthetically. He continues:
Without an aesthetic and visionary starting point for the reshaping of the
Destroyed areas, there can be no positive identification with the landscape. The
aesthetic reshaping of the landscape is always orientated around the Ecological
relationships. (website)
If one looks at these "Destroyed" places as places of ecological engagement, the
problem changes from how to make these sites ecologically healthy again to how
to make them ecologically healthy again, in a way that is compelling to the public.
If citizens are not involved in remediation efforts, it is unlikely that they will either
be aware of them or help to prevent such exploitation of local resources in the
future. Erzen writes that art can provide "symbolic, metaphoric and aesthetically
conceived forms" that comprise a unique and educational way to involve the
public in issues of ecological damage and reclamation, rather than only providing
a practical solution to ecological problems (24). The best remediative response to
polluted sites, then, involves not only science but also art.[8]
Several individuals and organizations are tackling environmental issues with this
interdisciplinary approach. One is a nonprofit organization in northern Appalachia
that is addressing abandoned coal mines that are leaking toxin-laden water into
the watershed. Another is an artist who works with public spaces to create a

nexus of public involvement and ecological restoration. A third project, in a small

community in the Appalachian Mountains, is also artist-driven, and seeks to
address the nebulous relationship that the community has with the natural
resources it depends on.[9] These projects profoundly affect their communities,
often contributing to not just the restoration of the local environment but also
residents' sense of community and place, and they inspire similar projects in
other communities. In this way -- by restoring the webs of community that
connect us all to each other and the land we inhabit and the water we use -- they
function not only as projects about and including ecological systems, but in a
sense, as key components in ecological systems themselves.
AMD&ART: Vintondale, Pennsylvania
AMD&ART is a nonprofit organization created by artist and historian T. Allan
Comp in 1994 to address the environmental hazard posed by abandoned coal
mines. Appalachian communities long dependent on coal are still suffering from
the departure of coal companies, which left many areas with weak economies,
ravaged ecologies, and abandoned, contaminated mines. AMD stands for Acid
Mine Drainage, or the water that picks up minerals exposed during mining as it
flows through abandoned coal mines and into other water sources. It is acidic,
metals-laden water that inundates "streambeds with orange sediment that kills
the bottom of the food chain, leaving streams dead" (http://www.amdandart.org/ ).
The toxic drainage has been ubiquitous in Appalachian communities for many
years, and many economically depressed former mining communities still live
with its presence. Comp sees AMD as a symbol of "dying communities, lost
biodiversity, lost opportunity" -- a metaphor for a society destroying itself through
the waste of its natural resources (website). Communities in Appalachia are
deeply conflicted about their past, Comp says, and therefore AMD&ART is
characterized by "trying to do something that people could be proud of, and that
[would bring] back a pride in a past that's been kind of denied them" together with
attempting to change the legacy left by pre-regulatory coal mining (interview).
Comp has a background in history and historic preservation; when he began a
job working in a federal heritage area in Western Pennsylvania, he noticed that a
common feature among the economically depressed communities there was that
"all of the creeks were orange," as well as completely devoid of life (interview).
He began to think about the potential impact of addressing the AMD in the area,
and a way to involve the arts -- "not just traditional visual artists, but writers,
designers, sculptors, historians, anthropologists and many other unfortunately
compartmentalized disciplines" (website) -- in solving environmental problems.
He likes to describe the impetus behind AMD&ART as the idea that "science is
necessary, but not sufficient."
Comp says that scientists realized in the late 1980s that AMD problems could be
ameliorated by "passive treatment," which involves the natural filtration and
treatment of polluted waters through wetlands. Looking at all of the different

treatment systems that used this principle, Comp realized that they were
incredibly pragmatic -- he describes this approach as "there are five or six
rectangular ponds stuck on a little piece of land, the water goes in bad, it comes
out good, problem solved" -- but failed to involve the public or inspire other
projects because "nobody even knew they were there"
(interview).
Comp sees this purely scientific solution as a symptom of societal
embarrassment of AMD; AMD&ART deliberately challenges "the belief that
treatment systems should be hidden away, just because we as a society are
ashamed of the mess we have created" (website). The organization instead
promotes the idea that the reclaiming of these spaces and resources is a
positive, community-building opportunity to engage all facets of society, and
"should be a celebration" of the solution instead of a way to hide it -- drawing
attention to, and thus spreading, the technology and the support for addressing
the problem (website).
When Comp started AMD&ART, he asked geologists, artists, and
hydrogeologists he knew to get involved in brainstorming an interdisciplinary way
to clean up AMD sites. He says the project formed very quickly around three
different possible sites for remediation; of these sites, only the "fairly small
discharge" in Vintondale (a town of fewer than 600 people in Southwestern
Pennsylvania) ended up being a feasible project for AMD&ART (interview).[10]
The site in Vintondale was chosen for the project because "it had several distinct
advantages," Comp says. The Ghost Town Trail, which, at that time (in the mid1990s) attracted about 60,000-70,000 recreational users per year (this number is
now more like 80,000, according to Comp), runs immediately adjacent to
Vintondale. In addition, the site, which is surrounded by the town, was
unoccupied, owned by the borough (the municipal unit in Pennsylvania), and
fairly flat. Comp says he "basically just walked into the borough council meeting
and said, 'Would you be willing to let us see what we can do?'" and promised, if
they agreed, to find funding elsewhere, to keep council members informed about
the progress of the project, and to never promise more than what he knew he
could deliver. While the council readily agreed to his proposal, Comp points out
that before the first big public meeting about the project, locals in the bar next
door just laughed at him for trying to change anything -- especially with art. The
attitude in the community when he began, Comp says, was one of cynicism and
low expectations, a common feature of Appalachian coal country.
From the beginning, Comp says, he realized that the organization would be more
a model for similar projects than a single entity attempting to solve the problems
of many places: "Nobody had ever done anything like [AMD&ART] before at all
that we could find," he says, so a model could conceivably have an enormous
impact. The organization's motto, "Artfully Transforming Environmental Liabilities
Into Community Assets," provides a clear philosophical basis upon which other

projects could be based. Comp sees AMD&ART as composed of three parts: The
design team (a hydrogeologist, a landscape designer, a sculptor, and a historian)
the AmeriCorps staff (one or two a year, and frequently including a landscape
architect, a historian, or an environmental studies major), and the community.
The project that the organization has been working on for years is the AMD&ART
art park in Vintondale. The park is a 35- acre space along the Ghost Town Trail. It
includes a series of large ponds ("My hydrogeologist would prefer to call them
treatment cells," Comp says) that "take a discharge from a pH of 2.8 and high in
iron and aluminum, to a pH of 6.5 or 7, with almost no metal" (interview); on the
pH scale, 7 is neutral, and anything below is acidic.
The cleansed water then flows into seven acres of wetlands that attract birds and
other wildlife and which the highway department has purchased, enabling
AMD&ART to create a trust fund to maintain the system for fifty years. Next to
these water features, AMD&ART has created a native tree arboretum, which the
organization calls its "Litmus Garden."
The center of the park is a recreation area for Vintondale residents. Based on the
community's needs, this area includes baseball and soccer fields, a volleyball
court, picnic tables, and open grassy areas. "Part of public design," Comp says,
"is [that] you have to give form to community aspiration." If the community doesn't
have a stake in the remediation project, it will not succeed in the long run.
Vintondale needed a park for recreational activities, and Comp was determined
to make that park a part of the AMD cleanup effort.
Because Comp plans to hand the reins of AMD&ART over to Vintondale to run -leaving only the funding for one AmeriCorps position, but removing himself and
the rest of his staff -- it is imperative that the community be invested in the
organization's survival. Vintondale residents are very proud of the park, Comp
points out, and call it "our park." "We built it with the community and now the
community is ready to step in," Comp says, adding that the nonprofit organization
AMD&ART is going to become "Vintondale AMD&ART Park, managed by locals."
Comp says that Vintondale residents are, in general, more aware of
environmental issues as a result of AMD&ART, and that there is a measurable
connection between the completion of a large project like the art park in
Vintondale and a community's confidence in its ability to achieve other projects,
let alone attempt them.[11] He points to a photograph of men helping build picnic
tables for the park as an example: these men were some of the hecklers in the
bar three years earlier. He adds that in order to change attitudes, one has to be
persistent and consistent -- in AMD&ART's case, someone from the organization
attended every monthly borough council meeting, whether or not he/she had
anything to share about the project.
Fig. 4. The creation of AMD&ART treatment ponds. AMD&ART

Finding funding has always been difficult for AMD&ART, Comp says, in large part
because the organization addresses problems in Appalachian coal country,
where funds are scarce for environmental projects. To diminish this predicament,
Comp decided to hire AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps*VISTA volunteers (the U.S.
government subsidizes these positions). Comp, who directs AMD&ART, does not
receive a salary for his work (which he has always done in addition to a regular
full-time job). "If this was really a better idea," Comp says he thought when he
founded the organization, "then we don't need to go to traditional sources of
funding for Acid Mine Drainage treatment first."
These sources were already funding AMD treatment, and Comp saw no need to
compete with the scientists who received those monies. AMD&ART initially
received a few thousand dollars from the local government program for the
Pennsylvania Council for the Arts; the Heinz Endowment funded a planning
workshop for local agencies and Comp and his colleagues. At some point in the
mid-nineties, Comp recalls, there was a fiscal crisis, and he wrote a letter to the
AMD&ART's board and some of his friends that said that the project might have
to go on hiatus indefinitely. Within a few months, Comp found out that the EPA's
Sustainable Development Program had awarded his organization a grant, and
that it was much larger than what he had applied for the previous summer:
$250,000 over three years. After that gift, which constituted "a huge gamble" by
the EPA, according to Comp, it became much easier for AMD&ART -- which has
no development staff -- to raise money from other government agencies and
foundations.
Comp says the idea of involving artists and others from the humanities as well as
scientists in projects has begun to garner positive attention in the past few years,
and that this may be "the most significant consequence" of the work AMD&ART
has done, "because it is being picked up on by others far from coal country as
something they need to consider as well." These others, Comp says, include the
U.S. Forest Service, people working on abandoned mine lands in the Rocky
Mountains, and a little watershed, Crowley Creek, in Oregon.[12]
A current project in the middle of the University of Virginia's Wise campus in
southwestern Virginia was inspired by AMD&ART (Comp is the co-manager and
co-designer); another project that uses AMD&ART as a model for innovative
approaches and partnerships is one at Upper Clark Fork in Montana. Comp
thinks of AMD&ART as not simply a project or a nonprofit but "a catalogue of
ideas," and encourages others to access it in order to create similar -- not
necessarily identical -- projects to heal land and communities. Significantly,
through his work with AMD&ART, Comp now works for the U.S. Department of
Interior's Office of Surface Mining to work with communities all over Appalachia to
clean up watersheds polluted by coal mining. Another measure of AMD&ART's
success, Comp says, is that the American Society for Mining and Reclamation
has asked him to appear as a plenary speaker for two years. Thus while the
nonprofit organization AMD&ART will soon cease to exist in its current form, the

idea that spawned AMD&ART continues to spread to communities throughout the

United States. The AMD&ART website will then become a permanent archive of
the project for anyone to access and use.
Passive treatment employs "native plants and native limestone to neutralize the
acid, drop out the metals, and release both clean water and new hope" (website).
Comp avers that his approach to AMD remediation differs profoundly from the
traditional one:
It's very easy to design a treatment system where all you need to do is fix the
water. But if you're going to try to get the 70,000 people riding by on their bicycles
to stop and look at it long enough to figure out what it is . . . and realize that
maybe getting one of those in their town would be a good idea, too, it's got to be
a lot more than just scientifically effective, which is why from the very beginning,
this project has always been a collaborative, multi-disciplinary effort between the
sciences and the arts. (interview)
Rather than seeing waste treatment as a purely scientific function, Comp writes
that it can be a part of our culture, too: "gardens, native plant arboretums and
places of learning" (website).
The arts open up "avenues for participation that people would not otherwise
seek," Comp says, and in this way complement the unintentionally exclusionary,
jargon-heavy sciences. The only way to engage members of the public in
environmental issues, he continues, is not only to teach them the scientific
principles at work in a particular situation, but also to inspire them to care, and
this is where the arts and the humanities come in. The arts without scientists,
Comp says, just make for "bad science and goofy art"; on the other hand,
collaboration spawns both good science and good art, as well as broad public
engagement.
Remediation is not the domain of environmentalists, but entire communities. In
Comp's view, we all have a stake in our communities, which include the physical
places where we reside, and the "natural" features found there (land, water,
organisms). When we invest in them, we gain not only what we can get directly
from these features (food, drinking water, a place to have a picnic), but also in
what we get from each other: a sense of belonging, a sense of investment in the
future, an understanding of who we are and where we come from, and places in
which we can come together in productive and positive ways.
By helping communities to become empowered, AMD&ART enables them to
view themselves in a new way, to look toward the future instead of the past, and
to take charge of the ecological health of their own resources. Local citizens
become active advocates instead of passive victims, and in turn aid others in
their searches for community health -- which AMD&ART wants to help us see
that we are all responsible for.

Patricia Johanson: Three Projects

Patricia Johanson is an artist who creates large-scale, permanent projects that
incorporate and celebrate ecological systems. She sees her work as a way to
frame ecologies so that humans will be drawn into natural systems and become
more aware of the organisms that live there and the forces that influence their
worlds. Johanson started her career as a painter and sculptor, but gradually
became interested in making sculptures that were sited in nature.
Speaking of her first foray into this kind of sculpture, Johanson says that she
quickly "became far more interested in the patterns of nature on the work of art
[than in the artwork itself] . . . you couldn't just look at the work of art anymore -you saw how nature was impinging and encroaching on the art" (interview). This
sculpture marked a change in the focus of all of Johanson's work: she remarks
that she thereafter began making work concerned exclusively with nature.
Johanson lives in New York State; she has a master's degree in Art History and a
bachelor's degree in architecture. She cites as her inspirations Monet and
nineteenth-century artists who explored the western U.S. and who acted as
naturalists, recording the flora and fauna of the unfamiliar places they came
across, as well as the celebrated landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead.
Johanson's first major ecological public art commission [13] was Fair Park
Lagoon, located in a city park next to the Dallas Museum of Natural History and
the Dallas Museum of Art (which has since moved). Begun in 1981 and
completed in 1986, the project is a testament to the creative, holistic, and
unconventional perspective that an artist can bring to environmental problems. A
few years after seeing an exhibit of Johanson's drawings of hypothetical, plantbased projects in a gallery in New York City, Harry Parker, who was then director
of the Dallas Museum of Art, invited Johanson to come up with a plan to restore
the lagoon.[14]
Covered in a harmful algae bloom, polluted, and missing key species like aquatic
insects and snails, the lagoon ("basically a flood basin," says Johanson) was
murky, had a deteriorating shoreline, and lacked a food chain. The body of water
was also a hazard to the community that might have enjoyed it -- it created a fiveblock-long obstacle for people walking through the park. Worse, several children
had drowned in it -- two on the morning Johanson came to look at the site at
Parker's invitation.
At the time, Johanson writes, "there was neither funding [for] nor community
interest" in the project (Art and Survival 14); however, the sesquicentennial of
Texas' independence from Mexico was approaching, and Johanson says that
Parker saw potential for a lagoon project to be touted as a sesquicentennial
project for Dallas, thus practically ensuring funding. According to Johanson,
Parker told her, "Do any kind of project you want. This is Dallas -- if they like it,
they'll build it." Johanson was given "absolute freedom," she says, to come up

with ideas for improving the body of water -- the museum imposed no budgetary
or other restrictions on her.
She gave a presentation with drawings and models of her ideas for the lagoon to
a group of invited guests at the art museum -- "basically, what [my initial
proposal] said was 'I want to use art to bring people into contact with nature and
clean up the water,'" she summarizes. Afterward, she was approached by the
grants administrator of a local foundation that eventually put up the bulk of the
money required for the project. In fact, the project was so popular with the
community that organizations offered funding even after it was no longer needed,
especially once construction began.
For Fair Park Lagoon, Johanson conducted research on what native animals eat
and what local plants would be appropriate to create a proposal that would
restore a healthy balance to the lagoon; she asked staff at the Dallas Museum of
Natural History to help her create "outdoor educational exhibits" (interview). In
addition to proposing the re-introduction of many species of plant and animal,
Johanson suggested that the museum remove a non-native species of duck then
populating the lagoon, stop.37 fertilizing the grass around the shoreline, and
encourage locals to fish for the overabundant sunfish. Johanson writes of the
beginning of the project:
I began to develop my own list of concerns, which included creating a functioning
ecosystem for a wide variety of plants and animals. I also wanted to control bank
erosion, and create paths so that people could cut across the lagoon. I began to
do research on what different animals eat, because I knew that the right plants
would attract wildlife. The project evolved from many different perspectives at
once. I knew that the structures had to not only solve a host of environmental
problems, but also had to be acceptable to scientists, engineers and city
planners. (Art and Survival 15)
Johanson carefully took all of these perspectives into account in the planning of
her artwork, which besides reconstructing the life cycle of the lagoon, involved
the creation of "elaborate entangled walkable paths with bridges and arches" that
meandered through the lagoon (Spaid 67). Johanson decided to use two native
Texas plants as models for the sculptures in the lagoon.
These sculptures, made of terracotta-colored gunite, serve as pathways for
visitors and resting places for animals. She designed the Delta Duck Potatobased sculpture's "roots," many of them five-foot-wide paths, to prevent water
from eroding the shoreline; the spaces between them "became microhabitats for
plants, fish, turtles, and birds" (Art and Survival 15). Thinner roots rise out of the
water, inaccessible to humans, and provide perches for birds, while leaves in the
middle of the lagoon serve as islands for turtles and other animals. The second
sculpture, across the lagoon, is based on a Texas fern, Pteris multifada:
The fern functions as a bridge -- not a direct pathway over the water, but a
network of crossovers, islands and stopping-points. Individual leaflets are twisted

to create the kinds of spaces I wanted, and the tip of the fern is a causeway
surrounded by water lilies and irises.(16)
Johanson wanted people who visit the lagoon to be initially attracted by the
sculptures -- she calls her work "big and brassy" -- and then drawn into the life
that thrives around it (interview). "Fair Park Lagoon is really a swamp -- a raw,
functioning ecology that people are normally afraid of," Johanson writes. "The art
project affords people access to this environment, so they find out how wonderful
a swamp really is . . . they're discovering a marvelous new world" (16).
Johanson uses art as a way to frame nature, so that people who aren't interested
in or cognizant of nature suddenly notice it. She sees this project and the others
she has done as inviting the public into relationships with the organisms in a
particular ecosystem, which then translates into a general appreciation for the
natural world. "There are always people who will do damage," she says, "but I
think far less [so] if people get some kind of basic understanding of nature and
love for it. And that kind of education naturally takes place in my projects, I
believe."
Johanson's methodology for creating large-scale environmental works was
perfected during her work on Fair Park Lagoon:
I always come up with designs in the exact same way: I look at the site, and I
decide what I want to accomplish on the site, in terms of how people are going to
move through it [and] what they're going to see . . . I want a living site -- I want
plants and animals living in natural communities. I look at [my work] as
developing a food chain. (interview)
Johanson says that she uses sculpture as a way to move people through the
space to give them access to the plants and animals living there. She designs
spaces that do not need to be maintained, for two reasons: "Half the time it's not
done anyway," she notes, but she also likes her artworks to evolve over time,
because they have lives of their own (interview). "The traditional art object is
based on the idea of perfection," Johanson writes, but her works grow and
change (Art and Survival 10). There may be a point, she says, where her projects
begin to disintegrate; at that time, she thinks it is acceptable to intervene, if a
community is interested in keeping a particular project, but not before.
Johanson's next major project, Endangered Garden, also resulted from an exhibit
of her drawings; this time both the exhibit and the commission were in San
Francisco. The circumstances surrounding this project were very different from
Fair Park Lagoon, however: the City of San Francisco needed a new transportstorage sewer that would go around Candlestick Cove, but the Public Works
Department couldn't come up with a design that the public would approve. The
latter had initially proposed "a two-story-high hunk of concrete that blocked the
view of San Francisco Bay," Johanson recounts (interview).

Furthermore, the city was about to be sued by the EPA for dumping raw sewage
in the bay, so it was in a hurry. Jill Manton, Director of the Public Art Program of
the San Francisco Arts Commission, who remembered the exhibit of Johanson's
work from a few years before, asked her to get involved. Within a month,
Johanson had become co-designer of the facility and produced plans that San
Franciscans loved.[15] "I knew right away: bury the sewer, make the roof a bay
walk, make it available to the public, so they're getting something for their
money," she recalls, adding:
Part of my strategy is always giving back to the public. If the community is happy,
the project will be a success. If the community isn't happy, the project won't be a
success . . . What happened was, I got huge community buy-in- people started
writing letters to the city, saying what a beautiful project this was and how much
they wanted [it]. (interview)
Because the public supported her idea so enthusiastically, the city Public Works
Department, which was not interested in building her project, had to back down -and was told by the City Attorney that it had to accept Johanson's proposal. She
says that she has always promoted art as an important component in
infrastructure projects, and muses that over the years, some of her work might
have changed the minds of those who disagreed. In 1987, however, when she
designed the project (it was completed three mayors later, in 1996), it was a fairly
novel idea to include an artist in the designing of a sewer.[16]
Johanson's design incorporates a huge San Francisco Garter Snake that serves
as the unifying element of the park, which is sited on a landfill. Parts of the
snake's winding body intersect with the half-mile long bay walk, creating stopping
points and the opportunity to appreciate the life found along the trail. The snake's
head emerges in a twenty-foot-high earthmound and the neck in another, and
some of the snake's scales were designed as huge sculptures.
The sculptures accommodate not only human but also animal traffic. "Cavities,
crevices and nesting shelves for bird habitat are incorporated into the structures .
. . [and] petroglyph depressions in the Baywalk paving fill with rainwater and
become birdbaths" (24). The snake's head mound was seeded with plants that
sustain endangered butterflies; the head and neck mounds are sited on a
meadow. Both humans and endangered butterflies utilize the windbreak provided
by the mounds. Johanson writes that her intention "was to provide cover for small
mammals like the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse and larval food plants
for endangered and rare butterflies" ("Beyond Choreography" 93).
Like Fair Park Lagoon, Endangered Garden is designed to attract visitors with its
sculptural components, but ultimately creates a relationship between the people
who visit and the organisms that make the space their home: "Body movement
and gardens of unplanned experience turn spectators into participants, ensuring
both a creative response and consideration of forces that affect the landscape
and their lives," Johanson asserts (98). Her work, in this way, shows that
interactions between "nature" and humanity are never passive -- when people

are drawn into observation and appreciation of an ecosystem, they become

conscientious advocates of its preservation. In Johanson's creations, there is no
opportunity to be passive. All those who enter the spaces she creates are
implicated in their continued existence and the survival of the organisms that
occupy them.
Before Endangered Garden, there was no public access to Candlestick Cove.
Now San Franciscans and tourists walk, jog, and bike the pathways on top of the
sewer to get access to the intertidal zone, and they use the spaces between to
have picnics and fly kites. Most members of the public do not realize that
underneath the trails, butterfly meadow, and sculpture, there is a functioning
sewer, Johanson says; the city made sure the project had a low profile during its
construction to avoid controversy over an artist being co-designer of the project
(even though it was built using percent-for-art funds). But Johanson seems to be
comfortable with the invisibility of the sewage system: "The idea was simply to
take something that was going to be built anyway, and translate it into a public
landscape that that people could use and enjoy," she writes (Art and Survival 6).
If the city was going to construct the sewer, she figured, it should incorporate art
and nature in a way that was meaningful to the people who live in that
community.
Even though the community might not remember or be aware of the role the
artist had in creating the park, she has still made a difference in their interactions
with the environment. Johanson originally saw the project as "a great chance to
make people aware of the issue of endangered species," and she seems to have
been successful (23).
Johanson says she frequently gets letters about the impact of her work -- people
write, among other things, that they became an artist or ecologist because they
grew up spending time around her projects. The impact of her work is also more
immediate: Endangered Garden is maintained by the San Francisco Youth
Conservation Corps (at-risk youth who pick up trash and weed plant beds on the
weekend), and when Johanson went to visit the site a few years ago, Corps
members applauded her. They told her that they loved the project, and that "it's
the best thing in their lives" (interview).
So Endangered Garden not only "fills in ecological gaps with food and habitat,
actually making it possible for species that have been wiped out to come back"
(Art and Survival 24), but also has opened up a world for humans, allowing them
to appreciate native animals and plants up close, while enjoying public space -all on the roof of a sewer co-designed by an artist in a major U.S. city.
Johanson is currently working on the Ellis Creek Water Recycling Facility and
Petaluma Wetlands Park, in Petaluma, California. This project, which at the time
of this writing is going out to bid (Johanson expects it to cost about $130 million),
involves "between four- and six-hundred acres, at least," she says, which will

process sewage for the city. The land already features Petaluma River, Ellis
Creek, and a brackish marsh, as well as agricultural fields, which provide food for
local mammals and migrating wildlife.
Raw sewage will enter the site through a headworks (the initial intake system)
and then flow through "densely vegetated treatment wetlands," Johanson says,
which will trap sediments and "remove algae, nutrients and heavy metals"
(Johanson, "Fecund Landscapes" 28), thus purifying the sewage. After the water
flows through the filtering plants in the treatment wetlands, it will enter the
polishing wetlands, which are different kinds of ponds that "have zones of plants
alternating with open water zones, which are deeper," and include plants and
fish, Johanson says. "Microscopic aquatic animals and insects that live on plants"
will consume suspended solids in the water and make up the basis of the food
chain (28).
In addition, aquatic plants will pump oxygen from the water, "thus supplying
microbial decomposers" and providing "food, shelter and nesting materials to" the
animals living there (28). Islands will direct the flow of water, circulating it
between the ponds. The islands will be covered in trees and shrubs, grass, or
oyster shells to provide refuge and nesting habitat for different species of birds
and other animals. After the water cycles through the treatment and polishing
wetlands, it will flow back up to the recycled water pond as drinkable water.
There will also be stormwater wetlands that take runoff from the nearby highway
and parking lot and purify it before it too enters the marsh and river. The facility
will produce twenty-five tons of fertilizer from human waste, which would normally
go to a landfill. Besides removing highway and parking lot run-off now polluting
the water in the area, the Petaluma project will restore formerly degraded
habitats. It will also provide habitat for endangered and threatened species, such
as the California Red-Legged and Yellow-Legged Frogs and the Salt Marsh
Harvest Mouse, among many others. Johanson has designed many different
land and water habitats to accommodate as many native species as possible.
Besides being essentially (in actuality if not name) a wildlife refuge, Johanson
points out that the project incorporates "many levels of community involvement"
(interview). The entire facility is designed to be a public facility, with about three
and half miles of trails winding through the different ecosystems, allowing for
recreation and environmental education. Johanson says that a local high school
is creating a plant nursery to breed native plants for the project, and another local
group, the Petaluma Wetlands Alliance, is planning to give docent tours. Local
schools, grades K-12, will use the space as an environmental learning laboratory.
Johanson started out with the California Dogface Butterfly as her working
metaphor for the project, but this morphed into images of morning glories and the
Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse when the city moved the headworks and
administrative facilities to the wetlands park site. For Johanson, the image that

describes the project is not important in itself -- instead she sees it as a way for
visitors "to grasp these very, very large projects" (interview).
"As you walk around [my projects], you have to experience them not just visually,
but also with your feet [and] with your other senses . . . and you have to form a
mental image or map of what's going on here," she says. By incorporating a
familiar image, this sewage treatment facility, like Johanson's other projects, will
engage visitors to be active participants in the ecosystems. Those who come for
recreation are likely to be drawn into the different spaces, either by the habitats
themselves or by the images of the mouse or morning glories, and will learn
about the organisms that live there, as well as what is necessary to purify human
waste. Johanson is showing that art, infrastructure, public space, and science
can peacefully co-exist, to the benefit of all. Jale Erzen summarizes the important
role works like this have in the public realm:
Aesthetic qualities which affect our emotions, which make us feel the pleasure of
perceiving beauty, would also make us understand the fragility and the
gentleness of this beauty, when we perceive it as being alive. As intelligent and
intentional agents we then become responsible about the protection of these
qualities.(23)
When we encounter spaces like those that Johanson designs, we almost cannot
help but be drawn into responsibility for their survival. Johanson's works reach
many, many people every day, and one can only hope that they, too,
consequently become environmental stewards and activists.
Beneath Land and Water: Elkhorn City, Kentucky
Beneath Land and Water is an ongoing, artist-initiated project in Elkhorn City,
Kentucky, a town of fewer than 1,000 people in the eastern Kentucky Mountains.
In Spring 2000, Suzanne Lacy, a Los Angeles-based activist/artist with a
background in performance and installation work focusing on issues of social
justice, was invited to participate in a workshop called "Artists in Community
Gathering," which was sponsored by Appalshop, a Kentucky arts and education
center, and the American Festival Project, which is housed in Appalshop.
The event matched teams of artists with small communities in the region in an
effort to "facilitate the deeper integration of arts into the lives" of these places by
creating a structure for community engagement
(http://greenarts.net/art/ky/home/home.html ). From this encounter, Lacy began
to work with the Elkhorn City Heritage Council to design a project that would
meet the community's needs, and she asked two other artists, Susan Leibovitz
Steinman and Yutaka Kobayashi, to be involved as well. Steinman, who lives in
Oakland, works closely with communities to create ecologically-centered work,
and Kobayashi, who is from Japan, makes ecological, site-specific sculpture and
other work.
The government of Elkhorn City was looking for a way to economically revitalize

the community, which is located in a region devastated by the coal and naturalgas mining industries. It quickly became clear to Lacy, Steinman, and Kobayashi
that residents of the town had an interest in improving Elkhorn City based on its
abundant resources, notably Russell River, the woods, and the mountains.
Putting it another way, Lacy's website describes the project as focusing "on
townspeople's personal experience of their land -- as a site of heritage and as a
generator of regional wealth -- and their river -- as an indicator of ecological
health and as a moving force that connects them, upstream and down, with the
rest of the country"
(http://www.suzannelacy.com/2000selkhorn_overview.htm). Lacy, Steinman, and
Kobayashi wanted to crystallize this experience in public art projects that would
reflect it back to residents.
After many community meetings, the project began to take shape; although still
evolving, it consists of several facets. One component is a waterfront park that
serves as a buffer zone between a bank parking lot and the riverfront. Runoff
from streets and parking lots, including pesticides used in residents' yards and
other toxins, runs downhill into the river. The park, about 500 feet wide, was
designed with plants and gravel to filter some of the runoff before it enters the
river.
Project participants planted native plants to serve as habitat and food for
butterflies and birds; built benches for visitors, which incorporate text generated
by residents with stories about the river; and created signage that highlights
features of the park and the river. The park is meant, Steinman says, to focus
attention on the river, but also to serve as a model for simple ways to remediate
some of the town's resources, to help enable its residents to see them differently.
Lacy, Steinman, and Kobayashi also created the Blue Line Trail, which links to a
hiking and biking trail that locals created to attract ecotourists and recreational
users. The Blue Line Trail is, as its name suggests, a sky-blue line painted
throughout the town. It is designed to unify the components of Beneath Land and
Water, as well as to support a sense of regional identity. Elkhorn City residents
hope to eventually connect the Blue Line Trail to the state's Pine Mountain Trail,
which would attract hikers to the area and the town, and would provide, Steinman
says, an "overt connection of Elkhorn City to regional and national resources."
The artists also painted several town features the same shade of blue.
Lacy and Steinman say that residents wanted a mural, so the artists brought tiles
to local schools for children to paint and held several Saturday tile-painting
events in the middle of town. These tiles eventually became part of a large
ceramic mural, placed on the side of a large building visible from the Blue Line
Trail. The artists designed the mural so that people using the trail would see it
and be drawn to find out more about the area, thus becoming invested in
preserving its natural assets.

Lacy and Steinman used the making of the mural as an educational opportunity
for the community by bringing photos of native plants and animals and talking
with residents about native and invasive species and how local ecosystems work.
Tile painters depicted the river and the town's relationship to it, as well as local
history.
Lacy, Steinman, and Kobayashi have been joined in their efforts by college
students from Lacy's classes at the California College of the Arts and Otis
College of Art and Design, who for three years have used their week-long spring
breaks to come to Elkhorn City to contribute to the project and gain practical field
experience. The first batch of students, in 2001, helped make the park and taught
tile-painting workshops for high school students and senior citizens. Steinman
says these students gave local students, many of whom looked forward to getting
out of Elkhorn City as soon as possible, a new perspective on what is valuable
about their community.
Lacy, Steinman, and Kobayashi have struggled to keep Beneath Land and Water
afloat from the beginning. Although it started with a grant from Appalshop, that
organization almost folded after September 11, 2001, and the artists had to look
elsewhere for money (Elkhorn City and its Heritage Council have limited
budgets). They have not been paid for any of their work -- although they make a
point of paying residents who help -- and use their own frequent flyer miles to
travel to Elkhorn City, in addition to often paying out of their own pockets for
materials needed for the project. The artists did secure a grant from the Creative
Capitol Foundation in 2002, which helped to fund parts of the project.
Steinman sees Beneath Land and Water as a "pragmatic education project"
(interview). It would be impossible, she says, "to clean the entire river," but by
finding out what the people who live in Elkhorn City have and want and figuring
out a way in which art can contribute, an artist can create a project that can
inspire locals to "become caretakers of the river." So while the remediation scope
of the project is relatively small -- mostly because of budget constraints -- Lacy
and Steinman hope that it will spawn or inspire other ecologically-minded
projects in Elkhorn City and other communities.
To a certain extent, Beneath Land and Water, like AMD&ART, is about a
community cultivating a sense of itself in a period of hardship. With the coal
companies' departure and the accompanying environmental devastation and
economic stagnation, as well as an aging population, many in Elkhorn City find it
difficult to invest in the future. But both Lacy and Steinman emphasize the fact
that they and Kobayashi have worked closely with residents and community
groups to generate project ideas, all of which build on already-present local
efforts and interests (interviews). The artists contributed ecological and aesthetic
knowledge and experience as well as a creative outlook that enabled them to
approach old problems in new ways.

Steinman says that working in a community as an outsider requires sensitivity

and openness; Lacy says that a community is very sensitive to how an artist
perceives it. Ultimately, Steinman says, "art is about problem-solving." Similarly,
Lacy says that art creates an atmosphere where people's perspectives can shift,
enabling them to begin to see their communities in new ways. She adds that art
is important to ecological activism and education because it "is an incredibly
unifying element." Beneath Land and Water, then, does not change the ecology
of Elkhorn City, but creates a way for residents to see themselves -- and thus
their relationship to the ecology of the place where they live -- differently.
Steinman, like Patricia Johanson, sees art as a visual hook. She says that she
uses art "as a public service announcement for what ecology is [and] how it is
everywhere around you; [that] art is an integrated part of life and we are an
integrated part of nature." Beneath Land and Water is an important step toward
spreading this perspective.
Conclusion(s)
American society can benefit from including art, artists, and artistic practices in
city infrastructure projects, education, community development and placemaking,
and environmental cleanup; ecology is an important concern in all of these. For
organizations and individuals working in communities to raise public awareness
of ecological issues and change behavior, art can be a useful tool. Because art is
inherently visual, it attracts attention and can involve members of the public in
ecological issues of which they might not be aware or about which they might not
care otherwise.
Artistic practices used in unexpected places and ways can frame ecological
systems, drawing individuals in and causing them to notice and care about
specific elements of those ecologies. Art projects and education can be used to
bring different kinds of people together to talk about ecological issues and to
inspire public action on these issues. Artistic practices can make ecological
issues accessible and interesting in a way that science cannot. Art projects and
projects using artistic strategies can serve as a means by which a community
can consider and examine its identity. Most of all, art is often a problem-solving
practice, and it can provide new perspectives on current concerns such as
pollution, waste management, recycling, resource management, sustainable
development, and endangered species.
All of the subjects of the case studies in this document bring these issues,
usually marginalized at the fringes of public awareness -- because of collective
shame, compartmentalized professional practices, neglect, or ignorance -- into
the very core of our society; and art is a key component of this shift in
perspective. The success of these projects, organizations, and programs
depends on the participation of the public and the public's willingness to change
its actions.

These case studies show that partnerships with policy makers, local
governments, nonprofits, scientists, schools, and businesses are also of
paramount importance. They all look at familiar things -- pollution, trash, public
space -- in new ways that seem to contradict the conventional wisdom in those
fields. By employing a creative perspective and sharing that with the public, they
also empower others to see them, enabling radical change and helping to ensure
a better future. Art is clearly an important component of an environmentally
healthy society, and it is time that we as a society recognize that it should be a
central component of any holistic perspective and progressive action. We must
change our relationship to the environment before it disappears, and art is a
necessary tool in this process.
--------------------------------------------------Works Cited
Websites
AMD&ART. http://www.amdandart.org/
Art From Scrap. Community Environmental Council.
http://www.communityenvironmentalcouncil.org/artfromscrap/.
Kobayashi, Yutaka. Homepage. http://greenarts.net/
Lacy, Suzanne. Homepage. www.suzannelacy.com/
"Municipal Solid Waste." United States Environmental Protection Agency.
http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/facts.htm
Prigann, Herman. Homepage. http://www.terranova.ws
SF Recycling & Disposal Artist-in-Residence Program. Norcal Waste Systems,
Inc. http:// www.sunsetscavenger.com/artist_in_residence.htm
3 Rivers 2nd Nature. Carnegie Mellon University College of Fine Arts.
http://3r2n.cfa.cmu.edu/
Interviews
Collins, Tim. Phone interview. 13 February 2005.
Comp, T. Allan. Phone interview. 24 February 2005.
Fresina, Paul. Phone interview. 9 February 2005.
Johanson, Patricia. Phone interview. 13 February 2005.
Lacy, Suzanne. Personal interview. 23 February 2005.
Leonard, Mark. Phone interview. 11 February 2005.
Sanchez, Cay. Phone interview. 11 February 2005.
Steinman, Susan Leibovitz. Phone interview. 2 March 2005.

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Cieri, Marie, and Claire Peeps, eds. Activists Speak Out: Reflections on the
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Footnotes
8 An early effort of this kind was Revival Field, in which the artist Mel Chin,
working with the scientist Dr. Rufus Chaney, successfully addressed the pollution
in a St. Paul, Minnesota brownfield with plants that can absorb and process large
quantities of heavy metals. This project has already been discussed in detail by
numerous authors, including Cieri and Peeps, Finkelpearl, Lippard, Miles, and
Spaid.
9 3 Rivers 2 nd Nature (3R2N) is an interdisciplinary project too complex to
address adequately in this limited format. Initiated by the artists Reiko Goto and
Tim Collins, working through the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon
University, 3R2N is an outgrowth of the artists' earlier project Nine Mile Run, and
"addresses the meaning, form and function of the three rivers and fifty-three
streams of Allegheny County in Western Pennsylvania"
(http://3r2n.cfa.cmu.edu/ ). This project deserves a longer examination than what
I can give it here, but provides an exciting glimpse of the possibilities in this field.
3R2N and Nine Mile Run are also featured in Spaid and in Strelow.
10AMD&ART began remediation at another site, Dark Shade Creek in Central
City, Pennsylvania, but that was taken over by the EPA soon after.
11 Comp bases this claim on the 2002 SUNY College of Environmental Science
and Forestry dissertation of Susan Thering, Documenting the Community
Capacity Building Benefits of Participatory Community Design and Planning and
Developing Indicators of Community Capacity, for which the AMD&ART project in
Vintondale was used as a case study.
12 AMD&ART is not the only organization promoting this idea: Seen&Unseen, a
project in England managed by the nonprofit Helix Arts, also seeks to help
communities address water pollution using both scientists and artists
(http://www.seen-unseen.com/ ). Keepers of the Waters is a nonprofit
organization that provides an online network created "to inspire and promote
projects that combine art, science and community involvement to restore,

preserve and remediate water sources" (http://www.keepersofthewaters.org/ ).

13 Johanson has made numerous large-scale artworks that incorporate
sculptural and ecological components in the U.S. and in Africa, South America,
and Asia. This is not meant to be an exhaustive study of her work, but a brief
examination of three U.S.-sited artworks that are designed for the public use and
to restore damaged ecosystems.
14 The lagoon is also called Leonhardt Lagoon after Dorothea Leonhardt, in
whose name a foundation made a large gift to the project.
15 Johanson cites numerous public meetings where both members of the public
and park rangers vocalized their support for her plans.
16 It was still a controversial idea-again, mostly with the other members of the
design team-a few years later in Phoenix, when two artists were made a part of
the team designing the Twenty-Seventh Avenue Solid Waste Management
Facility and Recycling Center, discussed in Chapter 1.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to everyone I interviewed, universally gracious and generous: Tim
Collins, T. Allan Comp, Paul Fresina, Patricia Johanson, Suzanne Lacy, Mark
Leonard, Cay Sanchez, and Susan Leibovitz Steinman.
A big thank you to Public Art Studies faculty, students, and alumni who offered
endless helpful (and life-saving!) tips on reading, writing, and thinking, as well as
lots of much-needed support-especially Anne Bray, Dawn Finley, Jeannie
Olander, Kendra Stanifer, Sarah Welch, Holly Willis, and Heidi Zeller.
Thanks to Kenny Berger and Jenn "Goiter" League for great editorial input; to
Jud Fine-and to Holly Willis and Anne Bray-for serving on my committee; and to
my family and friends for support and love.
Finally, thanks to KCRW-Jason Bentley of "Metropolis" and Raul Campos of
"Nocturna," above all-for the rad tunes that so often fueled my writing.
A Thesis Presented to the FACULTY OF THE SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF PUBLIC ART STUDIES May 2005
Copyright 2005 Sarah E. Graddy (sgraddy@gmail.com)
-----------------------------------------------------Creative and Green: Art, Ecology, and Community:
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BACK TO: Chapter 1: Art in Waste Management and Recycling Education
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2007 greenmuseum.org
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Creative and Green: Art, Ecology, and Community

Chapter 1: Art in Waste Management and Recycling Education

by Sarah E. Graddy
This is part of the Toolbox for Communities
This thesis takes a takes a thorough look at several innovative projects in the
United States which combine art and ecology in a community context. Creative
thinkers, working with organizations or on their own, have created unique
programs and artworks that show the potential art has to creatively transform
problems into opportunities.
--------------------------------------------Writing about the way the invention of the flushing toilet has transformed modern
society, Madhu Suri Prakash and Hedy Richardson assert that "instead of a
communal responsibility that belongs to a peoples' commons, human waste is
now transformed into a state matter," outside of the realm of individual
responsibility (67). Prakash and Richardson see the toilet as a metaphor for
modern society in general: with one swift movement, a person's unpleasant
waste is transported far away from her house and community. We deal with all of
our waste this way, and our disposal practices cost a great deal of money, land,
and energy, and endanger our environment. According to the website of the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in 2001, "U.S. residents, businesses,
and institutions produced more than 229 million tons of MSW [Municipal Solid
Waste], which is approximately 4.4 pounds of waste per person per day, up from
2.7 pounds per person per day in 1960" (Source).
At this rate, our entire country could soon become a landfill. Companies have
capitalized on Americans' increasing consumption, making products with the
feature of "planned obsolescence," or a limited lifespan that encourages users to
throw them away and thus purchase new products. As Charlene Cerny points
out, "The net result of this capitalistic principle, widely accepted by industry and
consumers alike, means that so-called durable goods, purposely designed to be
cheap to buy -- but difficult or too expensive to repair once broken -- quickly wind
up in the landfill, along with all the disposable packaging that leads an even
shorter useful life" (37). Even worse, we have been programmed to see our world
as disposable, so that even items that can be easily and cheaply repaired
become a burden to own, sell, or give away. When we don't want or need things

anymore, no matter how useful they are, we simply put them in our trash can or
dumpster, or drop them off at the landfill.
We cannot change the way companies manufacture goods overnight, but we can
alter our behavior to be more ecologically friendly, saving our resources for
another day and preventing places from becoming merely hosts for our trash. Art
can creatively call attention to our wasteful, harmful, and unsustainable disposal
practices by bringing trash into the public's everyday life, and not allowing it
simply to disappear into landfills, out of sight and consciousness. Those who see
this potential for art and encourage its practice use similar tactics in different
arenas to raise the public's awareness and change individuals' behavior. Reuse
stores are a fairly widespread phenomenon in this country; these organizations
take donations of landfill-bound leftovers from local businesses, diverting the
trash to show community members how to give these items new life. One such
nonprofit reuse organization is profiled here. Another solution is to involve
citizens in the waste disposal practices of the cities where they live. Two such
creative and pioneering efforts are profiled here: one is that of a large city that
created a waste management and recycling facility encouraging public
observation and participation. The other is an artist-in-residence program at a
private waste management company contracted to collect and dispose of the
solid waste of another large city. All of these efforts require flexibility,
transparency, and the willingness to combine two things that don't immediately
come to mind together: trash and art. They also all rely heavily on educating
children as a long-term strategy to changing our views and practices of
consumption.
SF Recycling & Disposal Artist-in-Residence Program: San Francisco,
California
SF Recycling & Disposal, Inc. is a private company that has incorporated art into
a pioneering waste-based program designed to raise public awareness of
ecological issues. The company started its innovative artist residency program in
San Francisco in 1990 after a local artist, Jo Hanson, approached the company
with the idea. At the time, SF Recycling & Disposal was expanding its recycling
education programs in conjunction with its new curbside recycling program, and
felt an artist residency would fit in with these efforts.[2] Through the company's
Artist-in-Residence Program, local artists use trash to create art. Currently (the
program has changed since its inception) residencies are for a period of three
months, and artists may choose to work part-time or full-time and receive a
stipend based on the amount of hours they work. The company offers funding for
the equivalent of one full-time artist per residency period, so two artists who want
to work part-time sometimes receive residencies simultaneously. Only Bay Area
artists may apply for residencies in September; the artists for the following year
are then selected by an advisory panel made up of approximately ten art
professionals, environmentalists, and educators.

SF Recycling & Disposal provides its artists-in-residence with a 1,200-squarefoot studio (available 24 hours a day) and access to the materials in its dump.
The studio is located at the company's transfer station, which also includes
"several recycling facilities and the Public Disposal Area (also known as 'the
dump')"
(http://www.sunsetscavenger.com/artist_in_residence.htm).[3] At the end of an
artist's residency, SF Recycling & Disposal hosts a public reception to exhibit the
artist's work.[4] The company also provides "miscellaneous supplies and
equipment," including welding and woodworking tools and a glass kiln. In return,
artists-in-residence are expected to work in the studio 40 hours per week (for a
full-time residency) or 20 hours per week (for a half-time residency); greet and
talk to tour groups during weekday mornings and one Saturday per month; make
a few pieces of art for the company's permanent art collection; use materials
found in the city's waste stream; talk to the media; and leave all art created
during the residency with SF Recycling & Disposal for one year after the end of
the residency (website).
The goal of this innovative program is "to use art to inspire people to recycle
more and conserve natural resources" (website). The artist-in-residence's role in
the company is to raise awareness about what happens to the things San
Francisco residents discard. When student and adult groups tour the transfer
station, the artist-in-residence speaks to them about "the experience of turning
trash into treasures" (website). Art from the program is exhibited in office building
entryways and public spaces in San Francisco, and in the sculpture garden next
to the transfer station.
According to the Artist-in-Residence Program's director, Paul Fresina, the
program is unique to San Francisco (interview).[5] He says he has been
contacted by other companies and cities interested in starting similar programs,
but has never heard of any actually getting off the ground. Fresina points out that
the program was created before the company had a risk manager, and that if it
were suggested today, the program would probably not pass muster with the risk
manager and the company's lawyers. An artist roaming around a dump on his or
her own does seem a steep obstacle to overcome; Fresina says artists-inresidence sign a waiver, but adds that if anything were to happen to an artist, the
program would likely be immediately shut down. So while the Artist-inResidenceProgram has gotten national press, it isn't likely to inspire others like it.
If a company or city were to start a program emulating that of SF Recycling &
Disposal, Fresina cautions against attempting to duplicate it exactly. "San
Francisco is so far ahead in terms of . . . environmental consciousness," he
points out.
We are way ahead of the rest of the country in terms of recycling percentages. For years,
before everyone even started having curbside recycling programs, San Francisco had a 25
percent recycling rate . . . people just took their bottles and cans to the recycling center.

He also points to the local tradition of "dumpster diving," or rescuing useful items from
the trash, as symbolic of the cultural sensibility that makes residents more open to the
program. "So many unique things converged to start our program," Fresina states. "With a
private company, you're more flexible to do innovative things." In addition, San
Francisco has an active and diverse arts community. So when people call him to ask
about starting programs like his company's, Fresina advises them to start small -- he says
it isn't the quality of the studio or even the stipend that draws interested artists; it's the
right to scavenge that people are most excited about. For nine months (three residency
periods) last year the company withdrew funding for the Artist-in-Residence Program
during layoffs, but Fresina says that the program still received 40 applications from
interested artists willing to work for free. (The largest number of applications the
program has received at one time was 75 in 2002.) This level of interest, he suggests,
indicates that people are open to looking at trash as a resource.
Indeed, the reason why art can be so important as a component of environmental
education, Fresina avers, is that it is so visual -- it automatically attracts attention, and can
thereby reach many people. "The trick is to make people look at the garbage," Fresina
says; he sees the art made by artists-in-residence as a way to lure the public into
becoming more thoughtful about waste. The artist-in-residence studio used to be located
right next to a landfill, but the company recently built a new studio on the other side of its
44-acre property. The end-of-the-residency exhibitions are held in the studio, so some of
the impact of the program may have been lost with the studio's move, Fresina
acknowledges. Visitors to the exhibitions no longer have to walk past a huge mound of
stinky garbage to get to the exhibits; the art has been removed from the context that made
it meaningful.
On the other hand, the program has an evolving tradition where at his/her show, each
artist creates a give-away pile of trash he/she saved during his/her residency but didn't
use, and members of the public who attend the exhibitions are encouraged to take these
items home. Fresina admits that the give-away pile probably diverts more waste from the
landfill than the artists' works do, but isn't bothered by this phenomenon. Ultimately, the
Artist-in-Residence Program is meant to raise awareness about trash, and to encourage a
sense in the public of "ownership" of its waste. Clearly, the program is reaching many
residents: About 2,000 people (approximately three-quarters of whom were
schoolchildren on field trips) took tours of the company's facilities, including the art
studio in 2004, according to Fresina. And a two-day exhibition in January 2005 attracted
about 850 people, up from 50-75 in 2000. Furthermore, more artists apply for residencies
every year (except 2004). The significance of the program is not quantifiable, Fresina
says. "We are raising awareness of the preciousness of resources and the need to conserve
them." Although it might not be possible to clone this program, its example can provide
inspiration for those determined to do something similar in their own communities. Other
communities can take note of and imitate the way this Artist-in-Residence Program
evolved organically out of its own community, drawing on a local sensibility to spread
ecological awareness.
Twenty-Seventh Avenue Solid Waste Management Facility and Recycling Center:

Phoenix, Arizona
The first large American city government to incorporate both major artist and public
involvement in its waste management practices is that of Phoenix, Arizona.[6] In the
early 1990s, the design for the city's new Twenty-Seventh Avenue Solid Waste
Management Facility and Recycling Center (hereafter referred to as the 27 th Avenue
Center) was created in large part by two artists, Michael Singer and Linnea Glatt. The
artists were selected through Phoenix's Percent for Art Program to contribute art to the
$18-million-dollar facility. They also submitted ideas for altering the engineers' scheme
that the city's administration liked and decided to use; the artists and the engineers
collaborated on the resulting building, which was completed in late 1993.
The facility was built not only using green techniques and materials, but also with the
public very much in mind: Finkelpearl writes that the artists intended to "bring the visitor
into direct contact with the recycling operation, hoping to transform the public's attitudes
toward waste and waste management" (197). The artists treated the building as a work of
art in itself, not simply a functional transfer station; the engineers who created the
original facility design did not think it needed to be beautiful or engaging as architecture
(198). Singer and Glatt's design incorporates huge central trusses that rise up out of the
building, making it visible for miles. Large windows showcase beautiful vistas, and
skylights and translucent panels add even more light. By opening up the space, and
making it inviting and easy to use for both the city's Sanitation Department and the
general public, Singer and Glatt encouraged public involvement in the waste management
process. About 5,000 children on school field trips tour the facility every year, and
approximately 1,500 citizens drop off waste there every weekend (Leonard, interview). In
addition, the city has made the facility, and art made from items found in the waste
stream, a stop on its annual art tour.
This visibility within the community is what the artists wanted; Glatt told Tom
Finkelpearl in an interview that "the first thing that we wanted to change in the site plan
was the 'out of sight, out of mind' attitude that says you do not put garbage in the view of
the visitor" (201). This way the facility becomes an integral part of the community's life
and encourages the public to deal with the implications of its waste. The artists'
perspective was important to the design of the building because they looked at the
specific site and considered how it would actually be used, rather than following the
prevailing practices of the industry. Singer relates his and Glatt's approach to Finkelpearl:
Every element of our design contributes to the idea of transformation, reclamation,
educating the public towards issues of waste, the need to recycle, the relationship of the
building to the landscape around it . . . [I]t was a great opportunity to provide vistas so
people could see the city (where the garbage comes from) and its effect, if it is not
recycled, on the natural environment, which is also in clear view. (204)
Because of Singer and Glatt's creative and innovative approach to integrating many
different components -- community, functionality, environmentally friendly practices,
education -- the 27th Avenue Center represents the future of municipal waste
management. This project shows the benefits of using an artistic approach to something
that ostensibly has little or nothing to do with art. City of Phoenix Public Works Director

Mark Leonard feels that including artists on design teams is imperative for waste
management projects:
A lot of us in the industry look at things in a certain way . . . [but] artists come in, and
they look at it differently. They look at ways that you can design a facility differently, or
accomplish environmental or ecological education from a point of view that is broader
and has many more components to it than, in my oopinion, any of us professionals would
ever achieve. They look at a way that it could be done that could attract [the public] more,
be of more interest to people, that will be . . . more beneficial to the operation, and we're
living proof of that. (interview)
Art is a way for Phoenix to engage the public in the facility directly. The
appearance of the facility (addressing some of the concerns of neighborhood
residents), its design (more user-friendly), and public involvement in events there
(the art tour, student group tours) all make the 27th Avenue Center a meaningful
part of the public realm. The City of Phoenix took a huge risk when it allowed the
artists input in the actual plans for the facility. Rather than relegating their role to
that traditionally allotted to public artists -- that of decorating a site without
affecting its functionality and use -- the city administration looked at their ideas as
equally legitimate, useful, and powerful as those of the engineering firm originally
hired to design the facility.
The transfer station and recycling center serves as an example for other
communities throughout the U.S. and even abroad. According to Singer and
Glatt, the city has received so many calls from other cities interested in creating
similar facilities that is has set up a consulting service (216). Leonard says the
city gives several tours a month to waste management professionals, elected
officials, and tourists interested in finding out how they can instigate similar
projects in their communities, and that he is "confident that we have had an
impact on the design" of other cities' waste management and recycling facilities.
Phoenix is also using its own facility as a model: the city is now building a new
recycling center and transfer station north of the city based on many of the ideas
first put into practice on 27th Avenue. An artist is part of the design team for the
new facility, and once again educational programming will be an integral part of
the design. Leonard says that the new facility will feature an elevated walkway
with windows on either side. Tour groups will be able to walk through the building
and see the dual functions taking place: recycling processing on one side, and
solid waste processing on the other. The city plans to continue pursuing the mix
of public education, art, and function in all of its waste management practices.
The 27th Avenue Center should serve as a model not only for other waste
management and recycling centers, but also for what a community can be. As
Glatt told Finkelpearl:
The most obvious [difference between our design and the engineers' design] is
that it just turns around the whole notion of what these places have always been
in a community...the only way that you are going to turn things around [is] to be

aware of the abuses and try to point the way in a new and responsible direction.
(206)
A creative approach enabled the 27th Avenue Center to help change the way
Phoenix residents think about waste and its disposal. Clearly the center has
created a new standard for what is possible in the process of serving both a
community and the environment on which it sustains itself.
Art From Scrap: Santa Barbara, California
Like the artist-in-residence program in San Francisco, Art From Scrap (AFS) is a
program that utilizes trash to make art. AFS, however, was begun in 1990 by
Santa Barbara parents who wanted to help find materials for local teachers to
use in their classes. The concept behind AFS, as its website proclaims, "is
incredibly simple and yet surprisingly unique: take materials that would normally
be thrown away, and provide them as art supplies to school children and the
public" to encourage recycling and waste reduction (http://www.
%20communityenvironmentalcouncil.org/artfromscrap/[7]
Like SF Recycling and Disposal's Artist-in-Residence Program, the founding of
AFS coincided with the passing of AB 939, so the parents (all volunteers) were
able to approach local businesses for donated materials with a pitch for helping
to reduce waste going to landfills, as well as helping schools and "getting the
thought of reuse into people's minds," says Cay Sanchez, Program Director
(interview). After a few years, the founders formed a nonprofit, and within about
two years, a local nonprofit organization, the Community Environmental Council,
absorbed AFS into its programming.
AFS encompasses a materials reuse store, environmental education, and an arts
program, which together reach 20,000 people annually, about half of whom are
students. The store accepts donations from local businesses and individuals of
items as diverse as eyeglass lenses and frames, ceramic tiles, circuit boards,
fabric, and envelopes. Members of the public can buy these materials, saved
from entering the landfill, cheaply in bulk or individually. The store also offers
teachers discounts on materials (those in the bulk section are free) when their
schools join the AFS School Materials Program (cost is $1 per student).
When school groups come to AFS, they receive a 75-minute lecture, during
which "environmental educators talk about Santa Barbara's landfill, where trash
goes, and how to create less trash through reducing, reusing, recycling and
composting;" specifically, "students learn to identify recyclable materials, observe
red worms transforming food scraps to a rich soil, discuss shopping choices that
conserve resources, learn about renewable and non-renewable natural
resources, and explore how their individual actions can help the environment"
(website). After the lecture, students participate in a workshop where they create
artwork from the materials reuse store.

These education programs are funded in part by Santa Barbara County (besides
mandating waste reduction, AB 939 also required cities and counties to provide
education about "reduce, reuse, and recycle," the mantra of the solid waste
industry). Every summer AFS holds an exhibition and auction. "About fifty local
artists, both professional and non-professional participate" each year, Sanchez
says. Artists donate their work to a silent auction; money raised goes to AFS's
programs.
AFS creates a powerful nexus in its community: local businesses donate
materials (reducing what they send to landfills and their expenses, allowing for
tax deductions, and providing a sense of satisfaction that they are contributing to
a good cause); artists, parents, teachers, kids, and other members of the public
go to the store; school and summer camp groups participate in the educational
workshops; and volunteers donate labor (usually students fulfilling community
service requirements for high school or a Teen Court program, but also
sometimes developmentally disabled adults). Adults are increasingly participating
in Saturday workshops that are funded by the local arts commission and led by
local artists. AFS has also cultivated many partnerships within the city:
Contemporary Arts Forum, a local nonprofit art gallery, sometimes sponsors
artists to give workshops at AFS. AFS donates gift baskets and workshop
coupons to school fundraisers every year, Sanchez says, and according to the
AFS website, the organization also donates materials to groups that work with atrisk youth.
AFS continues to grow organically around its mission: it has recently built a
gallery space and plans to hold six shows featuring local artists in 2005. "We just,
over the years, keep adding components that make sense," Sanchez declares.
She notes that when the program started, it would have been impossible to do
many of the things AFS does now. Because there is a solid foundation in terms of
partners, audience, and programming, it is possible -- even easy -- to continue to
expand around its original mission.
Sanchez says that she gets many calls from people who want to start their own
art-centric materials reuse stores, but never learns if they actually do. She directs
those making inquiries to a booklet put out by the Local Government Commission
in Sacramento in 1996 called California's Material Exchange Facilities, which
explains what these organizations are, and "how to get started, how to get
materials, how to store stuff, how to exchange stuff, personnel, marketing, all
kinds of things" (interview). Sanchez says she warns these callers not to assume
that an organization like AFS can survive on revenues from the store alone; AFS
earns only about one-quarter or one-fifth of its total budget from store sales. (The
organization earns revenue from grants, free events that it is paid to appear at,
contracts with the city and county, schools that pay for teachers' access to
materials, and program fees for hosting birthday parties and art workshops, in
addition to store sales.) AFS thus serves as an attainable model, spreading

organizational knowledge and experience, and making it easier for people in

other communities to begin similar efforts. Tourists often visit AFS, and Sanchez
hopes that they also take what they learn back to their communities with them.
She sometimes gets calls from people and businesses in other cities that want to
donate materials to AFS, but says she wants other communities to deal with their
own waste instead of sending it away.
When asked about the effects that AFS has on individuals once they leave the
organization's facilities, Sanchez answers that she thinks that AFS influences
members of the public to pursue more sustainable practices. "I also think that
people who have a natural tendency that way are re-inspired or re-supported or
feel like they have a place to practice what they feel like they should be
practicing," she adds. In addition, Sanchez feels strongly that AFS changes
behavior through the children it reaches -- these children not only gain
environmental awareness at a young age, but also influence their parents to alter
their consumption and waste practices. "We're definitely getting people to look at
what they're doing," she avers. This includes not only changing the public's
perception of what is useful and what is waste, but also affecting how people
shop, what resources they use, what they recycle, and what happens to it next,
Sanchez says. Besides the long-term results of educating members of the public
about waste practices, Sanchez says the organization reduces waste. She points
out that even if all of the art made at AFS ends up being thrown away, if the
organization didn't exist, children would make art using store-bought materials,
adding more bulk to landfills. AFS estimates that it diverts 30,000 pounds of trash
from the waste stream every year (website).
Ultimately, Sanchez summarizes the significance of AFS as a program that
encourages long-term changes in the ways in which participants think: "For me
it's more about creativity, what [participants] are doing. They're not necessarily
here to create a product" or become great artists. She sees the fact that AFS
cultivates and encourages creativity as important not only for art-making, but also
problem-solving. Individuals who are naturally inclined or trained to think
creatively tend to be more flexible, open-minded, and able to see more sides of
an issue, Sanchez says, and these are valuable qualities for solving
environmental (and other) problems. Art should be part of every aspect of our
lives, Sanchez says. In this way, AFS is helping to show the public that trash can
be art -- but it also shows those who utilize the organization that other problems
can also be solved in creative and progressive ways. It is a fairly simple idea, but
a powerful and effective one. Hopefully materials reuse stores will continue to
spread throughout the U.S., and as these organizations gain more visibility and
participants, the collective consumption and waste practices of Americans will
begin to stem the tide of still-useful objects that go to landfills, and will create a
new generation of conscious, creative, and environmentally proactive citizens.
Footnotes

1 A common association of ecology and art is what is commonly called land art,
earthworks, or environmental art. This work, created mostly in the 1960s and '70s
by such artists as Robert Morris and Robert Smithson, tends to be large-scale,
static sculpture; artists such as Christo and Andy Goldsworthy also make what is
sometimes termed environmental art. Readers might note that other artists, such
as Helen and Newton Harrison, Krzyzstof Wodiczko, Mierle Laderman Ukeles,
Buster Simpson, Stephen Sonfist, Jo Hanson, and Dominique Mazeaud, make or
have made works that touch upon many of the same themes that I explore in my
thesis. This thesis does not include these works for one or more of the following
reasons: they tend not to engage with the ecology (the trophic, or solar energybased life cycles) of a place but instead typically highlight some aspect of the
environment, usually largely aesthetic; are traditionally completely dependent on
one person's particular vision; do not, in general, encourage or inspire widespread ecological awareness and activism; and are often temporary, or exist only
hypothetically. Although several artists are included in this document, their work
is examined for its larger social and ecological implications, not for its aesthetic
qualities. This document does not look at art as a product to be evaluated, but
instead as a process intrinsic to the human perspective, and ultimately one that
belongs in all aspects of our lives. Some readers might take issue with what I
have chosen to include and exclude; here I would like to point out that I offer this
document not as a complete survey, but instead a preliminary exploration of what
is possible in ecology and community when art is involved, and what we can
hope for -- and work toward -- in the future.
2 SF Recycling & Disposal's strong push toward recycling was likely due in large
part to the passing of AB 939, also known as The California Integrated Waste
Management Act of 1989, which mandated that cities and counties convert at
least 50% of their waste stream from landfills to recycling efforts by the year
2000.
3 Websites will initially be referenced in full; thereafter, they will be referenced
only as "website" unless it is unclear which website I mean.
4 The work of artists-in-residence varies widely -- as can be expected because of
their differing interests and artistic practices -- but can include items like furniture,
clothing, flags, vessels, cardboard, games, books, trophies, kitchenware,
household appliances, and toys. I have not included any photos of specific artists'
work precisely because it is all so different; the Artist-in-Residence website has
photos of all of participating artists' work.
5 Throughout this document, when I write "according to so-and-so" or "so-and-so
says," I will reference the interview conducted the first time I mention that person.
Thereafter, the reference should be clearly inferred from the context; this will
avoid repetitive, distracting parenthetical references. When it isn't clear from the
context that I am quoting the interview, I have added a reference.

6 A successful recycling educational facility outside the U.S. is The Center for
Creative Recycling (Il Centro di Riciclaggio Creativo), known as REMIDA, in
Reggio Emilia, Italy. REMIDA , which has extensive public programming,
combines many of the components of the Phoenix 27 th Avenue Center with
those of both the SF Recycling & Disposal Artist-in- Residence Program and Art
in Scrap (and other materials reuse facilities), discussed later in this thesis.
7 Material reuse centers focusing on the arts exist in many cities, especially on
the West Coast: MECCA (Materials Exchange Center for Community Arts) in
Eugene, Oregon, East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse in Berkeley, California,
SCRAP (Scroungers Center for Reusable Art Parts) in San Francisco, California,
and SCRAP (School and Community Reuse Action Project) in Portland, Oregon,
et al. MECCA's website (http://www.materials-exchange.org/) features links to
these and others.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Creative and Green: Art, Ecology, and Community:
YOU ARE HERE:Chapter 1: Art in Waste Management and Recycling Education
AFTER THAT: Chapter 2: Art in Land and Water Remediation
Copied from: http://greenmuseum.org/generic_content.php?ct_id=238 2007
greenmuseum.org

Creative and Green: Art, Ecology, and Community

by Sarah E. Graddy
Introduction
This is part of the Toolbox for Communities
This thesis takes a takes a thorough look at several innovative projects in the
United States which combine art and ecology in a community context. Creative
thinkers, working with organizations or on their own, have created unique
programs and artworks that show the potential art has to creatively transform
problems into opportunities.
Table of Contents:
Abstract
Introduction
Chapter 1: Art in Waste Management and Recycling Education
Chapter 2: Art in Land and Water Remediation

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Abstract
This thesis explores the role of art in encouraging ecological awareness and
activism in members of the public. Art is examined as a problem-solving process
that can facilitate a positive shift in the relationship Americans have with ecology;
six different case studies (organizations, programs, and long-term projects) are
used to illuminate ways in which this change can take place.
Chapter 1: Art in Waste Management and Recycling Education, analyzes SF
Recycling & Disposal's Artist-in-Residence Program in San Francisco; the
Twenty-Seventh Avenue Solid Waste Management Facility and Recycling Center
in Phoenix; and Art From Scrap, a materials reuse center in Santa Barbara.
Chapter 2: Art in Land and Water Remediation, analyzes AMD&ART, a nonprofit
organization in Vintondale, Pennsylvania; three artworks by Patricia Johanson;
and Beneath Land and Water, a public art project in Elkhorn City, Kentucky.
Introduction
In the catalogue Ecovention: Current Art to Transform Ecologies that
accompanied an exhibit by the same name at Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts
Center in 2002, Sue Spaid writes that "the term ecovention (ecology + invention)
describes an artist-initiated project that employs an inventive strategy to
physically transform a local ecology" (1). But simply transforming a local ecology
is not enough -- we must work to transform our relationship to ecology. We are
accustomed to thinking of (and idealizing or demonizing) nature as separate from
us, but we are a part of it. In the United States, and in many other industrialized
countries, we live in a society where most of us do not grow our own food, we
don't make most of what we wear or use as furniture, and we drop our trash into
bins without thinking about where it goes.
Ecology is the science of systems-how natural systems work, how living
organisms interact with their environment, how organisms interact in relationship
to other organisms. Every organism on the planet is a part of an ecological
system, and humans are no exception. We just don't pay attention to how we fit
into the larger scheme of things. Sometimes we notice -- perhaps when a ship
full of trash is turned away from a port because the people who live there no
longer want to accept the burden of other communities' refuse, or in other
extreme situations. But mostly, we are content to live without thinking about the
real impact of our daily actions. Most of us understand that we are in danger of
using up all of our natural resources -- forests, clean air, freshwater, fossil fuels -but find it difficult to know what to do about it.
In this era of widespread budget shortages, environmental policy regressions,
ever-expanding bureaucracy, and special interest influence, it is unlikely that the

U.S. government will soon begin to aggressively encourage, promote, or sponsor

ecologically forward strategies for new development, building renovations, public
space, and waste disposal. Our government is already a disappointment in
conservation -- cars are not required to be fuel-efficient due to automobile
manufacturers' lobbies; the United States remains the only industrialized nation
(besides Australia) to refuse to sign the Kyoto Protocol, which will limit worldwide
greenhouse gas emissions; and U.S. national forests are quickly being sold off to
paper companies. The planet's climate is changing rapidly and disastrously, and
numerous animal and plant species disappear every day.
"It has fallen to local people to protect local places," Lucy Lippard writes (The
Lure of the Local 170). Ultimately, the burden of addressing enormous ecological
problems has been ceded to our local communities. While local efforts can be
limited -- it takes billions of dollars to restructure a car-centric city around public
transportation, for example -- they can make inroads to changing citizens'
perceptions about the use of space and resources in their communities. As their
perceptions change, these residents will begin to incorporate more sustainable
practices into their daily lives. We need creative solutions to these problems that
implicate us all, solutions that change the way we see the world so that we can
understand the impact we have on it.
Art-making has always been a community endeavor -- and it still is, in many
societies. Ellen Dissayanake, exploring the "ethology" (the evolution and
development of behavior) of art-making, gives context for her work:
The majority of preindustrial societies do not generally have an independent
concept of (or word for) art -- even though people in these societies do engage in
making and enjoying one or more of the arts and have words that refer to
carving, decorating, being playful, singing, imitating. (What is Art For? 35)
That is because what we call "art" is a part of most, if not all, aspects of people's
lives all over the world; it is not considered a separate behavior or occupation,
whereas, as Amy Lipton and Patricia Watts write, "Western culture has inherited
a belief system which places art and the artist in a position of uniqueness,
separate from the rest of society" (90). Intricate ceremonies, songs, and
decorated objects are closely associated with homemaking, eating, hunting,
harvesting, birthing, and marriage. Dissayanake avers that art-making, a uniquely
human behavior, comes from the need to "make special," where the everyday is
made important, or "what may be called such things as magic or beauty or
spiritual power or significance" (92). "Making special" is a way of ascribing
meaning and order to the world. Because, from this viewpoint, art is a
fundamental and universal human behavior -- like speech and play -- it follows
that involving the public in the "making special" of the materials involved in
everyday behaviors can be a way to bring unfamiliar concepts to the community.
In other words, if it is up to communities to alter their own environmentally
destructive habits, art can be a way to help make these changes, by enabling

people to see all everyday acts as worthy of special consideration. Lippard puts it
another way:
Art itself, as a dematerialized spark, an act of recognition, can be a catalyst in all
areas of life once it breaks away from the cultural refinement of the market realm.
Redefinition of art and artist can help heal a society that is alienated from its life
forces. ("Looking Around" 126)
Recognizing art as a useful and necessary behavior is a way for us to
understand humanity's relationship to the rest of the world, and to attempt to
restore our role in the cycles that envelop us, unrecognized, all the time.
Certain progressive institutions and individuals have begun this process of
incorporating art into their approaches to ecological preservation and restoration.
By utilizing art as a problem-solving perspective and process, these nonprofit
organizations, city governments, or private companies are helping to instigate an
enormous shift in public consciousness about and interaction with the ecological
systems of which we are a part. The programs, organizations, and projects
discussed here are disparate in their scopes, agendas, sizes, and even sectors
but can all be looked to as models for creating a powerful nexus of art, ecology,
and community that can change the world -- one acre, institution, family, or city at
a time.
The following are the criteria for the subjects of this paper's case studies: 1) If an
organization, its primary focus is on creating ecologically-minded activities or
space for the general public in which art is an important component (or it has a
specific program for this purpose, in which case the program, and not the
organization, is examined); 2) If a project, it must be long-term (defined here as
several years in duration or longer), and once begun, does not rely on the
specific intelligence, input, or creativity of any single individual; 3) Whether an
organization, program, or project, it must be designed with the intention of
involving the general public in ecological awareness and/or activism in an effort
to influence behavior.[1]
We cannot continue living the way we do now indefinitely: drastic change is
needed. Art is an effective and powerful way to bring ecological education and
awareness to the public. As Heike Strelow asserts, "It is essential for artists and
other culturally creative individuals to be drawn into social discussions and
design processes if there is to be a theoretical and practical change in the search
for a viable future" (13). If creative members of society can participate
meaningfully in realms with which art seems to have little to do, we can change
our destructive practices and begin to see resources in a new way.
Footnotes
1 A common association of ecology and art is what is commonly called land art,
earthworks, or environmental art. This work, created mostly in the 1960s and '70s

by such artists as Robert Morris and Robert Smithson, tends to be large-scale,

static sculpture; artists such as Christo and Andy Goldsworthy also make what is
sometimes termed environmental art. Readers might note that other artists, such
as Helen and Newton Harrison, Krzyzstof Wodiczko, Mierle Laderman Ukeles,
Buster Simpson, Stephen Sonfist, Jo Hanson, and Dominique Mazeaud, make or
have made works that touch upon many of the same themes that I explore in my
thesis.
This thesis does not include these works for one or more of the following
reasons: they tend not to engage with the ecology (the trophic, or solar energybased life cycles) of a place but instead typically highlight some aspect of the
environment, usually largely aesthetic; are traditionally completely dependent on
one person's particular vision; do not, in general, encourage or inspire widespread ecological awareness and activism; and are often temporary, or exist only
hypothetically. Although several artists are included in this document, their work
is examined for its larger social and ecological implications, not for its aesthetic
qualities.
This document does not look at art as a product to be evaluated, but instead as a
process intrinsic to the human perspective, and ultimately one that belongs in all
aspects of our lives. Some readers might take issue with what I have chosen to
include and exclude; here I would like to point out that I offer this document not
as a complete survey, but instead a preliminary exploration of what is possible in
ecology and community when art is involved, and what we can hope for -- and
work toward -- in the future.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Creative and Green: Art, Ecology, and Community:
YOU ARE HERE: INTRODUCTION
NEXT: Chapter 1: Art in Waste Management and Recycling Education
AFTER THAT: Chapter 2: Art in Land and Water Remediation
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2007 greenmuseum.org

HAND IN HAND
Collaborative Environmental Art and Community-building
By Alix W. Hopkins
The relationship between landscape and art, as defined through artistic
interpretation or collaborative environmental art, is an emerging and significant
aspect of community collaboration. Environmental art which can explore and
strengthen the relationship between people, art and landscape, is emerging as
an effective community-strengthening tool. Art creates a framework for
interpreting this connection, using the cultural or environmental history of a

particular piece of land as the catalyst. By building broad public support for a
project and the landscape on which it sits, art can also play an important role in
promoting the benefits of community living.
Collaborative environmental art helps build a sense of community through
collective envisioning. Subsequently, people create tangible, if sometimes
ephemeral, images through which they can relate their love of land and place. In
turn, this process sparks them to act positively in any number of ways. Ultimately,
art can inspire greater environmental awareness, leading to increasing levels of
advocacy and encouraging a new ethic of stewardship for the land and for the
community living on it.
Even further, as participants develop deeper connections with fellow residents
who are kindred spirits, they consistently achieve results far beyond their original
intentions. They also realize skills and attributes they never knew they
possessed. And often they go on to other significant efforts, becoming civic
leaders in the process.
Art can represent a holistic way of bringing community into projects through
collaborative visioning, funding, siting and maintaining the installations. It calls for
artists and communities to work together to implement a creative idea. Art offers
itself as cultural memory to help remind people of their place in the community.
Anyone, of any age or educational background, can express through art why he
or she cares about a special place. This applies to people in communities both
nationally and internationally. In Israel, for example, artists have collaborated with
scientists and citizen activists on environmental art projects since the 1970s.
It is important to remember, however, that a fine line exists between making art
and modifying or destroying natural landscapes to create it. The value and
appreciation of artistic creations depends on the intention and the context in
which they take place. For some, "fairy houses" (tiny dwellings built in the woods
from small, natural objects found nearby) and cairns (piles of stones used as
directional indicators along trails) are magical. Others perceive the disturbance of
natural features for the sake of art as almost blasphemy. Because of our belief in
freedom of expression, we Americans sometimes do not know when to stop!
Perhaps we would do well to be more thoughtful about leaving things in their
natural state in the wilderness, instead concentrating our art more in urbanoriented settings. Yet some feel just as strongly about not disturbing those areas,
such as those who wanted to keep a Portland, Maine, rail yard along the Eastern
Promenade in its raw, glass-strewn and derelict character, rather than to create a
scenic harbor-front trail for many more people to access and enjoy. One thing is
certain: people rarely agree what constitutes art. And artists often seek to
provoke debate and reaction through their work.
In its most positive light, however, art is transformative, teaching new ways of
looking at land, at the places we love and how to protect them. Whatever works

for you, please think about how you might best use art to enhance your own
causes and draw people to support them.
About the Author:
Alix W. Hopkins was founding executive director of Portland Trails in Maine. She
is also co-president of the Pownal Land Trust and the Northern Forest Canoe
Trail, and author of the upcoming book, "Groundswell"/ Saving Places, Finding
Community", which celebrates the role of land conservation in preserving
community character, building individual character and connecting people.
Published in 2005 by the Trust For Public Land.
Copied from: http://greenmuseum.org/generic_content.php?ct_id=211
2007 greenmuseum.org

The Convergence of Art & Science

by Caitlin Strokosch Glass (2005)
This is part of the Toolbox for Communities
This essay appears courtesy of The Alliance of Artists Communities.
Ecology and A Sense of Place
Artists' communities often talk of their "sense of place." Sometimes elusive,
sometimes concrete, this sense of place encompasses the human history, the
built and natural environment, and the relationship and proximity to the local
community. Artists' communities recognize that they are part of and inseparable
from their local ecology, and they often have a natural connection and
commitment to their ecologies. Randall Koch, Director of the Sitka Center for Art
and Ecology, explains: "You can't separate the sense of place that is so essential
for artists' communities from a commitment to the physical space. There is an
increased consciousness of place at an artists' community, and the importance of
place means that honoring the space is not really separate from the mission."
For many organizations, this commitment is manifested through stewardship of
their property. The Djerassi Resident Artists Program in Woodside, California, for
example, resides on a 580-acre former cattle ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
While their primary function is as an artists' residency program, their dual mission
is to support and enhance the creativity of artists by providing uninterrupted time
for work, reflection, and collegial interaction in a setting of great natural beauty,
and to preserve the land on which the program is situated. For some, ecological
stewardship is an equal partner to the service of artists. One such place, A Studio
in the Woods in New Orleans, is dedicated to preserving the bottomland

hardwood forest and providing within it a peaceful retreat where artists can work.
For ASITW, offering opportunities to artists is a natural extension of their
environmental commitment: "The work of artists raises humankind's
consciousness of the interdependence of all life, inspiring us to envision and
strive for a better world," write co-founders Joe and Lucianne Carmichael.
Many residency programs(The Sacatar Foundation in Bahia, Brazil; Rockmirth
EcoArts School, Atelier and Residential Artists' Retreat in Sapello, New Mexico;
and Nantucket Island School of Design and the Arts in Massachusetts, to name a
few)encourage their artists to be especially considerate of the local ecology.
Some(like Santa Fe Art Institute, and the Artist House at St. Mary's College of
Maryland)have nontoxic studio policies and seek to educate artists about
nontoxic materials for the health of both the artists and the environment. Says
Taylor Van Horne, Director of Sacatar: "We are in a low-tech environment, and
we urge artists to work directly and simply with available materials and methods."
For Rockmirth, says Director Judyth Hill, "the pristine quality of the land is the
source that feeds the artists. That's what we strive to preserve here."
While rural residencies seem naturally connected to this eco-consciousness,
there are many urban residency centers that take special note of their ecology as
well. The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, for example, aims to generate a
cultural life for neighborhoods that encompasses both people and place. The
LMCC has found that many urban artists want to use recycled materials and
address issues of ecology and the environment in their work. One of the ways in
which LMCC responds to and encourages this is through a partnership with
Materials for the Arts (which is cooperatively run by New York City's Departments
of Cultural Affairs, Sanitation, and Education), which allows access to a
warehouse of recycled materials. "Ecology is an idea we function with and that is
reflected in our daily practices," says Erin Donnelly, Residency Director and
Curator. "Whether looking at creative adaptive reuse of buildings or working with
recycled materials, we are deeply engaged in the ecology of our neighborhoods."
Because of the intensity of the residency experience, many artists-in-residence
develop an intimate and personal relationship to an artists' community's ecology.
"Ecology" comes from the Greek word for homeoikosand it's no wonder that
these homes away from home often shape the artist's experience and work in
powerful ways. Art Farm, in Marquette, Nebraska, is a working farm that hosts
artists-in-residence. Experiencing rural, farm life while in the midst of creating
new work affects the majority of artists that come to Art Farm in often unexpected
ways. "Art Farm's physical presence is in its buildings and land," writes Director
Ed Dadey. "More elusive to describe is the ambiance, the subtle influence of the
environment's impact on time and space. Time is kept by sun and night sky, not
by clock and calendar. Space is marked by proximity to sound and silence. The
sky and your ears will be filled with the sound and shapes of an incredible
number of birds and insects. And, like it or not, the weather will be your
collaborator in all undertakings."

Reaching Across Disciplines

Artists' residencies have always served as "research and development"
laboratories for new creative work, something the sciences have long understood
the value of. The residency environment is also particularly well-suited for
collaboration and synergy between often disparate-seeming disciplines. Pamela
Winfrey of the Exploratorium, a museum of science, art, and human perception in
San Francisco that hosts a residency program, explains: "I rub brain with
neurobiologists, anthropologists, cognitive psychologists, etc., all the time and
feel that actually, it is our differences that create the really interesting work. This
is true of our best residencies when a scientist and an artist really hit it off
together."
In this spirit, many multidisciplinary organizations are forming creative
residencies as a way of addressing ecological and scientific issues. The Center
for Land Use Interpretation, for example, operates a residency program for
artists' researchers and theorists who work with land and land use issues in an
innovative and engaging manner, in order to support the development of new
interpretive methodologies and ideas. Residents primarily work out of the CLUI
facilities in Wendover, Utah, and explore and interpret the landscape of that
remarkable desert region. The space arts (projects that engage with the themes
of outer space exploration and space development) have also become
increasingly interested in residencies, as a way of fostering the interdisciplinary
and collaborative work that is essential in space arts.
Just as arts organizations are involving scientists in their work, so are science
centers involving artists. For many of these research centers, art is a way of
making science more accessible. The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics,
which hosts an artist-in-residence, explains: "Art and imagery are inherent in the
creative process in science and integral to the communication of its discoveries.
For theoretical physics, images can be powerful expressions of elegant
mathematical equations that are otherwise inaccessible to many."
For Daniel Goods, an artist who works full-time at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, science-based art is about
communication. Artists often investigate ideas differently than scientists, and
communicating this way of seeing can move the science forward. "If I can change
the perspective, just a little bit, so that others think about things a little differently,
that is my service here," says Goods. One of Goods' installations, Light/Shadow,
is based on a project at JPL that seeks to invent ways of blocking out star light so
we can see small planets. Goods communicates these ideas through a system of
projections and spotlights; when people interact with the installation, planets
become visible. Some of his colleagues recommended that he create special

glasses that would enable a single individual to see all the forms, but for Goods,
the concept was something best communicated through simple human
interaction: "I don't want any extra technology-all I want is you." The piece not
only communicates the scientific phenomona, but also represents Goods'
experience in the research labit takes people coming together to see things
differently.
The Santa Fe Institute, which is devoted to the creation of a new kind of scientific
community pursuing emerging syntheses in science, has hosted three artists-inresidence over the last 25 years. Robert Buelteman, who uses a cameraless,
lensless photography technique, was invited to be an artist-in-residence at the
Santa Fe Institute in 2004. The residency has no structure, no term, and no
expectations to produce; the Institute is a place for creativity, thought, and inquiry,
designed to be interactive. Buelteman makes periodic trips to Santa Fe for
several weeks to several months at a time and spends a great deal of time with
the scientists, staff, and other visitors at the Institute.
The fellowship of the Santa Fe Institute often revolves around meals together.
Presentations are given each day at lunch and dinner, while afternoon tea
provides another opportunity to explore and share ideas. For Buelteman, these
presentationsboth the two he has given and those he has attended are "very
exciting and very intimidating." The Institute is a place where Buelteman feels
comfortable asking questions and opening himself up to new knowledge. "When I
embrace the ignorance that I am, the blindness that I am, all the time," says
Buelteman, "this allows for the possibility of knowledge, the possibility of real
sight."
This community at the Institute also provides for Buelteman a coming together of
consciousnesses-"an inquiry between ancient wisdom and contemporary
physics." He is deeply interested in some of the questions high-energy particle
physics is attempting to explain-such as the role of the observer in that which is
being observed-that are for Buelteman at the core of both photography and life.
"What excites me more than anything about the Santa Fe Institute. . . is that I
have found myself at the nexus of the scientific community and the spiritual
community I've been a part of for 30 years."
A different kind of residency brought a group of artists to CERN (the European
Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland) in 2000. Founded in
1954, CERN is the world's largest particle physics center and is addressing the
absolute limits of scientific research. Neil Calder (then Director of
Communications at CERN) developed Signatures of the Invisible, a residency
program that invited twelve visual artists to CERN for a year, with the goal of
producing work based on the artists' exposure to physics. The program came
about, in part, from a conviction that "this separation between art and science is

artificial and in fact destructive," says Calder. "Both experimental art and
experimental science are about ways of seeing, of trying to express our
understanding of where we are in the universe." Rather than simply responding
to the science, the artists were challenged to understand it and re-represent it
through an artistic medium. This encouraged an intensely intellectual interaction
between the scientists, engineers, technicians, and artists, resulting in
collaboration not simply across disciplines, but also between different
practitioners of science and art.
Over the course of a year, the participants negotiated the physical as well as the
philosophical components of their work together. The artists were initially
overwhelmed by the level of technology available to them (for instance, the ability
to fuse gold molecules onto sculpture) and the technicians played a significant
role in the residency, helping the artists to realize their vision through the
technology available at the lab. The artists were also surprised to find that some
of the most innovative art was already being created at the lab by the engineers
and lab technicians, who were crafting machines that combined state-of-the-art
technology and some of the world's finest craftsmanship. The resulting dialogue
explored the question of whether sculptural objects that were created without the
intention of being art-but rather as scientific tools-were in fact art.
Signatures of the Invisible helped create a similar dialogue between art and
science at other labs, and resulted in an exhibition that traveled internationally
from 2001 to 2003. While some American science centers have engaged artists
as well, there is a greater emphasis on safety in the U.S. (which is "quite right,"
says Calder) making it more difficult to facilitate real participatory work with
artists. The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in Menlo Park, California,
hosted a successful collaboration between physicists and the San Francisco
artist Dawn Neal Meson. While many artists are inspired by readily available
scientific imagery, Meson's paintings are based on the theories and processes in
quantum physics. SLAC physicist Stephon Alexander helped Meson understand
the complex mathematics and physics she was interpreting, for which Meson
then developed symbolism and visual language to express. Meson's paintings
include detailed explanations of the science on which they are based, something
she hopes will both inspire scientists to see their work differently and encourage
nonscientists to take a greater interest in science.
Creative Problem Solving
STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh has
been a leader in this movement of interdisciplinary, collaborative residencies for
fifteen years. "We perceive a world where artists and scientists collaborate
directly with each other to create innovative interdisciplinary work and projects
that have a positive impact on society, technology and culture," reads their vision

statement. The STUDIO has received funding from the National Science
Foundation for many of its residencies, including the 3 Rivers 2nd Nature project,
which addresses the meaning, form and function of the three river systems and
53 streams of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. A team of artists, historians,
botanists, Geographic Information Systems specialists, landscape architects,
scientists, engineers, and water policy experts are working together to conduct
an analysis of the green infrastructure that provides social, aesthetic, ecological
and economic benefit to the Three Rivers Region.
An increasing number of residencies are tackling difficult ecological issues,
addressing their rural or urban environments with a thoughtful mix of intellectual
rigor and creativity. The residencies are "striving to not only be positively
impacted by their environment, but also improve and become active participants
in their environment," says Pamela Winfrey. Building on conversations at the
Alliance's 2001 Future of Creativity symposium and the last two annual
conferences, Alliance board member Allan Comp is leading an Eco/Arts Initiative
within the Alliance to discuss how residencies can bring together the arts and
sciences to address ecological challenges unique to each residency's
community. One model is already being createdthe Crowley Creek
Collaboration at Sitka Center, a residency project led by Comp that will bring
artists, scientists and others to Oregon over the next year to collaborate with
each other and the local community to create a holistic plan for watershed
restoration.
Establishing a strong, long-term relationship with the community is a critical
benefit of this work. Says Randall Koch, "Artists' communities have a
responsibility to interact with [their local] communities and be a conduit between
artists and the local community." While artists-in-residence come and go, the
organizations must provide the sense of permanence. Comp says, "The
community needs to know you won't be gone in a week. Artists' communities are
there to stay, and need to share ownership in the community." Facilitating
sophisticated collaborations that address serious environmental issues takes
time, trust, and a sense of humor, something Comp has discovered in his work
with AMD&ART, which is dedicated to "artfully transforming environmental
liabilities into community assets" (AMD stands for acid mine drainage).
"Collaborative work means sometimes you have to lock the door and make sure
everyone's singing from the same hymnal," says Comp, "but if we are to
realistically address our whole environment, it's our only good option."
Art and Science as Partners
While it's easy to see the role of scientists in environmental projects, Comp talks
of the value artists add: "From my own experience, it is the absence of the arts
and the consequent dominance of the sciences that leaves too many reclamation
or environmental projects impoverished of their human connections, their
commitment to community, the very reasons for civic engagement." One of the

driving forces behind the Crowley Creek Collaboration is an understanding that

neither science nor art could adequately address the ecological issues. "While
science dominates restoration thought, it seems increasingly clear that science is
necessary, but not sufficient-and neither is art. I think this project can help
establish a clear role for artists and humanists, not as solitary visionaries, but as
participants; not as some mystical or magical process, but as an important,
critical perspective; not as arbitrator, but as co-worker, one among many
disciplines equally necessary to the recovery and revitalization of this whole
place," says Comp.
This increasing view of artists and scientists as equal partners, where neither
discipline is compromised, is an exciting development in the residency field. Of
course, there is a risk in such interdisciplinary collaborations that neither the art
nor the science will be taken seriously. "For many years at AMD&ART," says
Comp, "I think we were seen as too artsy for the serious environmental and
science funders, and too environmental for serious arts funders. Thanks to a rich
variety of adventuresome funders, we've been able to create a site that has art
and environment all in the same place."
Indeed, it is this search for balance that has drawn so many to the convergence
of science and art. And balance is the essence of ecology. Sam Bower, Executive
Director of greenmuseum.org, a nonprofit online resource to support and
advance the environmental art movement, writes that, "This growing and global
movement hastaken on an increasingly collaborative eco-activist agenda as
well as a visually stunning and celebratory one . Addressing the world's
problems will require creative and inspiring collaborations between people,
places and creatures." Residency programs are positioned to do just that.
To find residencies that facilitate interdisciplinary work between art and science,
or to join a discussion with Allan Comp and members of the Alliance about the
ways in which residencies can address ecological issues, contact Caitlin Glass,
Program & Communications Director at the Alliance of Artists Communities, at
cglass@artistcommunities.org.
For more information: Robert Buelteman; Dan Goods; Dawn Neal Meson.
2007 greenmuseum.org
Copied from: http://greenmuseum.org/generic_content.php?ct_id=227

Environmental art: A Brief Introduction

A Brief Introduction
by Clive Adams

Director of the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (2002)
From prehistoric times, peoples have transformed the environment, shaping their
tools from stone, and, in their cave wall paintings, megaliths and stone circles,
seeking ways to connect with the forces of nature. Since those times, artists and
designers have been profoundly influenced by the images, colors, patterns,
structures and systems of nature around them.
At times of turbulent change in our history, as in Hellenistic Greece, medieval
Japan and Europe at the time of industrial and political revolution, new art forms
have evolved in order to address the changing relationships between nature and
society.
During the political and social upheavals of the 1960s, a group of artists in the
United States and Europe increasingly questioned the restriction of painting and
experimented with radical new ways of responding to the environment and its
ecology. Rather than paint the landscape, their experiences were realized by
sculpting the land itself, by photographic sequences and in sculpture made from
natural materials.
Since the turn of the Millennium, world concern over environmental issues such
as pollution and global warming, species depletion, new genetic technologies,
AIDS, BSE and foot-and -mouth epidemics has increased. Artists, in turn, are
responding by answering collective cultural needs and developing active and
practical roles in environmental and social issues.
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2007 greenmuseum.org

Interview With Robert Smithson, Paul Cummings

For The Archives of American Art/ Smithsonian Institution (1972)

Interview conducted on July 14 and 19, 1972
July 14, 1972
PAUL CUMMINGS: You were born in New Jersey?

ROBERT SMITHSON: Yes, in Passaic, New Jersey.

CUMMINGS: Did you come from a big family?
SMITHSON: No, I'm an only child.
CUMMINGS: So many artists I have been interviewing lately have been an only child.
Did you grow up there, go to school there?
SMITHSON: I was born in Passaic and lived there for a short time, then we moved to
Rutherford, New Jersey. William Carlos Williams was actually my baby doctor in
Rutherford. We lived there until I was about nine and then we moved to Clifton, New
Jersey. I guess around that time I had an inclination toward being an artist.
CUMMINGS: Were you making drawings?
SMITHSON: Oh yes, I was working in that area even back in the early phases in
Rutherford. I was also very interested at that in natural history. In Clifton my father built
what you could call a kind of suburban basement museum for me to display all my fossils
and shells, and I was involved with collecting insects and
CUMMINGS: Where did these shells come from?
SMITHSON: Oh, different places. We traveled a lot at that time. Right after the war in
1946 when we went out West I was about eight years old. It was an impressionable
period. I started to get involved in collecting at that time. But basically I was pretty much
unto myself in being interested in field naturalist things, looking for insects, rocks and
whatever.
CUMMINGS: Did you have books around that were involved with these topics?
SMITHSON: Yes. And I went to the Museum of Natural History. When I was about
seven I did very large paper constructions of dinosaurs which in a way, I suppose, relate
right up to the present in terms of the film I made on The Spiral Jetty - the prehistoric
motif runs throughout the film. So in a funny way I guess there is not that much
difference between what I am now and my childhood. I really had a problem with school.
I mean, there was no real understanding of where I was at, and I didn't know where I was
at that time.
CUNMINGS: Did you like primary school or high school?
SMITHSON: No, I didn't. I grew rather hostile to school, actually, I started going to the
Art Students League. I won a scholarship. In my last year of high school I managed to go
only half way. I was just very put off by the whole way art was taught.
CUMMINGS: Really? In what way?
SMITHSON: Well, my high school teacher would come up with statements like - I
remember this one quite vividly - that the only people who become artists are cripples
and women.
CUMMINGS: This was a high school art teacher? What was their problem?
SMITHSON: Well, They seemed to have all kinds of problems. Everything was kind of
restricted. There was no comprehension of any kind, no creative attitude. It was mostly
rote - a very unimaginative teaching staff, constricted and departmentalized. At that point
I didn't have any self-realization, so really couldn't tell, except that the Art Students
League did offer me a chance to at least come in contact with other people. I made a lost
of friends with people in the High School of Music and Art in New York.
CUMMINGS: Did you go to that school?
SMITHSON: No, but I had a lot of friends from there, and we had a sketch class together.
Every Saturday in the last two years of high school I went to Isaac Osier's studio. We

used to sketch each other and we'd talk about art and go to museums. And that was a very
important thing for me, getting out of that kind of stifling suburban atmosphere where
there was just nothing.
CUMMINGS: How did you get the scholarship to the League?
SMITHSON: I applied for that. I did a series of woodcuts, rather large woodcuts. I
remember one of them was called Teenagers on 42nd Street. It was done in a kind of
German Expressionist style. I was about sixteen when I did that.
CUMMINGS: Did you have art books and things at home?
SMITHSON: Yes. I kept coming into New York and buying art books. I was pursuing it
on my own.
CUMMINGS: Did you go to museums and galleries?
SMITHSON: Yes. The first museum show I saw at the Museum of Modern Art was The
Fauves' exhibition. I was about sixteen. I had that attitude. And then I went back to
Clifton High School and tried to present those ideas but they didn't quite jell.
CUMMINGS: Were you interested in other classes in school?
SMITHSON: Well, I was somewhat interested in writing, although at that time I had a
sort of writer's block, you know, I couldn't quite get it together. I had a good oral sense; I
liked to talk. I remember giving a talk, I think in my sophomore year in high school, on
The War of Worlds, the H.G. Wells thing. And I gave a talk on the proposed Guggenheim
Museum. Things like that interested me. But I found those things that interested me really
didn't coincide with school, so I became more and more disenchanted and more and more
confused.
CUMMINGS: You had no instructor in any class who picked up on any of those things?
SMITHSON: No. It was all very hostile and cramped, and it just alienated me more and
more to the point where I grew rather hostile to the whole public school situation. In a
very, very definite way I wanted nothing to do with high school, and I had no intention of
going to college.
CUMMINGS: What about the writing? When did that start?
SMITHSON: That started in 1965 - 1966. But it was a self-taught situation. After about
five years of thrashing around on my own, I started to pull my thoughts together and was
able to begin writing. Since then, I guess I've written about twenty articles.
CUMMINGS: Do you find it augments your work? Or is it separate from it?
SMITHSON: Well, it comes out of my sensibility - it comes out of my own observation.
It sort of parallels my actual art involvement. The two coincide; one informs the other.
CUMMINGS: How did you find the art scene in the fifties?
SMITHSON: That was a very crucial time. Everything was very repressed and stupid;
there was no art context as we know it now. There weren't any galleries to speak of (when
I was sixteen or seventeen). I was very much encouraged by Frederica Beer-Monti who
ran the Artists Gallery. She was an Austrian woman of the circle of Kokoschka and that
crowd, and she had been painted by a lot of those people. She was very encouraging.
CUMMINGS: How did you meet her?
SMITHSON: I took my woodcuts to the gallery. It was run by Hugh Stix and his wife
who were very encouraging. It was a non-profit gallery. I would have discussions there
with Owen Ratchliff, who was sort of the director. I would say that in a way they gave me
an opportunity to work for myself.
CUMMINGS: You had a show with them at one point?

SMITHSON: I had a show with them. I was the youngest artist to ever show there. And I
felt - well, you know, if I can show at age nineteen, keep on going. I've always been kind
of unreachable, I guess, especially at that point. I met other people, - I was friendly with
the son of Meyer Levin, Joe Levin, who went to Music and Art High School. I remember
Meyer Levin saying that I was the type of person that couldn't go to school, that I would
either make it very big or else go crazy.
CUMMINGS: Nice alternatives. How did you like that Art Students League? What did
you do there?
SMITHSON: It gave me an opportunity to meet younger people and others who were sort
of sympathetic to my outlook. There wasn't anybody in Clifton who I was close to except
for one person-Danny Donahue. He got interested in art, but eventually he did go crazy
and was killed in a motorcycle and just I mean it was a very difficult time, I think, for
people to find themselves.
CUMMINGS: That was in the fifties?
SMITHSON: In the fifties, yes, This was, I'd say, around 1956-57. I spent a short periodsix months-in the Army.
CUMMINGS: Were you drafted? Or did you join?
SMITHSON: No, I joined. Actually I joined with Danny Donahue, Joe Levin, and
Charlie Hasloff. Charlie is a poet from Dusseldorf. Both Danny and Joe were excluded
and that left Charlie and me. The reason I joined was because it was a special plan; it was
a kind of art group called Special Services.
CUMMINGS: Oh, really! What was that?
SMITHSON: Well, strangely enough, John Cassavetes was in this group. And Miles
Kruger, who is an expert on nostalgia.
CUMMINGS: Oh,yes! The Amercian musical stage.
SMITHSON: Right, You know him?
CUMMINGS: Oh, for years! Yes.
SMITHSON: Well, in a way he was responsible for cueing me into the situation. So it
turned out that I went to Fort Knox, went through basic training, spent some unhappy
hours in clerk-typist's school, and then ended up as sort of artist-in-residence at Fort
Knox. I did watercolors of local Army installations for the mess hall. It was a very
confusing period. Another important relationship I had was with a poet named Alan
Brilliant. I stayed at his place up on Park Avenue and 96th Street, in the El Bario area. He
was involved with publishing poet. I met him through Joe Levin.
CUMMINGS: Was Miles with you all through this military period?
SMITHSON: I spent a few times with Miles at the Rienzi Cafe down in the village were
we had discussions. That sort of thing. I don't know him that well. I think this was around
1956. I mean that was an interesting period for me. I'm trying to put it together right now.
CUMMINGS: What about the poet though- Brilliant?
SMITHSON: Brilliant married a novelist , Teo Savory, moved out to California, and
became a little magazine publisher-The Unicorn Press. In that group I met Hubert Selby,
who wrote Last Exit to Brookelyn, Franz Kline, a lot of people from Black Mountain.
That was an important thing.
CUMMINGS: At the Cedar Bar.
SMITHSON: At the Cedar Bar. Carl Andre said one time that that was where he got his
education. In a way I kind of agree with him.

CUMMINGS: A lot of people did.

SMITHSON: I think it was a kind of meeting place for people who were sort of
struggling to figure out who they were and where they were going.
CUMMINGS: The late fifties was also sort of the heyday of the Tenth Street galleries.
SMITHSON: That's right. I knew a lot of people involved in that. Although I had had this
show at the Artists Gallery, I was somewhat unsatisfied. The show was reviewed in Art
News by Irving Sandler, but I just didn't feel satisfied. Strangely enough, the work sort of
grew out of Barnett Newman; I was using stripes and then gradually Introduced pieces of
paper over the stripes. The stripes then sort of got into a kind of archetypal imagistic
period utilizing images similar, I guess, to Pollock's She-Wolf Period and Dubuffet and
certain mythological religious archetypes.
CUMMINGS: Well, that's something like the images in the show in Rome then-right?
SMITHSON: Yes. That comes out of that period. Charles Alan offered to put me in a
show in his gallery in New York. And the reason I got the show in Rome was because of
the painting called Quicksand. It's an abstraction done with gouache. I think Charles Alan
still owns it. It was fundamentally abstract, sort of olives and yellow and pieces of paper
stapled onto it; it had a kind of incoherent landscape look to it.
CUMMINGS: Did you know Newman's work? Were you intrigued by that kind of thing?
SMITHSON: Yes I did see Newman's work. But emotionally I wasn't -I mean I
responded to it, but this latent imagery was still in me, a kind of anthropomorphism; and,
you see, I was also concerned with Dubuffet and de Kooning in terms of that kind of
submerged
CUMMINGS: Where had you seen Dubuffet? Because he was not shown that much here.
SMITHSON: Oh, I think he had a lot of things in the Museum of Modern Art. And I'd
seen books. I think he was being shown at one of the galleries. I can't remember exactly
which one. I'am pretty sure I saw things of his in the Museum of Modern Art. I was
around twenty at this time.
CUMMINGS: As long as we're talking about galleries and museums, which galleries
interested you most? Do you remember the ones that you went to in those days?You've
mentioned Charles Alan and the Artists Gallery.
SMITHSON: Yes. Well, a lot of the galleries hadn't opened yet. I was very much
intrigued by Dick Bellamy's gallery-the Hansa Gallery. When I was still going to the Art
Students League I used to drop around the corner to see Dick Bellamy. He was very
encouraging. Also in the late fifties I moved to Montgomery Street; there I was living
about three blocks from Dick Bellamy. He was the first one to invite me to an actual
opening. I believe it was an Allan Kaprow opening at the Hansa Gallery. At the time I
was trying to put together a book of art and poetry with Allan Graham (Which never
manifested itself) so Dick had suggested that I go to see these new young artists Jasper
Johns and Rauschenberg. I remember having seen their work at The Jewish Museum in a
small show. And also in this book I wanted to include comic strips. I was especially
interested in the early issues of Mad magazine-"Man Out of Control". Then there was an
artist who was interesting, somebody who had a kind of somewhat psychopathic
approach to art; his name was Joseph Winter and he was showing at the Artists Gallery; I
wanted to include him. I also met Allen Ginsberg sand Jack Kerouac at that time. I met
lots of people through Dick Bellamy. Let me see what else. I worked at the Eighth Street
Bookshop too.

CUMMINGS: Oh, really? When was that?

SMITHSON: I would say in 1958, I think right about that period, give or take a year.
CUMMINGS: To kind of go back a bit, who did you study with at the League?
SMITHSON: Oh, John Groth, who was an illustrator.
CUMMINGS: How did you select him?
SMITHSON: Well, you see, I could only go on Fridays. I also studied with somebody
named Bove during the week. But I just selected him - he had a sort of loose way of
drawing and I was interested in drawing. In the early years of high school I had ideas of
being an illustrator of some sort.
CUMMINGS: Making it a useful paying career.
SMITHSON: Yes. But John Groth was worthwhile teacher and he had a good sense of
composition. I always did my work at my home. I did sketching from models and things
at the League, but basically I did all my work at home. I worked in caseins. I still have
some of those works from that period.
CUMMINGS: How did your family like this development?
SMITHSON: They didn't like it.
CUMMINGS: There was no encouragement?
SMITHSON: Well, you know, they just didn't see it as a paying enterprise. They saw it as
a rather questionable occupation, Bohemian, you know, that sort of thing. Although my
great-grandfather was a rather well-known artist around the turn of the century. He did
interior plaster work in all the major municipal buildings in New York: the Museum of
Natural History, the Metropolitan; he did the entire subway system.
CUMMINGS: What was his name?
SMITHSON: His name was Charles Smithson. Well, of course since then all the work
has been torn out of the subways. I guess it was of the period that Lewis Mumford called
"The Brown Decade"; you know, that kind of work. There was an article written about
him in an old journal from around 1900. He was also involved in sort of public art. My
grandfather worked with him for a while, but then the unions came in and that sort of
craft work went out and prefab work came in. Then the Depression wiped out my greatgrandfather and my grandfather who was sort of a poet actually CUMMINGS: What was his name?
SMITHSON: His name was Samuel Smithson. Incidentally, there was somebody at
Columbia who claimed that all the Smithsons were related to the founder of the
Smithsonian Institution, as a matter of fact.
CUMMINGS: Well, you see how small the world is.
SMITHSON: But I don't know about that.
CUMMINGS: It's only two hundred years ago.
SMITHSON: Well, he had no offspring. I don't know - I never could understand it but
this man whose name is I.M.Smithson is working at Columbia on all of the Smithsons,
and how they're related to the Smithsonian one. As a matter of fact, he called me up as a
result of the flyer from the Artists Gallery which one of the students gave him. But I
never heard anything more about that.
CUMMINGS: He may well be up there digging away somewhere.
SMITHSON: Right. My father worked for Auro-lite. I do remember some interesting
things that he used to bring home - like films - where they had all these car parts sort of
automated, you know, like marching spark plugs and marching carburetors and that of

thing. It's very vivid in my mind. Later on he went into real estate and finally into
mortgage and banking work. He just never had the artistic view. On my mother's side I'm
Middle European of diverse origins, I suppose mainly Slavic.
CUMMINGS: Well, what happened? You had this exhibition at the Artists Gallery. Did
that help your parents' interest in your work?
SMITHSON: Yes. Well, they came to see it and try to understand what their son was
getting into. They've always been sympathetic. I mean they're really pretty good to me - I
had a brother who died before I was born. My father did take me on trips. Actually, no
looking back on it, he did have real sense of a kind of, you know, American idea of the
landscape, but in an American way; I mean he loved to travel. He hitchhiked around the
country, rode the rails and everything when he was younger; he sort of had a feeling for
scenic beauty, but couldn't understand modern art.
CUMMINGS: He liked Bierstadt paintings.
SMITHSON: Yes. Well, that sort of thing.
CUMMINGS: How much of the country have you traveled around? I know you've been
here, there, and everywhere.
SMITHSON: I sort of concentrated on it in my childhood and adolescence. Well, my first
major trip was when I was eight years old and my father and mother took me around the
entire United States. Right after World War II we traveled across the Pennsylvania
Turnpike out through the Black Hills and the Badlands, through Yellowstone, up into the
Redwood forests, then down the Coast, and then over to the Grand Canyon. I was eight
years old and it made a big impression on me. I used to give little post card shows. I
remember I'd set up a little booth and cut a hole in it and put post cards up into the slot
and show all the kinds these post cards.
CUMMINGS: Oh. The post cards you picked up on your travels?
SMITHSON: Yes. And then on my mother's side it's obscure. Her maiden name was
Duke from Austria, that area. Her father was a wheelmaker.
CUMMINGS: Then there's a strong craft tradition behind you- using materials and
making objects.
SMITHSON: Yes. I guess there is something to that.
CUMMINGS: Let's see, you went to the Brooklyn Museum School at one point?
SMITHSON: Yes, I got a scholarship there too. I went there on Saturdays, but I didn't go
there too long. It was kind of far to go there. I went to life classes with Isaac Soyer again;
well, mainly we used to gather at his place. His studio was up near Central Park. We'd do
sketching. I think I went there for may beabout three months.
CUMMINGS: How was the Brooklyn Museum? Did you like that?
SMITHSON: No. I can't say that. I really responded that much. I think the strongest
impact on me was the Museum of Natural History. My father took me there when I was
around seven. I remember he took me first to the Metropolitan which I found kind of dull.
I was very interested in natural history.
CUMMINGS: All the animals and things.
SMITHSON: Yes.
CUMMINGS: Did they have the panoramas then? I don't remember
SMITHSON: Oh, yes. I mean it was just the whole spectacle, the whole thing- the
dinosaurs made a tremendous impression on me. I think this initial impact is still in my
psyche. We used to go the Museum of Natural History all the time.

CUMMINGS: That was your museum rather than the art museum?
SMITHSON: Yes.
CUMMINGS: Were your parents interested in that, or was it because you were
interested?
SMITHSON: Yes-well, my father liked it. My father sort of liked the dioramas and things
of that sort, because of the painstaking reality. Looking back on that, I think he took me
to the Metropolitan thinking that was the Museum of Natural History- I could be wrong
but I think I remember his saying: Oh, well, we can go to an interesting museum now. For
me it was much more interesting. Then from that point on I just got more and more
interested in natural history. At one point I thought of becoming either a field naturalist or
a zoologist.
CUMMINGS: Did you go to college anywhere?
SMITHSON: No.
CUMMINGS: I didn't think you did. So what happened then? When did you move to
New York?
SMITHSON: I moved to New York in 1957, right after I got out of the Army. Then I
hitchhiked all around the country. I went out West and visited the Hopi Indian
Reservation and found that very exciting. Quite by chance, I was privileged to see a rain
dance at Oraibi. I guess I was about eighteen or nineteen.
CUMMINGS: Had you been to the Museum of the American Indian ever?
SMITHSON: No.
CUMMINGS: You hadn't? So it was a new experience.
SMITHSON: Yes. Well, you see, again, I knew about Gallup, New Mexico. I knew about
and made a special point of going to Canyon de Chelly. I had seen photographs of that. I
hiked the length of Canyon the Chelly at that point and slept out. It was the period of the
beat generation. When I got back, On the Road was out, and all those people were
around, you know, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, both of whom I met. And Hubert
Selby, I knew him rather well; I used to visit him out in Brooklyn and we listened to jazz
and that sort of thing. He was strange person. I mean there was something weird about
him. In fact he billed himself as an Eisenhower Republican, lived in a highrise. He had
lung trouble, I think he had only a quarter of a lung left or something. At one point he
tried to commit suicide. I don't know - it just got very bad. He was trying to get his book
published at that time. The way I met him - I was sitting at a table at the Cedar Bar, I had
read a chapter from his book and I praised it to, I think it was Jonathan Williams of the
Black Mountain Press. It just happened that Hubert was sitting there (Cubby as he was
called) and - well, of course he was taken with the fact that somebody liked his story that
much.
CUMMINGS: How did you find the Cedar? Was that just through wandering around the
Village?
SMITHSON: How did I find the Cedar? No, I think people just sort of gravitated to it.
Tenth Street was very active. I can't remember exactly how I discovered it. But I think
perhaps, again through Dick Bellamy or Miles Forst, Dody Muller, people like that, you
know. I knew Edward Avedisian to at that time. And Dick Baker who worked for Grove
Press and became a Zen monk.
CUMMINGS: You never showed in Tenth Street, did you, in any of those galleries?
SMITHSON: No. By that time, I was even more confused, I mean I had a certain initial

kind of intuitive talent in terms of sizing up the situation and being influenced. But I had
to work my way out of that. It took me three years. And then I was exposed to Europe
through my show at the George Lester Gallery in Rome which had a tremendous impact
on me.
CUMMINGS: How did that happen?
SMITHSON: As I said, he offered me a show on the basis of that painting Quicksand that
was shown at the Alan Gallery. At that time I really wasn't interested in doing
abstractions. I was actually interested in religion, you know, and archetypal things, I
guess interested in Europe and understanding the relationship of
CUMMINGS: Did you go to Europe then?
SMITHSON: Yes, I went to Europe in 1961. I was in Rome for about three months. And I
visited Siena. I was very interested in the Byzantine. As a result I remember wandering
around through these old baroque churches and going through these labyrinthine vaults.
At the same time I was reading people liking William Burroughs. It all seemed to
coincide in a curious kind of way.
CUMMINGS: What other things were you reading besides Burroughs?
SMITHSON: T.S.Eliot then had a big influence on me, of course, after going to Rome.
So I had to wrestle with that particular problem of tradition and Anglo- Catholicism, the
whole number. And then I was getting to know Nancy- we met in New York in 1959
CUMMINGS: What was it like being a young American in Rome and having a show?
SMITHSON: It was very exciting to me. I was very interested in Rome itself. I just felt I
wanted to be a part of that situation, or wanted to understand it.
CUMMINGS: In what way? What were the qualities?
SMITHSON: I wanted to understand the roots of- I guess you could call it Western
civilization really, and how religion had influenced art.
CUMMINGS: What got you interested or involved in religion at that point? I find that
interesting in the context of the people you knew, because it wasn't generally something
they were all that interested in.
SMITHSON: Well, I was reading people- like I read Djuna Barnes' Nightwood,
T.S,Eliot , and Ezra Pound. There was a sense of European history that was very
prevalent. Also I was very influenced by Wyndham Lewis.
CUMMINGS: Oh, really? But Pound is not particularly involved with
SMITHSON: Well, he was interested in a kind of notion of what Western art grew out of
and what happened to it. I mean it was a way of discovering the history of Western art in
terms of the Renaissance and what preceded it, especially the Byzantine.
CUMMINGS: Well, you mean the ritual and the ideas and all those things?
SMITHSON: Yes, and I think a kind of Jungian involvement - like Jackson Pollock's
interest in archetypal structures. I was just kind of interested in the facade of Catholicism.
CUMMINGS: But were you interested in Jung or Freud particularly?
SMITHSON: Yes, I was at that time.
CUMMINGS: You read their writings and things?
SMITHSON: Yes.
CUMMINGS: Did you ever go into analysis?
SMITHSON: No.
CUMMINGS: How did you find that those activities worked for you? Did they answer
questions for you? Or did they just pose new ones?

SMITHSON: I think I got to understand, let's say, the mainspring of what European art
was rooted in prior to the growth of Modernism. And it was very important for me to
understand that. And once I understood that I could understand Modernism and I could
make my own moves. I would say that I began to function as a conscious artist around
1964-65 I think I started doing works then that were mature. I would say that prior to the
1964-65 period I was in a kind of groping, investigating period.
CUMMINGS: I'm curious about the show at the George Lester Gallery.
SMITHSON: The three paintings which were probably the best, were sort of semiabstractions based on a rough grid- one was called. The Inferno, another was called
Purgatory, another was called Paradise.
CUMMINGS: Dante-esque.
SMITHSON: It was Dante-esque, but- it was a rough irregular grid type painting with
sort of fragments of faces and things embedded in this grid. Other things were kind of
iconic, tending toward a kind of Byzantine relationship. I was also very much interested
in the theories of T.E. Hulme; as I said, that whole circle, that whole prewar circle of
Modernism.
CUMMINGS: What artists were you interested in at that point?
SMITHSON: I really wasn't- I was really interested in the past at that point.
CUMMINGS: It was an interest in modern literature and old art?
SMITHSON: Initially- well, when I was nineteen- the impact was Newman,
Pollock,Dubuffet, Rauschenberg, de Kooning; even Alan Davie who I had seen I think at
the Viviano Gallery; the whole New York School of painting. I felt very much at home
with that when I was in my late teens, but when I rejected it in favor of a more traditional
approach. And this lasted from maybe 11960 to1963.
CUMMINGS: Why do you think you rejected those things?
SMITHSON: I just felt that -they really didn't understand, first of all, anthropomorphism,
which had constantly been lurking in Pollock and de Kooning. I always felt that a
problem. I always thought it was somehow seething underneath all those masses of paint.
And even Newman in his later work still referred to a certain kind of Judeo-Christian
value. I wasn't that much interested in a sort of Bauhaus formalist view. I was interested
in this kind of archetypal gut situation that was based on primordial needs and the
unconscious depths. And the real breakthrough came once I was able to overcome this
lurking pagan religious anthropomorphism. I was able to get into crystalline structures in
terms of structures of matter and that sort of thing.
CUMMINGS: What precipitated that transition, do you think?
SMITHSON: Well, I just felt that Europe had exhausted its culture. I suppose my first
inklings of a more Marxists view began to arise, rather than my trying to reestablish
traditional art work in terms of the Eliot-Pound-Wyndham Lewis situation. I just felt
there was a certain naivete in the American painters-good as they were.
CUMMINGS: Did you get interested in Marxism?
SMITHSON: No. It was just sort of flicker. I mean began to become more concerned
with the structure of matter itself, in crystalline structures. The crystalline structures
gradually grew into mapping structures.
CUMMINGS: In a visual way, or in a conceptual way?
SMITHSON: Visual, because I gave up painting around 1963 and began to work plastics
in kind of crystalline way. And I began to develop structures based on a particular

concern with the elements of material itself. But this was essentially abstract and devoid
of any kind of mythological content.
CUMMINGS: There was no figurative overtone to it.
SMITHSON: No, I had completely gotten rid of that problem. I felt that Jackson Pollock
never really understood that, and although I admire him still, I still think that that was
something that was always eating him up inside.
CUMMINGS: But it's interesting because there is a development away from traditional
kinds of imagery and yet an involvement with natural materials
SMITHSON: Well, I would say that begins to surface in 1965-66. That's when I really
began to get into that, and when I consider my emergence as a conscious artist. Prior to
that my struggle was to get into another realm. In 1964, 1965, 1966 I met people who
were more compatible with my view. I met Sol LeWitt, Dan Flavin, and Donald Judd. At
that time we showed at the Daniels Gallery; I believe it was in 1965. I was doing
crystalline type works and my early interest in geology and earth sciences began to assert
itself over the whole cultural overlay of Europe. I had gotten that our of my system.
CUMMINGS: Out of chaos comes
SMITHSON: Yes. Well, out of the defunct, I think, class culture of Europe I developed
something that was intrinsically my own and rooted to my own experience in America.
CUMMINGS: Have you been back to Europe since that?
SMITHSON: Yes, I have been back to Europe. I did Broken Circle - Spiral Hill in
Holland in 1971. I consider it a major piece.
JULY 19, 1972
CUMMINGS: Would you like to say something about your visit with William - Carlos
Williams?
SMITHSON: Yes. Well, this took place I think in either 1958 or 1959. William Carlos
Williams was going to do an Introduction for Irving Layton's book of poems. So I went
out to Rutherford with Irving Layton. It wasn't for an interview, he was in pretty bad
shape at that time, he was kind of palsied. But he was rather interesting - Once he found
out that we weren't going to be doing any articles, he was pretty open. Sophie Williams
was there too. He said that he enjoyed meeting artists more than writers.
CUMMINGS: Ob, really? Why?
SMITHSON: He just found them more interesting to talk to.
CUMMINGS: Contrast, maybe.
SMITHSON: As it turned out, he had a whole collection of paintings by Marsden Hartely,
Demuth, Ben Shahn; and also paintings by Hart Crane's boy friend, which I thought was
interesting. He bought them CUMMINGS: I can't remember who that was.
SMITHSON: I can't remember his name either. He talked about Ezra Pound, which I
thought was interesting apropos of all the controversy about Ezra Pound. And it turned
out that when Pound was giving his broadcasts in Italy he said something to the effect
that "Old Doc Williams in Rutherford, New Jersey will understand what I mean." So the
very next day the FBI descended on Williams' house and he had to explain that he wasn't
involved in that kind of political attitude. He went on to talk about the other poets, but he
seemed somewhat estranged from them. Let me see what else. Oh, he didn't seem to have
much liking for T.S. Eliot. And he said he remembers Hart Crane inviting him over to

New York for all his fairy parties; that sort of thing. And what else? - well, he showed us
all these paintings. There was painting that somehow reminded me of a painting by
Duchamp. Demuth did like two dogs running around sniffing each other's asses. He
talked a lot about Allen Ginsberg coming out at all hours of the night, and having to
spring poets out there. Allen Ginsberg comes from Paterson, New Jersey. I guess the
Paterson area is where I had a lot of my contact with quarries and I think that is
somewhat embedded in my psyche. As a kid I sued to go and prowl around all those
quarries. And of course, they figured strongly in Paterson. When I read the poems I was
interested in that, especially this one part of Paterson where it showed all the strata levels
under Paterson. Sort of proto-conceptual art, you might say. Later on I wrote an article for
Artforum on Passaic which is a city on the Passaic River south of Paterson. In a way I
think it reflects that whole area. Williams did have a sense of that kind of New Jersey
landscape.
CUMMINGS: Was he amused at the idea that you were one of his children in a sense?
SMITHSON: Oh, yes, he said he remembered me, he remembered the Smithsons. He was
amused at that actually, yes There are certain things that I know I'm forgetting. But it
was a kind of exciting thing for me at that time. And what else? Where were we?
CUMMINGS: I'm curious also, about your interest in religion and theology since it was
mentioned in so many kinds of oblique ways on the other side of the tape. Did you have a
very strict religious upbringing?
SMITHSON: No. Actually, I was very skeptical even through high school. In high school
they thought I was a Communist and an atheist, which I was actually. That problem
always seemed to come up. In fact, while I was still going to high school, my friend
Danny Donahue and did a joint project, a tape recording for a psychology class. And it
was essentially a questioning of the premises of religion drawn mainly from Freud and
H.G. Wells.
CUMMINGS: That's good combination.
SMITHSON: I guess I was always interested in origins and primordial beginnings, you
know, the archetypal nature of things. And I guess this was always haunting me all the
way until about 1959 and 1960 when I got interested in. Catholicism through T.S. Eliot
and through that range of thinking. T.E. Hulme sort of led me to an interest in the
Byzantine and in notions of abstraction as a kind of counterpoint to the Humanism of the
late Renaissance. I was interested I guess in a kind of iconic imagery that I felt was
lurking or buried under a lot of a abstractions at the time.
CUMMINGS: In Pollock.
SMITHSON: Yes. Buried in Pollock and in de Kooning and in Newman, and to that
extent still is. My first attempts were in the area of painting. But even in the Artists
Gallery show there were paintings carrying titles like White Dinosaur, which I think
carries through right now, a similar kind of preoccupation. But I hadn't developed a
conscious idea of abstractions. I was still really wrestling with a kind of anthropomorphic
imagery. Then when I when to Rome I was exposed to all the church architecture and I
enjoyed all the labyrinthine passageways, the sort of dusty decrepitude of the whole
thing. It's probably a kind of very romantic discovery, that whole world. Prior to the trip
to Rome I had just faced the New York art worked and what was developing there. So my
trip to Rome was sort of an encounter with European history as a nightmare, you know.
CUMMINGS: All of it at once.

SMITHSON: Yes. In other words, my disposition was toward the rational, my disposition
was toward the Byzantine. But I was affected by the baroque in a certain way. These two
things kind of clashed.
CUMMINGS: All of it at once.
SMITHSON: Yes. In other words, my disposition was toward the rational, my disposition
was toward the Byzantine. But I was affected by the baroque in a certain way. These two
things kind of clashed.
CUMMINGS: Yes. But in the sense of forms and colors and images rather than the idea
that they represented?
SMITHSON: Yes, I mean I never really could believe in any kind of redemptive
situation. I was fascinated also with Gnostic heresies, Manicheism, and the dualistic
heresies of the East and how they infiltrated into the
CUMMINGS: But in what sense? - as abstractions?
SMITHSON: I think it was a kind of cosmology. I guess I was interested in some kind of
world view. I had a rather fragmented idea of what the world was about. So I guess it was
a matter of just taking all these pieces of fairly recent civilizations and piecing them
together, mainly beginning with primitive Christianity and than going on up through the
Renaissance. And then it became a matter of just working my way out from underneath
the heaps of European history to find my own origins.
CUMMINGS: So it was really the ideas rather than the rituals of any of these things?
SMITHSON: Well, I was sort of fascinated by the ritual aspect of it was well. I man the
ceremonial, almost choreographed aspect of the whole thing, you know, the grandeur
CUMMINGS: The sound and lights.
SMITHSON: There was a kind of grotesqueness that appealed to me. As I said, while I
was in Rome I was reading William Burroughs' Naked Lunch and the imagery in that
book corresponded in a way to a kind of grotesque massive accumulation of all kinds of
rejective rituals. There was something about the passage of time, the notion of the ritual
as being defunct actually interested me more, erecting those kinds of ritual situations
fascinated me.
CUMMINGS: You mean building monuments and?
SMITHSON: Yes. The way Burroughs brings in a kind of savage Mayan - Aztec imagery
to that; yet at the same time there was always an element of overt corruption surrounding
the whole thing. It was a very strange combination of influences. Mallarme and Gustave
Moreau and that kind of things was also still plaguing me.
CUMMINGS: A kind of decadence and end-of-the-century elegance.
SMITHSON: Yes. Which I felt was very much in Burroughs. So it wasn't so much a
matter of belief or test of faith or something like that. It was a kind of fascination with
these great accumulations of sculpture and labyrinthine catacombs
CUMMINGS: You mean why they were built and what the purposes what?
SMITHSON: Yes. I mean I liked the uselessness of them. And also there were these great
carvings and drapery out of rose marble and things like that with gold skeletons, you
know underneath.
CUMMINGS: There seems to be a curious kind of macabre overlay on some of these
things?
SMITHSON: Yes. I guess at that time there was. It took me a while to work out of that
preoccupation. A kind of savage splendor, you know.

CUMMINGS: What has supplanted that?

SMITHSON: Well, gradually I recognized an area of abstraction that was really rooted in
crystal structure. In fact, I guess the first piece of this sort that I did was in 1964. It was
called the Enantiomorphic Chambers. And I think that was the piece that really freed me
from all these preoccupations with history; I was dealing with grids and planes and empty
surfaces. The crystalline forms suggested mapping. And mapping.b CUMMINGS:
Mapping in what way?
SMITHSON: In other words, if we think of an abstract painting, for instance, like Agnes
Martin's, there's a certain kind of grid there that looks like a map without any countries on
it.
CUMMINGS: Oh, I see.
SMITHSON: So I began to see the grid as a kind of mental construct of physical matter,
and my concern for the physical started to grow. Right along I had always had an interest
in geology as well.
CUMMINGS: Was there a conflict of interest development there?
SMITHSON: A conflict?
CUMMINGS: Did you want to go into geology as an activity?
SMITHSON: No, I think the interest in geology sort of developed out of my perception
as an artist. It wasn't predicated on any kind of scientific need. It was aesthetic. Also the
entire history of the West was swallowed up a preoccupation with notions of prehistory
and the great prehistoric epics starting with the age of rocks and going up, you know,
through the
CUMMINGS: Right. Through all those marvelous charts with different colors.
SMITHSON: The Triassic and the Jurassic and all those different periods sort of
subsumed all the efforts of these civilizations that had interested me.
CUMMINGS: Well, what was happening just prior to the clarification of the grid system
idea? Had you continued painting? Or did you stop painting? Or were you making things
that were a combination?
SMITHSON: I sort of stopped. I did drawings actually.
CUMMINGS: What were they like?
SMITHSON: They were kind of phantasmagorical drawings of cosmological worlds
somewhat between Blake and - I'm trying to think - oh, a kind of Boschian imagery.
CUMMINGS: There were still figurative overtones?
SMITHSON: Oh, very much, yes. Very definitely. They were sort of based on iconic
situations. I think I made those drawings around 1960-61. They dealt with explicit images
like, the city; they were kind of monstrous as well, you know, like great Moloch figures.
CUMMINGS: Were they large?
SMITHSON: No, they were very small.
CUMMINGS: Done in what kind of material?
SMITHSON: Pencil and paper.
CUMMINGS: Very complicated? Very traditional?
SMITHSON: Well, they were sort of rambling. They consisted of many figures they
were sort of proto-psychedelic in a certain kind of way. They were somewhat like
cartouches. They freed me from - the whole notion anthropomorphism. I got that out of
my system, you might say.
CUMMINGS: And the grids appeared in

SMITHSON: Yes - well, it was more of a crystalline thing, more of a triangulated kind of
situation. I started using plastics. I made flat plastic paintings. I have one in the front
room that I can show you.
CUMMINGS: How did you pick plastics? Because that's shift from pencil and paper to
SMITHSON: Well, actually there was a kind of interim period there where I was just
doing mainly a kind of college writing. I did kind of writing paintings, I guess you'd call
it, but they included pasting
CUMMINGS: Just like Burroughs cut and pasted the poetry he did?
SMITHSON: Yes - well, not exactly. I would boats on a piece of wood or something like
that. There was a lot of nebulous stuff I was doing then.
CUMMINGS: Testing materials?
SMITHSON: Actually there was a show at the Castellane Gallery which I suppose sums
it all up to a great extent. For instance, I started working from diagrams. I would take like
a evolutionary chart and then paint it somewhat in a kind of Johnsian
CUMMINGS: What about this endless series of group exhibitions that you've been in
around the country over the years? Do you find them useful for you? Or are they just a
kind of exposure?
SMITHSON: At that time I thought there was a need for them. I think that there was
something developing - this was in the mid-sixties - that wasn't around before in terms of
spaces and in terms of exhibitions. The works were making greater demands on interior
spaces. The small galleries of the late fifties were giving way to large white rooms and
they seemed to be a growing thing.
CUMMINGS: But by the late sixties everybody worked out of the buildings.
SMITHSON: Yes. Well, there was always this move toward public art. But that still
seemed to be linked to large works of sculpture that would be put in plazas in front of
buildings. And I just became interested in sites I guess in a sense these sites had
something to do with entropy, that is, one dominant theme that runs through everything.
You might say my early preoccupation with the early civilizations of the West was a kind
of a fascination with the coming and going of things. And I brought that all together in
the first article that I did for Artforum which was the "Entropy and the New Monuments"
article. And I became interested in kind of low profile landscapes, the quarry or the
mining area which we call an entropic landscape, a kind of backwater or fringe area. And
so the entropy article was full of suggestion of sites external to the gallery situation.
There was all kinds of material in that article that broke down the usual confining aspect
of academic art.
CUMMINGS: Yes. Something that you buy and take home.
SMITHSON: I was also interested in a kind of suburban architecture: plain box buildings,
shopping centers, that kind of sprawl. And I think this is what fascinated me in my earlier
interest with Rome, just this kind of collection this junk heap of history. But here we are
confronted with a kind of consumer society. I know there is a sentence in "The
Monuments of Passaic" where I said, "Hasn't Passaic replaced Rome as the Eternal
City?" So that is this almost Borgesian sense of passage of time and labryinthine
confusion that has a certain kind of order. And I guess I was looking for that order, a kind
of irrational order that just sort of developed without any kind of design program.
CUMMINGS: But it becomes, in a way, a kind of altering nature doesn't it?
SMITHSON: This is lodged, I think, in the tendency toward abstraction. Books like

Abstraction and Empathy, where the tendency of the artist was to exclude the whole
problem of nature and just dwell on abstract mental images of flat planes and empty void
spaces and grids and single lines and stripes, that sort of thing, tended to exclude the
whole problem of nature. Right now I feel that I am part of nature and that nature isn't
really morally responsible. Nature has no morality.
CUMMINGS: But how do you feel a part of it? I get the feeling that you have a different
sensibility now than, say, in the late fifties.
SMITHSON: Oh, yes - well, to an extent. I just think it's extended over greater stretches
of time. In other words, it's almost as though all through this I was involved in a kind of
personal archaeology, sort of going through the layers, of, let's say, the last 2,000 years of
civilization, and going back into the Egyptian and Mayan and Aztec civilizations. I
hitchhiked to Mexico when I was about nineteen and visited and pyramids outside of
Mexico City.
CUMMINGS: Was that because you knew about them? Or you wanted to go to Mexico?
SMITHSON: I always had this urge toward all this civilized refuse around. And then I
guess the entropy article was more about a kind of built-in obsolescence. In fact I
remember I was impressed by Nabokov, who says that the future is the obsolete in
reverse. I became more and more interested in the stratifications and the layerings. I think
it had something to do with the way crystals build up too. I did a series of pieces called
Stratas. Virginia Dwan's piece called Glass Strata is eight feet long by a foot wide, and
looks like a glass staircase made out of inch-thick glass; it's very green, very dense and
kind of layered up. And my writing, I guess, proceeded that way. I thought of writing
more as material to sort of put together than as a kind of analytic searchlight, you know.
CUMMINGS: But did the writing affect the development of things that you made?
SMITHSON: The language tended to inform my structures. In other words, I guess if
there was any kind of notation it was a kind of linguistic notation. So that actually I,
together with Sol LeWitt, thought up the language shows at the Dwan Gallery. But I was
interested in language as a material entity, as something that wasn't involved in ideation
values. A lot of conceptual art becomes, you know essentially ideational.
CUMMINGS: How do you mean "material," though?
SMITHSON: Well, just a printed matter - information which has a kind of physical
presence for me. I would construct my articles the way I would construct a work.
CUMMINGS: I'm curious about that. Does it relate to philosophy? Or to semantics? Or
do you find that it relates to a more aesthetic attitude toward art?
SMITHSON: Well, I think it relates probably to a kind of physicalist or materialist view
of the world, which of course leads one into a kind of Marxian view. So that the old
idealisms of irrational philosophies began to diminish. Although I was always interested
in Borges' writings and the way he would use leftover remnants of philosophy.
CUMMINGS: When did you get interested in him?
SMITHSON: Around 1965. That kind of taking of a discarded system and using it, you
know, as a kind of armature. I guess this has always been my kind of world view.
CUMMINGS: Well, do you think it's so much the system that's the valuable aspect, or the
utilization of it?
SMITHSON: No, the system is just a convenience, you might say. It's just another
construction on the mires of things that have already been constructed. So that my
thinking, I guess, became increasingly dialectical. I was still working with the resolution

of the organic and the crystalline, and that seemed resolved in dialectics for me. And so I
created the dialectic of site and nonsite. The nonsite exists as a kind of deep threedimensional abstract map that points to a specific site on the surface of the earth. And
that's designated by a kind of mapping procedure. And these places are not destinations;
they're kind of backwaters or fringe areas.
CUMMINGS: How do you arrive at those different areas?
SMITHSON: I don't know - I guess it's just a kind of tendency toward a primordial
consciousness, a kind of tendency toward the prehistoric after digging through the
histories.
CUMMINGS: But do you work from, say, a large map? Or do you work from having
been in that part of the world?
SMITHSON: Well, a lot of the nonsites are in New Jersey. I think that those landscapes
embedded themselves in my consciousness at a very early date, so that in a sense I was
beginning to make archaeological trips into the recent past to Bayonne, New Jersey.
CUMMINGS: So in a sense it was a real place that then became abstracted to a nonsite?
SMITHSON: Yes. And which then reflected the confinement of the gallery space.
Although the nonsite designates the site, the site itself is open and really unconfined and
constantly being changed. And then the thing was a bring these two things together. And I
guess to a great extent that culminated in the Spiral Jetty. But there are other smaller
works that preceded that - the investigations in the Yucatan.
CUMMINGS: How did that come about?
SMITHSON: Here was a kind of alien world, a world that couldn't really be
comprehended on any rational level; the jungle had grown up over these vanished
civilizations. I was interested in the fringes around these areas.
CUMMINGS: What do you mean, fringes?
SMITHSON: Well, like these backwater sites again, maybe a small quarry, a burnt-out
field, a sand bank, a remote island. And I found that I was dealing not so much with the
center of things but with the peripheries. So that I became very interested in that whole
dialogue between, let's say, the circumference and the middle and how those two things
operated together.
CUMMINGS: But most of the sites are not in metropolitan areas, are they? They're
usually in the country.
SMITHSON: Most of them are in New Jersey; there's one in Bayonne, there's one in
Edgewater, on in Franklin Furnace, one in the Pine Barrens. Since I grew up in New
Jersey I would say that I was saturated with a consciousness of that place. And then,
strangely enough, I did a double nonsite in California and Nevada, so that I went from
one coast to the other. The last nonsite actually is one that involves coal and there the site
belongs to the Carboniferous Period, so it no longer exists; the site becomes completely
buried again. There's no topographical reference. It's submerged reference based on
hypothetical land formations from the Carboniferous Period. The coal comes from
somewhere in the Ohio and Kentucky area, but the site is uncertain. That was the last
nonsite; you know, that was the end of that. So I wasn't dealing with the land surfaces at
the end.
CUMMINGS: How did you develop the idea of the sites and nonsites, as opposed to
building specific objects?
SMITHSON: Well, I began to question very seriously the whole notion of Gestalt, the

thing in itself, specific objects. I began to see things in a more relational way. In other
words, I had to question - where the works were, what they were about. The very
construction of the gallery with its neutral white rooms became questionable. So I
became interested in bringing attention to the abstractness of the gallery as a room, and
yet at the same time taking into account less neutral sites, you know, sites that would in a
sense be neutralized by the gallery. So it became a preoccupation with place.
CUMMINGS: What was your relationship with the Park Place group?
SMITHSON: I did show at Park Place once with Leo Vallador and Sole LeWitt. John
Gibson was running it then. I knew him, and he was friendly with Virginia Dwan. I never
really was that involved with Park Place.
CUMMINGS: Yes. I don't identify you with that place generally.
SMITHSON: No. I never really had the kind of technological optimism that they have. I
was always questioning that.
CUMMINGS: It was an idea which didn't work?
SMITHSON: Yes. I preferred Sol LeWitt's mode of thinking. And Carl Andre's. But all
those people were in some way connected with that. Also in 1966 I did an article with
Mel Bachner on the Hayden Planetarium which, once again, was sort of an investigation
of a specific place; but not on a level of science, but in terms of discussing the actual
construction of the building, once again, an almost anthropological study of a planetarium
from the point of view of an artist.
CUMMINGS: One thing you never finished discussing was the Dallas - Fort Worth
Airport.
SMITHSON: Well, they eventually lost their contract. The piece were never built.
Although there was interest, I don't think that they fully grasped the implications of that.
I've been back there a few times since. I don't think they got out of me what they thought
they would have gotten. But it was very worthwhile for me because it got me to think
about large land areas and the dialogue between the terminal and the fringes of the
terminal - once again, between the center and the edge of things. This has been a sort of
ongoing preoccupation with me, part of the dialectic between the inner and the outer.
Text excerpted from ROBERT SMITHSON: THE COLLECTED WRITINGS, 2nd
Edition, edited by Jack Flam, The University of California Press, Berkeley and Los
Angeles, California; University of California Press, LTD. London, England; 1996
Originally published: The Writings of Robert Smithson, edited by Nancy Holt, New York,
New York
University Press, 1979
ISBN # 0-520-20385-2
above copied from: http://www.robertsmithson.com/essays/interviews.htm

Entropy And The New Monuments, Robert Smithson

On rising to my feet, and peering across the green glow of the

Desert, I perceived that the monument against which I had slept
was but one of thousands. Before me stretched long parallel
avenues, clear to the for horizon of similar broad, low pillars.
John Taine (Erick Temple Bell) "THE TIME STREAM"
Many architectural concepts found in science-fiction have nothing to do with science or
fiction, instead they suggest a new kind of monumentality which has much in common
with the aims of some of today's artists. I am thinking in particular of Donald Judd,
Robert Morris, Sol Le Witt, Dan Flavin, and of certain artists in the "Park Place Group."
The artists who build structured canvases and "wall-size" paintings, such as Will Insley,
Peter Hutchinson and Frank Stella are more indirectly related. The chrome and plastic
fabricators such as Paul Thek, Craig Kauffman, and Larry Bell are also relevant. The
works of many of these artists celebrate what Flavin calls "inactive history" or what the
physicist calls "entropy" or "energy-drain." They bring to mind the Ice Age rather than
the Golden Age, and would most likely confirm Vladimir Nabokov's observation that,
"The future is but the obsolete in reverse." In a rather round-about way, many of the
artists have provided a visible analog for the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which
extrapolates the range of entropy by telling us energy is more easily lost than obtained,
and that in the ultimate future the whole universe will burn out and be transformed into
an all-encompassing sameness. The "blackout" that covered the Northeastern states
recently, may be seen as a preview of such a future. Far from creating a mood of dread,
the power failure created a mood of euphoria. An almost cosmic joy swept over all the
darkened cities. Why people felt that way may never be answered.
Instead of causing us to remember the past like the old monuments, the new monuments
seem to cause us to forget the future. Instead of being made of natural materials, such as
marble, granite, plastic, chrome, and electric light. They are not built for the ages, but
rather against the ages. They are involved in a systematic reduction of time down to
fractions of seconds, rather than in representing the long spaces of centuries. Both past
and future are placed into an objective present. This kind of time has little or no space; it
is stationary and without movement, it is going nowhere, it is anti-Newtonian, as well as
being instant, and is against the wheels of the time-clock. Flavin makes "instantmonuments"; parts for "Monument 7 for V.Tatlin" were purchased at the Radar
Fluorescent Company. The "instant" makes Flavin's work a part of time rather than space.
Time becomes a place minus motion. If time is a place, then innumerable places are
possible. Flavin turns gallery-space into gallery time. Time breaks down into many times.
Rather than saying, "What time is it?" we should say, "Where is the time?" "Where is
Flavin's Monuments?" The objective present at time seems missing. A million years is
contained in a second, yet we tend to forget the second as soon as it happens. Flavin's
destruction of classical time and space is based on an entirely new notion of the structure
of matter.
Time as decay or biological evolution is eliminated by many of these artists; this
displacement allows the eye to see time as an infinity of surfaces or structures, or both

combined, without the burden of what Roland Barthes calls the "undifferentiated mass of
organic sanction." The concealed surfaces in some of Judd's works are hideouts for time.
His art vanishes into a series of motionless intervals based on an order of solids. Robert
Grosvenor's suspended structural surfaces cancel out the notion of weight, and reverse the
orientation of matter within the solid-state of inorganic time. This reduction of time all
but annihilates the value of the notion of "action" in art.
Mistakes and dead-ends often mean more to these artists than any proven problem.
Questions about form seem as hopelessly inadequate as questions about content.
Problems are unnecessary because problems represent values that create the illusion of
purpose. The problem of "form vs. content," for example, leads to illusionistic dialectics
that become, at best, formalist reactions against content. Reaction follows action, till
finally be artist gets "tired" and settles for a monumental inaction. The action-reaction
syndrome is merely the leftovers of what Marshall McLuhan calls the hypnotic state of
mechanism. According to him, an electrical numbing or torpor has replaced the
mechanical breakdown. The awareness of the ultimate collapse of both mechanical and
electrical technology has motivated these artists to built their monuments to or against
entropy. As LeWitt points out, "I am not interested in idealizing technology." LeWitt
might prefer the world "sub-monumental," especially if we consider his proposal to put a
piece of Cellini's jewelry into a block of cement. An almost alchemic fascination with
inert properties is his concern here, but LeWitt prefers to turn gold into cement.
The much denigrated architecture of Park Avenue known as "cold glass boxes," along
with the Manneristic modernity of Philip Johnson, have helped to foster the entropic
mood. The Union Carbide building best typifies such architectural entropy. In its vast
lobby one may see an exhibition called "The Future." It offers the purposeless
"educational" displays of Will Burtin, "internationally acclaimed for his threedimensional designs," which portray "Atomic Energy in Action." If ever there was an
example of action in entropy, this is it. The action is frozen into an array of plastic and
neon, and enhanced by the sound of Muzak faintly playing in the background. At a
certain time of day, you may also see a movie called "The Petrified River." A nine-foot
vacuum-formed blue plexiglass globe is a model of a uranium atom - "ten million trillion
trillion times the size of the actual atom. "Lights on the ends of flexible steel rods are
whipped about in the globe. Parts of the "underground" movie, "The Queen of Sheba
Meets the Atom Man," were filmed in this exhibition hall. Taylor Mead creeps around in
the film like a loony sleepwalker, and licks the plastic models depicting "chain-reaction."
The sleek walls and high ceilings give the place an uncanny tomb-like atmosphere. There
is something irresistible about such a place, something grand and empty.
This kind of architecture without "value of qualities," is, if anything, a fact. From this
"undistinguished" run of architecture, as Flavin calls it, we gain a clear perception of
physical reality free from the general claims of "purity and idealism." Only commodities
can ford such illusionist values; for instance, soap is 99 44/100% pure, beer has more
spirit in it, and dog food is ideal; all and all this mean such values are worthless. As the
cloying effect of such "values" wears off, one perceives the "facts" of the outer edge, the

flat surface, the banal, the empty, the cool, bland after blank; in other words, that
infinitesimal condition known as entropy.
The slurbs, urban sprawl, and the infinite number, of housing developments of the
postwar boom have contributed to the architecture of entropy. Judd, in a review of a show
by Roy Lichtenstein, speaks of "a lot of visible things" that are "bland and empty," such
as "most modern commercial buildings, new Colonial stores, lobbies, most houses, most
clothing, sheet aluminum, and plastic with leather texture, the formica like wood, the cute
and modern patterns inside jets and drugstores." Near the super highways surrounding the
city, we find the discount centers and cut-rate stores with their sterile facades. On the
inside of such places are maze-like counters with piles of neatly stacked merchandise;
rank on rank it goes into a consumer oblivion. The lugubrious complexity of these
interiors has brought to art a new consciousness of the vapid and the dull. But this very
vapidity and dullness is what inspires may of the more gifted artists. Morris has distilled
many such dull facts and made them into monumental artifices of "idea." In such a way,
Morris has restored the idea of immortality by accepting it as a fact of emptiness. His
work conveys a mood of vast immobility; he has even gone so far as to fashion a bra out
of lead. (This he has made for his dance partner, Yvonne Rainer, to help stop the motion
in her dancer.)

This kind of nullification has re-created Kasimir Malevich's "non-objective world,"

where there are no more "likenesses of reality, no idealistic images, nothing but a desert!"
But for many of today's artists this "desert" is a "City of the Future" made of null
structures and surfaces. This "City" performs no natural function, it simply exists
between mind and matter, detached from both, representing neither. It is, in fact, devoid
of all classical ideals of space and process. It is brought into focus by a strict condition of
perception, rather than by any expressive or emotive means. Perception as a deprivation
of action and reaction brings to the mind the desolate, but exquisite, surface-structures of
the empty "box" or "lattice." As action decreases, the clarity of such surface-structures
increases. This is evident in art when all representations of action pass into oblivion. At
this stage, lethargy is elevated to the most glorious magnitude. In Damon Knight's Sci-fi
novel, "Beyond the Barrier," he describes in a phenomenological manner just such
surface-structures: "Part of the scene before them seemed to expand. Where one of the
flotation machines had been there was a dim lattice of crystals, growing more shadowy
and insubstational as it swelled; then darkness; then a dazzle of faint prismatic light-tiny
complexes in a vast three-dimensional array, growing steadily bigger." This description
has none of the "values" of the naturalistic "literary" novel, it is crystalline, and of the
mind of virtue of being outside of unconscious action. This very well could be an
inchoate concept for a work by Judd, LeWitt, Flavin, or Insley.
It seems that beyond the barrier, there are only more barriers. Insley's "Night Wall" is
both a grid and a blockade; it offers no escape. Flavin's fluorescent lights all but prevent
prolonged viewing; ultimately, there is nothing to see. Judd turns the logic of set theory

into block-like facades. These facades hide nothing but the wall they hang on.
LeWitt's first one-man show at the now defunct Daniel's Gallery presented a rather uncompromising group of monumental "obstructions". Many people were "left cold" by
them, or found their finish "too dreary." These obstructions stood as visible clues of the
future. A future of humdrum practicality in the shape of standardized office buildings
modeled after Emery Roth; in other words, a jerry-built future, a feigned future, an ersatz
future very much like the one depicted in the movie "The Tenth Victim." LeWitt's show
has helped to neutralize the myth of progress. It has also corroborated Wylie Sypher's
insight that "Entropy is evolution in reverse." LeWitt's work carries with it the
brainwashed mood of Jasper Johns' "Tennyson," Flavin's "Coran's Broadway Flesh," and
Stella's "The Marriage of Reason and Squalor."

Morris also discloses this backward looking future with "erections" and "vaginas"
embedded in lead. They tend to illustrate fossilized sexuality by mixing the time state or
ideas of "1984" with "One Million B.C." Claes Oldenburg achieves a similar conjunction
of time with his prehistoric "ray-guns." This sense of extreme past and future has its
partial origin with the Museum of Natural History; there the "cave-man" and the "spaceman" may be seen under one roof. In this museum all "nature" is stuffed and
interchangeable.
This City (I thought) is so horrible that its mere existence and perdurance, though in the
midst of a secret, contaminates the past and future and in some way even jeopardizes the
stars.
Jorge Luis Borges, The Immortal
Tromaderians consider anything blue extremely pornographic.
Peter Hutchinson, Extraterrestrial Art
"Lust for Life" is the story of the great sensualist painter Vincent Van Gogh, who bounds
through the pages and passions of Irving Stone's perennial bestseller. And this is the Van
Gogh overwhelmingly brought before us by Kirk Douglas in M-G-M's film version, shot
in Cinemascope and a sun-burst of color on the actual sites of Van Gogh's struggles to
feel feelings never felt before.
Promotion Copy, quoted in
Vincent Van Gogh-The Big Picture, John Mulligan
Unlike the hyper-prosaism of Morris, Flavin, LeWitt, and Judd, the works of Thek,
Kauffman, and Bell convey a hyper-opulence. Thek's sadistic geometry is made out of
simulated hunks of torn flesh. Bloody meat in the shape of a birthday cake is contained
under a pyramidal chrome framework-it has stainless steel candies in it. Tubes for

drinking "blood cocktails" are inserted into some of his painful objects. Thek achieves a
putrid finesse, not unlike that disclosed in William S. Burroughs' Nova Express; "Flesh
juice in festering spines of terminal sewage - Run down of Spain and 42nd St. to the fish
city of marble flesh grafts." The vacuum-formed plastic reliefs by Kanuffman have a pale
Justrous surface presence. A lumpy sexuality is implicit in the transparent forms he
employs. Something of the primal nightmare exists in both Thek and Kauffman. The
slippery bubbling ooze from the movie "The Blob" creeps into one's mind. Both Thek and
Kauffman have arrested the movement of blob-type matter. The mirrored reflections in
Bell's work are contaminations of a more elusive order. His chrome-plated lattices
contain a Pythagorean chaos. Reflections reflect reflections in an excessive but pristine
manner.
Some artists see an infinite number of movies. Hutchinson, for instance, instead of going
to the country to study nature, will go to see a movie on 42nd Street, like "Horror at Party
Beach" two or three times times and contemplate it for weeks on end. The movies give a
ritual pattern to the lives of many artists, and this induces a kind of "low-budget"
mysticism, which keeps them in a perpetual trance. The "blood and guts" of horror
movies provides for their "organic needs." Serious movies are too heavy on "values," and
so are dismissed by the more perceptive artists. Such artists have X-ray eyes, and can see
through all of that cloddish substance that passes for "the deep and profound" these days.
Some landmarks of Sci-fic are; Creation of the Humanoids (Andy Warhol's favorite
movie), The Plant of the Vampires (movie about entropy), The Thing, The Day the Earth
Stood Still, The Time Machine, Village of the Giants (first teen-science film), War of the
Worlds (interesting metallic machine). Some landmarks of Horror are: Creature from the
Black Lagoon, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus (very
sickening), Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Artists that like Horror tend toward
the emotive, while artists who like Sci-fic tend toward the perceptive.
Even more of a mental conditioner than the movies, is the actual movie house. Especially
the "moderne" interior architecture of the new "art-houses" like Cinema I and II, 57th St.
Lincoln Art Theatre, the Coronet, Cinema Rendezvous, the Cinema Village, the Baronet,
the Festival, and the Murray Hill. Instead of the crummy baroque and rococo of the 42nd
Street theaters, we get the "padded cell" look, the "stripped down" look, or the "goodtaste" look. The physical confinement of the dark box-like room indirectly conditions the
mind. Even the place where you buy your ticket is called a "box-office." The lobbies are
usually full of box-type fixtures like the soda-machine, the candy counter, and telephone
booths. Time is compressed or stopped inside the movie house, and this in turn provides
the viewer with an entropic condition. To spend time in a movie house is to make a "hole"
in one's life.
Recently, there has been an attempt to formulate an analog between "communication
theory" and the ideas of physics in terms of entropy. As A.J. Ayer has pointed out, not
only do we communicate what is true, but also what is false. Often the false has a greater
"reality" than the true. Therefore, it seems that all information, and that includes anything
that is visible, has its entropic side. Falseness, as an ultimate, is inextricably a part of

entropy, and this falseness is devoid of moral implications.

Like the movies and the movie houses, "printed-matter" plays an entropic role. Maps,
charts, advertisements, art books, science books, money, architectural plans, math books,
graphs, diagrams, newspapers, comics, booklets and pamphlets from industrial
companies are all treated the same. Judd has a labyrinthine collection of "printed-matter,"
some of which he "looks" at rather than reads. By this means he might take a math
equation, and by sight, translate it into a metal progression of structured intervals. In this
context, it is best to think of "printed-matter" the way Borges thinks of it, as "The
universe (which others call the library)," or like McLuhan's "Gutenberg Galaxy," in other
wards as an unending "library of Babel." This condition is reflected in Henry Geldzahler's
remark, "I'm doing a book on European painting since 1900 - a drugstore book. Dell is
printing 100,000 copis." Too bad Dell isn't printing 100,000,000,000.
Judd's sensibility encompasses geology, and mineralogy. He has an excellent collection of
geologic maps, which he scans from time to time, not for their intended content, but for
their exquisite structure precision. His own writing style has much in common with the
terse, factual descriptions one finds in his collection of geology books. Compare this
passage from one of his books, "The Geology of Jackson Country, Missouri" to his own
criticism: "The interval between the Cement City and the Raytown limestones varies
from 10 to 23 feet. The lower three-quarters is an irregularly colored green, blue, red, and
yellow shale which at some places contains calcareous concretions." And now an excerpt
from Judd's review of Dan Flavin's first one-man show: "The light is bluntly and
awkwardly stuck on the square block; it protrudes awkwardly. The red in the green
attached to a lighter green is odd as color, and as a sequence."
I like particularly the way in which he (Robert Morris) subverts the "purist" reading one
would normally give to such geometric arrangement.
Barbara Rose, "Looking at American Sculpture,"
Artforum, February 1965
"Point Triangle Gray" Faith sang, waving at an intersection ahead.
"That's the medical section. Tests and diseases, injuries and-" she giggled naughtily"Supply depot for the Body Bank."
J. Williamson & F. Pohl, The Reefs of Space
Make a
sick
picture
or a sick
Readymade
Marcel Duchamp, from the Green Box
May of Morris's wall structures are direct homages to Duchamp; they deploy facsimiles
of ready-mades within high Manneristic frames of reference. Extensions of the Cartesian

mind are carried to the most attenuated points of no return by a systematic annulment of
movement. Descartes' cosmology is brought to a standstill. Movement in Morris's work is
engulfed by many types of stillness: delayed action, inadequate energy, general slowness,
an all over sluggishness. The ready-made are, in fact, puns on the Bergsonian concept of
"creative evolution" with its idea of "ready made categories." Says Bergson. "The history
of philosophy is there, however, and shows us the eternal conflict of systems, the
impossibility of satisfactorily getting the real into the ready-made garments of our readymade concepts, the necessity of making to measure." But it is just such an "impossibility"
that appeals to Duchamp and Morris. With this in mind, Morris's monstrous "ideal"
structures are inconsequential or uncertain ready-mades, which are definitely outside of
Bergson's concept of creative evolution. If anything, they are uncreative in the manner
of the 16th-centuary alchemist-philosopher-artist. C.G. Jung's writing on "The Materia
Prima" offers many clues in this direction. Alchemy, it seems, is a concrete way of
dealing with sameness. In this context, Duchamp and Morris may be seen as artificers of
the uncreative or decreators of the Real. They are like the 16th-century artist
Parmigianino, who "gave up painting to become an alchemist." This might help us to
understand both Judd's and Morris's interest in geology. It is also well to remember that
Parmigianino and Duchamp both painted "Virgins," when they did paint. Sydney
Freedberg observed in the work of Parmigianino, if not in fact, at least in idea.
The impure-purist surface is very much in evidence in the new abstract art, but I think
Stella was the first to employ it. The iridescent purple, green, and silver surfaces that
followed Stella's all-black works, conveyed a rather lurid presence through their
symmetries. An exacerbated, gorgeous color gives a chilling bite to the purist context.
Immaculate beginnings are subsumed by glittering ends. Like Mallarme's "Herodiade,"
these surfaces disclose a "cold scintillation"; they seem to "love the horror of being
virgin." These inaccessible surfaces deny any definite meaning in the most definite way.
Here beauty is allied with the repulsive in accordance with highly rigid rules. One's sight
is mentally abolished by Stella's hermetic kingdom of surfaces.
Stella's immaculate but sparkling symmetries are reflected in John Chamberlain's
"Kandy-Kolored" reliefs. "They are extreme, snazzy, elegant in the wrong way,
immoderate," says Judd. "It is also interesting that the surfaces of the reliefs are definitely
surfaces." Chamberlain's use of chrome and metalflake brings to mind the surfaces in
Scorpio Rising, Kenneth Anger's many-faceted horoscopic film about constellated
motorcyclists. Both Chamberlain and Anger have developed what could be called
California surfaces. In a review of the film, Ken Kelman speaks of "the ultimate
reduction of ultimate experience to brilliant chromatic surface; Thanatos in Chrome artificial death" in a way that evokes Chamberlain's giddy reliefs.
Judd bought a purple Florite crystal at the World's Fair. He likes the "uncreated" look of it
and is impenetrable color. John Chamberlain, upon learning of Judd's interest in such a
color, suggested he go to the Harley Davidson Motorcycle Company and get some "HiFi" lacquer. Judd did this and "self" sprayed some of his works with it. This transparent
lacquer allows the "star-spangled" marking on the iron sheet to come through, making the
surfaces look mineral hard. His standard crystallographic boxes come in a variety of

surfaces from Saturnian orchid-plus to wrinkle-textured blues and greens - alchemy from
the year 2000.
But I think nevetheless, we do not feel altogether comfortable at
being forced to say that the crystal is the seat of grater disorder
than the parent liquid.
P.W. Bridgman, The Nature Of Thermodynamics

The formal logic of crystallography, apart form any preconceived scientific content,
relates to Judd's art in an abstract way. If we define an abstract crystal as a solid bounded
by symmetrically grouped surfaces, which have definite relationship to a set of imaginary
lines called axes, then we have a clue to the structure of Judd's "pink plexiglas box."
Inside the box five wires are strung in a way that resembles very strongly the
crystallographic idea of axes. Yet, Judd's axes don't correspond with any natural crystal.
The entire box would collapse without the tension of the axes. The five axes polarize
between two stainless steel sides. The inside surfaces of the steel sides are visible through
the transparent plexiglas. Every surface is within full view, which makes to inside and
outside equally important. Like many of Judd's works, the separate parts of the box are
held together by tension and balance, both of which add to its static existence.
Like energy, entropy is in the first instance a measure of something that happens when
one state is transformed into another.
P.W. Bridgman, The Nature Of Thermodynamics
The Park Place Group (Mark di Suvero, Dean Fleming, Peter Forakis, Robert Grosvenort,
Anthony Magar, Tamara Melcher, Forrest Myers, Ed Ruda, and Leo Valledor) exists in a
space-time monastic order, where they research a cosmos modeled after Einstein. They
have also permuted the "models" of R. Buckminster Fuller's "vectoral" geometry in the
most astounding manner.
Fuller was told by certain scientists that the fourth dimension was "ha-ha," in other
words, that it is laughter. Perhaps it is. It is well to remember that the seemingly topsyturvy world revealed by Lewis Carroll did spring from a well ordered mathematical mind.
Martin Gardner in his "The Annotated Alice," notes that in science-fiction story "Mimsy
Wwere the Borogroves" the author Lewis Padgett present the Jabbetwocky as a secret
language from the future, and that if rightly understood, it would explain a way of
entering the fourth dimension. The highly ordered non-sense of Carroll, suggests that
there might be a similar way to treat laughter. Laughter is in a sense of kind of entropic
"verbalization." How could artists translate this verbal entropy, that is "ha-ha," into
"solid-models"? Some of the Park Place artists seem seem to be researching this
"curious" condition. The order and disorder of the fourth dimension could be set between
laughter and crystal-structural, as a device for unlimited speculation.
Let us now define the different type of Generalized Laughter, according to the six main

crystal systems: the ordinary laugh is cubic or square (Isometric), the chuckle is a triangle
or pyramid (Tetragonal), the giggle is a hexagon or rhomboid (Hexagonal), the titter is
prismatic (Orthorhombic), the snicker is oblique (Monoclinic), the guffaw is asymmetric
(Triclinic). To be sure this definition only scratches the surface, but
I think it will do for the present. If we apply this "ha-ha-crystal" concept to the
monumental models being produced by some of the artists in the Park Place group, we
might begin to understand the fourth-dimensional nature of their work. From here on in,
we must not think of Laughter as a laughing matter, but rather as the "matter-of-laughs."
Solid-state hilarity, as manifest through the "ha-ha-crystal" concept, appears in a patently
anthropomorphic way in Alice in Wonderland, as the Cheshire Cat. Says Alice to the Cat,
"you make one quite giddy!" This anthropomorphic element has much in common with
impure-purist art. The "grin without a cat" indicates "laugh-matter and/or anti-matter,"
not to mention something approaching a solid giddiness. Giddiness of this sort is
reflected in Myers' plastic contraptions. Myers sets hard titter against soft snickers, and
puts hard guffaws onto soft giggles. A fit of silliness becomes a rhomboid, a high-pitched
discharge of mirth becomes prismatic, a happy outburst becomes a cube, and so forth.
You observed them at work in null time. From your description
of what they were about, it seems apparent that they were erecting
a transfer portal linking the null level with its corresponding aspect
of normal entropy - in other words, with the normal continuum.
Keith Laumer, The Other Side of Time
Through direct observation, rather than explanation, many of these artists have developed
way to treat the theory of sets, vectoral geometry, topology, and crystal structure. The
diagrammatic methods of the "new math" have led to a curious phenomenon. Namely, a
more visible match that is unconcerned with size or shape in any metrical sense. The
"paper and pencil operations" that deal with the invisible structure of nature have found
new models, and have been combined with some of the more fragile states of minds.
Math is dislocated by the artists in a personal way, so that it becomes "Manneristic" or
separated from its original meaning. This dislocation of meaning provides the artist with
what could be called "synthetic math." Charles Pierce (1839-1914), the American
philosopher, speaks of "graphs" that would "put before us moving pictures of though."
(See Martin Gardner's Logic Machines and Diagrams.) This synthetic math is reflected in
Duchamp's "measured" pieces of fallen threads, "Three Standard Stoppages," Judd's
sequential structured surfaces, Valledor's "fourth dimensional" color vectors, Grosvenor's
hypervolumes in hyperspace, and di Suvero's demolitions of space-time. These artists
face the possibility of other dimensions, with a new kind of sight.
from Unpublished Writings in Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, edited by Jack
Flam, published University of California Press, Berkeley, California, 2nd Edition 1996
copied from: http://www.robertsmithson.com/essays/entropy_and.htm

Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson (January 2, 1938July 20, 1973) was an American artist famous for his
land art.
Smithson was born in Passaic, New Jersey and studied painting and drawing in New York
City at the Art Students League of New York. His early exhibited artworks were collage
works influenced by "homoerotic drawings and clippings from beefcake magazines"
(Kimmelman 2005), science fiction, and early Pop Art. He primarily identified himself as
a painter during this time, but after a three year rest from the art world, Smithson
emerged in 1964 as a proponent of the then-fashionable minimalism. His new work
abandoned the preoccupation with the body that had been common in his earlier work.
Instead he began to use glass sheet and neon lighting tubes to explore visual refraction
and mirroring, in particular the sculpture Enantiomorphic Chambers.
Crystalline structures and the concept of entropy became of particular interest to him, and
informed a number of sculptures completed during this period, including Alogon 2.
Smithson became affiliated with artists who were identified with the minimalist or
Primary Structures movement, such as Nancy Holt (whom he married), Robert Morris
and Sol Lewitt. As a writer, Smithson was interested in applying mathematical
impersonality to art that he outlined in essays and reviews for Arts Magazine and
Artforum and for a period was better known as a critic than as an artist. Some of
Smithson's later writings recovered 18th- and 19th-century conceptions of landscape
architecture which influenced the pivotal earthwork explorations which characterized his
later work. He eventually joined the Dwan Gallery, whose owner Virginia Dwan was an
enthusiastic supporter of his work.
In 1967 Smithson began exploring industrial areas around New Jersey and was fascinated
by the sight of dump trucks excavating tons of earth and rock that he described in an
essay as the equivalents of the monuments of antiquity. This resulted in the series of 'nonsites' in which earth and rocks collected from a specific area are installed in the gallery as
sculptures, often combined with mirrors or glass. In September 1968, Smithson published
the essay "A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects" in Artforum that promoted the
work of the first wave of land art artist and in 1969 he began producing land art pieces to
further explore concepts gained from his readings of William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard,
and George Kubler.
As well as works of art, Smithson produced a good deal of theoretical and critical
writing, including the 2D paper work A Heap of Language, which sought to show how
writing might become an artwork. In his essay "Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the
Yucatan" (Smithson 1969), Smithson documents a series of temporary sculptures made
with mirrors at particular locations around the Yucatan peninsula. Part travelogue, part
critical rumination, the article highlights Smithson's concern with the temporal as a

cornerstone of his work.

Smithson's interest in the temporal is explored in his writings in part through the recovery
of the ideas of the picturesque. His essay "Frederick Law Olmsted and the Dialectical
Landscape" was written in 1973 after Smithson had seen an exposition by Elizabeth
Bartlow at the Whitney Museum called Frederick Law Olmsteds New York as the
cultural and temporal context for the creation of his late-19th-century design for Central
Park. In examining the photographs of the land set aside to become Central Park,
Smithson saw the barren landscape that had been degraded by humans before Olmsted
constructed the complex naturalistic landscape that was viscerally apparent to New
Yorkers in the 1970s. Smithson was interested in challenging the prevalent conception of
Central Park as an outdated 19th-century Picturesque aesthetic in landscape architecture
that had a static relationship within the continuously evolving urban fabric of New York
City. In studying the writings of 18th- and 19th-century Picturesque treatise writers
Gilpin, Price, Knight and Whately, Smithson recovers issues of site specificity and human
intervention as dialectic landscape layers, experiential multiplicity, and the value of
deformations manifest in the Picturesque landscape.
Smithson further implies in this essay that what distinguishes the Picturesque is that it is
based on real land (Smithson 1996, p. 160). For Smithson, a park exists as a process of
ongoing relationships existing in a physical region (Smithson 1996, p. 160). Smithson
was interested in Central Park as a landscape which by the 1970s had weathered and
grown as Olmsteds creation, but was layered with new evidence of human intervention.
While Smithson did not find beauty in the evidence of abuse and neglect, he did see the
state of things as demonstrative of the continually transforming relationships between
man and landscape. In his proposal to make process art out of the dredging of The Pond,
Smithson sought to insert himself into the dynamic evolution of the park (Smithson 1996,
p. 170).
Smithson became particularly interested in the notion of deformities within the spectrum
of anti-aesthetic dynamic relationships which he saw present in the Picturesque
landscape. He claimed, the best sites for earth art are sites that have been disrupted by
industry, reckless urbanization, or natures own devastation (Flam 165). While in earlier
18th-century formal characterizations of the pastoral and the sublime, something like a
gash in the ground if encountered by a leveling improver, as described by Price,
would have been smoothed over and the whole composition returned to a more
aesthetically pleasing contour (Smithson 1996, p. 159).
For Smithson, however, it was not necessary that the deformation become a visual aspect
of a landscape; by his anti-formalist logic, more important was the temporal scar worked
over by natural or human intervention. He saw parallels to Olmsted's Central Park as a
sylvan green overlay on the depleted landscape that preceded his Central Park
(Smithson 1996, p. 158). Defending himself against allegations that he and other earth
artists cut and gouge the land like Army engineers, Smithson, in his own essay, charges
that one of such opinions failed to recognize the possibility of a direct organic

manipulation of the land.. and would turn his back on the contradictions that inhabit
our landscapes (Smithson 1996, p. 163).
In revisiting the 18th- and early 19th-century treatises of the Picturesque, which Olmsted
interpreted in his practice, Smithson exposes threads of an anti-aesthetic anti-formalist
logic and a theoretical framework of the Picturesque that addressed the dialectic between
the physical landscape and its temporal context. By re-interpreting and re-valuing these
treatises, Smithson was able to broaden the temporal and intellectual context for his own
work, and to offer renewed meaning for Central Park as an important work of modern art
and landscape architecture.
Other theoretical writings explore the relationship of a piece of art to its environment,
from which he developed his concept of sites and non-sites. A site was a work located in
a specific outdoor location, while a non-site was a work which could be displayed in any
suitable space, such as an art gallery. Spiral Jetty is an example of a sited work, while
Smithson's non-site pieces frequently consist of photographs of a particular location,
often exhibited alongside some material (such as stones or soil) removed from that
location.
The journeys he undertook were central to his practice as an artist, and his non-site
sculptures often included maps and aerial photos of a particular location, as well as the
geological artifacts displaced from those sites. In 1970 at Kent State University, Smithson
created Partially Buried Woodshed to illustrate geological time consuming human history.
His most famous work is Spiral Jetty (1970), a 1500-foot long spiral-shaped jetty
extending into the Great Salt Lake in Utah constructed from rocks, earth, salt and red
algae. It was entirely submerged by rising lake waters for several years, but has since reemerged.
On July 20, 1973, Smithson died in a plane crash, while surveying sites for his work
Amarillo Ramp in Texas. Despite his early death, and relatively few surviving major
works, Smithson has a cult following amongst many contemporary artists. In recent
years, Tacita Dean, Sam Durant, Lee Ranaldo, Vik Muniz and Mike Nelson have all made
homages to Smithson's works.
References:
* Busch, Julia M. (1974), A Decade of Sculpture: the New Media in the 1960s,
Philadelphia: The Art Alliance Press, OCLC 804815, ISBN 0-87982-007-1.
* Kimmelman, Michael (2005-06-24), "Sculpture From the Earth, But Never Limited by
It", The New York Times, . Retrieved 2 June 2007.
* Smithson, Robert (1969), "Incidents of mirror-travel in the Yucatan", Artforum VIII (1),
ISSN 0004-3532 OCLC 1514329.
* Smithson, Robert (1996), Flam, Jack D., ed., Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings,
Berkeley: University of California Press, OCLC 32853450.
External links:
Robert Smithson

http://www.robertsmithson.com/
Pictures of Robert Smithson's ''Spiral Jetty''
http://scenicutah.com/spiral-jetty/robertsmithson.php
Robert Smithson exhibition at [[The Renaissance Society]], 1976]
http://renaissancesociety.org/site/Exhibitions/Intro.171.0.0.0.0.html
Smithson Sightings] Short essay on Smithson by Timothy Don of ''3 Quarks Daily''
http://3quarksdaily.com/
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2005/07/negotiations_4_.html

The Death of Piety, Ian Hamilton Finlay in conversation with Nagy

Rashwan
Landscape artist, poet, sculptor, and painter Ian Hamilton Finlay was born in 1925 in
Nassau, Bahamas, and returned to Scotland as a child. After a childhood inflected by
poverty in Glasgow he left school at thirteen with the outbreak of war when he was
evacuated to the Orkneys. Later he served in the army and saw service in Germany. He
started his artistic career in conventional poetry and short story formats in his books The
Sea Bed and Other Stories (1958), The Dancers Inherit the Party (1960), and Glasgow
Beasts (1962). Although his early work was admired in America by such poets as Robert
Creeley, Robert Duncan and Lorine Niedecker, it was not well received in Scotland. His
pioneer contribution to the international Concrete Poetry Movement in the 1960s, in such
works as Rapel (1963) and Canal Strip 3 and 4 (1964), has earned him the title
Scotlands greatest concrete poet. From the late 1960s to the present, Finlays art, has
re-invented itself in the whole three-dimensional verbal / visual world of architectural
installations, paintings, poster poems, and stone hewn pieces. He has produced an
enormous amount of work exhibited around the world from the Tate Gallery to the Kller
Mller Museum in Holland, the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and The Eric Fabre
Gallery in Paris.
But he is best known for his transformation of his farmhouse at Lanark, near Edinburgh,
Scotland, which he started in 1966. The estate is a miniature republic of symbolic
sculptures, temples, and conceptual artistic pieces woven into the fabric of his gardens
flowers and water. Finlay named it Little Sparta.
Experimenting in the realms of the composite artistic forms and materials, Finlays art
enacts a process of multi-layered aesthetic symbolisation of history and mythology, of
nature and culture; a process of collaboration and search for ever more artistic
possibilities embodying his contemplative moral and aesthetic reflections. It is not a
question of generic identity and textual or contextual ingenuity that stimulates ones
curiosity and draws ones attention to Finlays work. Nor is it a question of ideals,
reflecting upon the perfectionist, almost romantic, conclusions he draws about his
cultures increasing secularization and lake of piety. For me, the strength of his works
particularity lies in its extraordinary ability to interrogate fundamental concepts of artistic

articulation while proving itself both politically and culturally neither classical nor
traditional as Finlay himself declares but both Sublime, and decidedly contemporary.
Within the realm of transcendent values and thoughts, Finlays aesthetic articulates a
critical distance of philosophical contemplation and reflections, and within the realm of
history and mythology his artistic compositions diminish allusionist and metaphoric
distances between references and symbolic connotations. In both, the presence and the
absence of particular abstract distances, Finlays aesthetic invents its own reality and its
own realism.
Indeed, his break with the discursive linear poetry in his first collection of concrete
poetry Rapel (1963) was followed by another shift from concrete poetrys paginated
limits into the wider horizons of the land, the sea, and the literally structured word.
Finlays work reflects those moments of hidden but established individuality which
articulates postmodernitys concern for undermining what one American poet terms the
fallacy of the poetic I [Note 1], and what Finlay himself calls poetic self-extensions.
[Note 2] His aesthetic seems more akin to that Multi-media, inter-discoursial spirit we so
often associate with post-modern sensibility than to the classical cultural idioms and
axioms that he so readily feels inhabiting.
Such is the status of a composer as he himself comments to whom materials of
composition is neither here nor there, and to whom the purpose of composition is
always to create the beautiful.
This interview took place in Finlays house; Little Sparta (Stonypath), Dunsyre, Lanark,
Scotland, on April 12th, 1996.
Nagy Rashwan

Nagy Rashwan: Perhaps I can start by asking you: How would you define your present
relationship with Concrete Poetry now?
Finlay: As a friendly one. I would still like to write concrete poems, but I can only do it
sometimes. For me concrete poetry was a particular way of using language which came
out of a particular feeling , and I dont have control over whether this feeling is in me or
not. But if it is in me, I am very happy to write concrete poetry. I dont feel it is in any
way over for me. But I can only write what the muse allows me to write. I cannot choose,
I can only do what I am given, and I feel pleased when I feel close to concrete poetry
still.
At a specific stage of your career, say from the early sixties till the early seventies, you
were almost completely identified as a concrete poet. Was concrete poetry just one artistic
possibility that you felt to be available then?

It was never for me an academic question. I just had this curious experience that I
couldnt any longer continue with the way I had been writing. I felt great problems about
how to put words together in the simplest way. At that time I made little toys out of
cardboard and wood very simple ones. I really wanted to write concrete poetry but I
didnt know what it was I had never heard of it. Latter when I saw an anthology of
Brazilian concrete poetry I was very surprised because it was just what I had been talking
about and there it was. This was a confirming experience. At that time I was
completely engrossed in concrete poetry, and I suppose I didnt approve of people writing
poetry that was not concrete. But of course concrete poetry was much disapproved of
you were much criticised for doing it. Also many people thought they were writing
concrete poetry when they werent really writing concrete poetry. Concrete poetry came
out of a particular kind of experience, which in some way was being shared by different
individuals all over the world one of those inexplicable things. However, it was
somehow spoilt a bit by becoming fashionable, though it was never accepted. In a way,
becoming fashionable spoilt it for me, I think.
The point is that I felt that the way I had written, I couldnt continue with any more. It
was a big mystery for me why I felt I couldnt put the words together the way I was
used to but I felt there must be some other way of putting the words together, and this
for me was concrete poetry I didnt want to do anything else and couldnt imagine
doing anything else. But it was never an intellectual academic question for me it was
like an intuition; a deep feeling which was quite strange. I didnt know where it came
from, or what it was it was a longing of some sort.
How about latter development in the Brazilian concrete poetry, for instance, Augusto
DeCamposs Popcrete poetry, and Decio Pignataris and Luiz Angelo Pintos Semiotic
poetry ?
I didnt approve of de Camposs Popcrete at all I thought it was very wicked. As for
Pignataris Semiotic work, I thought some of it wasnt bad. Some of it was quite
interesting and quite pure but the Pop-thing, I didnt approve of at all. I took moral
exception to it; I thought it was very impure in a Scottish sense, I thought it was
wrong.
How would you describe your poetrys subsequent developments, when you started
incorporating other elements in your work in the garden for example? would you
consider this broadening of concrete poetry or would you consider it as something other
than concrete poetry?
Some works I would do outside would be what you would consider a broadening of it,
and other works derive more from the classical traditions. But at the beginning it was
clear to me that concrete poetry was peculiarly suited for using in public settings. This
was my idea, but of course I never really much got the chance to do it. Nobody was
interested or there was no money or whatever. I would have liked to do it I used to
have dreams about doing big concrete poems. In Stuttgart I got to do some works like
this.

Do you think your sense of broadening the possibilities of your art; your sense of
incorporating architecture, for example, in your work, might have been present then when
you were considered primarily to be a concrete poet who is interested in artistic
experiments?
Yes, but there are three issues involved here; firstly, what you want to do, secondly, what
the institutions allows you to do, and finally what the material situation allows you to do.
I mean I had no money. If I wanted to do a poem on glass or something, it was a big
problem for me. There was no easy way of my doing it I hardly had any money, I was
often hungry and so on.
So the material situation; the lack of financial resources, along with the lack of support,
moral or material, from the institutions of art, often hindered and confined your
investigation for new artistic possibilities at that stage.
Yes, that is right.
Considering your work more generally, would it be accurate to say that your vision of
contemporary cultures increasing secularisation and increasing loss of piety has
motivated your return to classical references?
Yes, I think we have created a culture in which there is a complete absence of piety of
any kind. And piety was always an ingredient of culture. But, when one uses the word
piety now, nobody knows what you mean by it. They think perhaps you mean some
narrow Christian piety or something dogmatic. As a feeling, piety is almost completely
absent from our culture and I deplore this situation. And this is perhaps partly
responsible for my classical inclination, which may have also arisen because, when I
started working with letter cutters, most of them would actually do Roman-type letters.
So, the act of writing texts that suit that type of letters led me to the classical. Also, I
suppose, the idea of harmony is implicit in the classical and is implicit in me, but again it
seems to be lost in our culture. Nobody speaks about it any more, and it seems to me to
be very important. I suppose also I came to classicism through reading philosophy, but I
suppose the interest was already in me or I wouldnt have read philosophy.
So, the classical impulse in your art has also been motivated by the lack of harmony in
the culture, and even in art?
Not even in art, specially in art. But also things come into you from outside and you
might not know why. I mean my grandfather was in charge of the sawmill at Hopetoun
House quite a famous big classical house near Edinburgh. My fathers sister lived in
this little cottage, and my uncle was a night watchman in this big house and, who knows,
maybe my work has been partially inspired by memories of the grounds, the lands and the
deer and the classical house who knows? But I know when I started the garden my
inclination towards the classical was increased. But, of course everything for me has been
home-made. I was never at university or anything. I was always in the outside so, I

worked things out for myself.

Quite a number of critics have compared your distinction between the poetry of anguish
and self and the concrete as a model of order [Note 3] with Gomringers sense that
concrete poetry offers a particularly orderly poetic play-area [Note 4].How do you
respond to this comparison ?
These concepts are of course classical formulations. I didnt get them from the classical, I
got them from my own self, but I can see that they are expressions of a kind of classical
attitude. I mean pre-Socratic Greek philosophy is never about self at all. As for
Gomringer, I think he is a very nice poet, but a very modern man. I am not a modern
man, I am just a wee old fashioned one. I like Gomringers poetry, it is very pure and the
absence of humour in his work is very good too because a lot of concrete poetry was
spoilt by becoming merely witty; wit has made it very limited.
Would you agree with Charles Jencks that your work is a post-modern mock-heroic
genre [Note 5].
No, my work is not satiric and is not mock-heroic. This is Charles Jencks describing
himself may be, but not me. I would never say this, such genre is completely forbidden
for me.
Perhaps the concept of parody as defined by Linda Hutcheon might more accurately
describe the classical impulse in your work? [Note 6]. Hutcheon defines parody as a
dialogue which the artist opens with the works of classical antiquity in order to redefine
the past through the present without losing either the presents newness or the pasts
classicity.
Yes, but I dont feel a distance between me and the classical. To me it represents quite a
natural language. Other languages could be natural too, but I dont feel outside the
classical. It is clear that most people when they think about these things, their biggest
experience is of a distance. I dont have that experience. I have often said that just as the
French revolution, for instance, understood itself through antiquity, I think our time can
be understood through the French revolution. It is quite a natural process to use other
times to understand your own time. It offers a kind of dramatic possibility or something
like that. Of course our time does not try to understand itself at all, unfortunately, but
times have always understood themselves through other times which provide a means of
dramatising the issues of the present.
Do you think this might be the reason why some critics find your work so challenging?
Not only because of its variety of artistic genres and materials, but also because of its
complex relationship with the classical? Duncan Glen, for example, concludes that the
only way to come to terms with your work is simply by accepting its rich ambiguities
[Note 7].
Ambiguous, of course, implies disapproval, but to me it could also mean complicated.

However, this is not what they mean, they mean that they disapprove of it; that it is not
politically correct, that it is unfashionable; or out with the pressure of fashion in them, or
something like that.
Does your work consciously challenge fashionable artistic categories?
No, I dont make my work in order to challenge or confuse other peoples expectations
I only do what I find natural. But my work seems different to these peoples expectations,
and they never fail to remind me of this difference. I dont know why they find it
challenging. People have always found me challenging I dont know why, when I am
only being myself. I dont understand why they find me so annoying but they do. It is
pity, but that is how it is.
Your collaborations with other artists and craftsmen in the production of your work, have
led critics to raise the question of their authorship and originality. Stuart Mills, for
example, argues: further problems arise when he collaborates with other artists, so
raising the question of authorship [Note 8]. How would you respond to these
observations?
I came to these mediums through having the garden, and of course, people who have
designed gardens have always worked in collaboration, and never made their own
inscriptions. Shenstine, for example, didnt make the inscriptions in his garden he
wrote the inscriptions, but somebody else carved them for him. Nor did Capability Brown
also make the sculptures in his gardens. So, it is quite natural for me to collaborate. Of
course when you go out from the garden into exhibitions such collaborations may not
seem so natural. However , it has to be said that many famous artists today do
collaborate, but they dont say so they dont acknowledge their collaborators, but I do.
Not all your collaborators have been happy ones. Can you tell me about your dispute with
Fulcrum Press?
The dispute with Fulcrum Press was quite bizarre. The Dancers Inherit The Party had
been published twice, and Fulcrum Press asked if they could publish it again and, after I
had signed the contract, they informed me that they intended to describe it as a first
edition. But it patently was not a first edition, it was a third edition. At this point I wrote
to the Arts Council of Great Britain because they gave a grant to the publisher and I said
public money shouldnt be used to subsidise fraudulent editions. This is very clear and
quite simple, but they wrote back to me very rudely telling me to mind your own
business, and things like that.
So, I wrote to the Scottish Arts Council, which had short-listed the second edition of the
book for a prize two years before. They told me that if London says that it is a first
edition then it must be a first edition. Then I wrote to the Association of Little Presses and
they said something like; Youre selfishly spoiling a good racket, because you get more
money for the first edition! I found all this extraordinary!
Then I got the parliamentary ombudsman to make an investigation and he consulted the
British Museum who confirmed that the book couldnt be a first edition. But when they

were asked to say that publicly, they refused to do so. The National Library of Scotland, a
copyright library which received editions of all my books, also refused to say anything. It
is extraordinary that something so clear could be deliberately ignored like this. My
position was really quite simple, I didnt wish to take part in a fraud on the public. But at
that time most poets either were published by Fulcrum, or wished to be published by
Fulcrum, so they seemed to consider me a danger, and after six years I was completely
isolated. Nobody spoke to me anymore, and people were saying it is not nice to fight
and all this kind of thing.
So, then, I went to the Consumer Protection Department which sent the book to Sothebys
whose expert on literary fraud, a man called Carter, said that it could not be a first
edition, took the publisher to court, and got the ruling that I was right. It then took the
Arts Council Of Great Britain a further two years to accept the court ruling and to
apologise to me. But I was never forgiven, I was always reminded that I did something
terrible. The fact that I was proven right counted for nothing at all. What people
remembered was that I had cause a lot of trouble to these institutions by asking them to
stand up and speak a simple truth. But it was very instructive to me! This was when I first
realised what culture is.
You also had a subsequent dispute with Strathclyde Regional Council over the
commercial or the non-commercial status of your garden temple another dispute
which probably confirmed your sense of the secularity and materiality of contemporary
culture?
They won on a technicality and now I am supposed to pay a lot of money which I wont
pay. They cannot put me in prison they can only come and take my possessions away
from me, which I suppose they will do. Now I have closed the garden to the public. My
position is that since the non-secular status of my garden is not recognised by the law; by
the world of the public, then the garden can only be private. So, I closed the garden to the
public.
The Arts Council had the opportunity to solve this dispute. Many years ago the Sheriffs
Officer, tired of having to raid my temple, had a secret meeting with me and asked me
how this dispute could be resolved. I suggested that since the Scottish Art Council
advises the government on all the matters concerning the arts, he should ask them to give
an opinion on the status or the nature of the building. In a meeting of the twenty two
members of the Council, the evidence I had prepared was considered, but they voted
unanimously to express no opinion at all. My view was that they could disagree with my
opinion if they wished, but that they should fulfil their obligation to advice the
government one way or the other, or they should all be removed from their positions.
They were not removed, of course.
Recently, I spoke to the Visual Director of the Scottish Arts Council and he told me that
he wouldnt contradict the Region because the Region might reduce its support for the
arts. But what he really meant was that he wouldnt contradict the Region for the general
good of his job.
The same sort of thing happened in my dispute with the National Trust book: Follies: A
National Trust Guide, which implied that the only pleasure you can get from Folly
architecture is by calling the architect mad, and by laughing at the architecture. When I

wrote to the National Trust to remind them that their task is to preserve buildings and
traditions remarking that this book was absolutely destructive, they wrote back to me
very casually. So I started a whole campaign and got other people to join in. In the end
they removed their name from the book, and told everybody that I was a Nazi supporter,
and so on and so on, and they too never forgave me.
At one stage of this dispute they told me that they would publish anything which made
money! What can you say? This book treated some of the greatest English gardens as
follies. This is an age that treats its whole past as something outside itself which it
wishes to reject or mock or whatever. What can you say? It is madness none of these
battles should have existed. But, in each case people had a public position which made it
reasonable to think that they should have defended certain values and they all found
excuses not to do so. I would have supposed that their whole natural inclination would
have been to defend these things, but it became clear that their natural inclination was the
very opposite of this.
So, in your terms, the tragedy of our culture is that it has lost all sense of responsibility
towards its past?
The condition of our culture is that it feels separated from the past and, of course, the past
now becomes nothing more than two years ago or three years ago. It used to be thousands
of years, then it became hundreds, and now anything that is not part of an instant of
fashion is considered the past. Within the enclaves of university walls, youre allowed to
take about the past, but only of course in an academic manner. It is not allowed to be
treated as real or anything like that. Outside the university walls, youre not allowed
even to talk about it. To read Greek philosophy is suspect, and elitist. There used to be
no such word, they had the word educated instead. But now youre not educated, youre
an elitist, and wicked.
If art can open a channel of communication with the past, do you think that culture as a
whole would then follow its example?
No, because you would be asking the culture to do something it cannot do it would
have to change its being to be able to do that. For me, the crucial point is the destruction
or the end of piety. The nineteenth century announced the death of God or the end of
God. Our century, though it hasnt been made clear yet, has announced the death of piety
or the end of piety there is no place for piety any longer. This is the problem today
because piety seems to represent the condition of objectivity in a culture without
piety nothing can be understood. It is hard to think of any previous age in which there has
been this kind of absence of piety piety took different forms, but it has never before
been completely abandoned. Our age has abandoned it and that is why so many things
become incomprehensible, and therefore cannot be spoken about. But you have to
understand that I consider myself a very modest artist, or whatever, and not of importance
really at all it is quite embarrassing to me to be asked my opinion about things. I am
only a wee Scottish poet on the outside of everything.
This reminds me of your response to John J. Sharkey when he asked you to contribute to

his anthology of concrete poetry Mindplay of 1971when you replied that you didnt feel
involved in what was happening then [Note 9].
Well, probably I was fed up with concrete poetry. There was a lot of bad concrete poetry
and besides, it was confused with visual poetry which was completely different.
You also remarked in a more recent interview with Nicholas Zurbrugg that you dont
consider yourself to be an avant-garde artist? [Note 10]
Yes, the idea of the avant-garde doesnt seem to me to be relevant. Whether I am or not
who cares, it is not important. I mean what avant-garde is there in Britain? Nothing.
Nothing that is not fashionable, completely acceptable to everybody, completely
supported by the Arts Council there is only state aided art.
In this respect it seems that your work resists both the superficial novelty of fashion and
the more radical sense of innovation associated with the avant-garde, and offers a general
cultural critique based upon the aesthetic principles embedded in the classical which
oppose the very idea of fashion and radical innovation. Your work seems concerned
primarily with giving instances of what you think of as the beautiful; harmony, purity,
devotion and heroism. Rather than celebrating the past on its own right, it seems to
celebrate examples from the past that correspond to your vision of beauty. So the past
seems to be a part of your present, rather than a substitute for your present.
Yes, all these things are parts in a language that I can use.
Some of your critics discuss your work in terms of binary oppositions between wit,
humour, and the seriousness of a cultural critique, between surprising images of warfare
and the peaceful content of harmony, purity and simplicity [Note 11]. Do you sense such
frameworks in your vision?
Not particularly, I dont think of it that way at all. Maybe it comes out like this, but I
dont think of it in these terms at all. I do different work, some pastoral, some tragic;
some this, and some that. I work with a range of things, but that is life, isnt it.
Presumably such critics are trying to detect generic patterns in your work?
Yes, but I dont think I have such patterns.
You make this kind of point in your famous letter to the French poet Pierre Garnier of
1963, in which you note that none of your poems reveal a method that can be applied to
the next poem: I cannot derive from the poems I have written any method which can be
applied to the writing of the next poem. [Note 12]
I am always a beginner. I only try to include different parts of life; the pastoral, the tragic,
et cetera.

How important for you is it that your references to such parts of life are successfully
communicated by your work? How important for you is the process of communicating a
specific content?
This question is quite simple really. You assume some sort of common humanity which is
accessible to everybody, and you try to remain true to that. Therefore, you dont think, for
example; Is the National Trust going to understand this? or Is so and so going to
understand that?. You just think Is this pure or not?. If the work is pure then you have
to think it could be understood. If it is not understood it doesnt mean that your work is
not accessible. It doesnt worry me, but, of course, I would be pleased if people liked my
work. However, I dont feel the world is looking over my shoulder when I am working
I never think about this at all. What I think about is trying to make my work pure, and if it
is pure then it can be accessible. It is quite straight forward really.
Do you think your concerns for classical values and for artistic purity differentiate your
aesthetic from the concerns of Gomringer and the South American poets?
Yes, it is different. They are more modern people than I am. I mean I was just a little
outsider, hungry, without money, without a place in the world and so on. Somethings,
however, I did share with them, but I think my concerns are often misunderstood. For
example, a lot of people interpreted my dispute with Strathclyde Regional Council as one
of the individual against bureaucracy, but this is not what it was at all. I used to get quite
upset by getting supported by people who thought I was acting in an anarchic manner. I
didnt want support from such people; they misunderstood what the problem was. So, I
made a rubber stamp to put on my letters to say: the people has a right to rigorous
bureaucracy which shocked everybody.
Gomringer and the Noigandres Group really belong to a different world from mine I
mean Augusto, whom I used to write to, was a lawyer and lived in a flat in Sao Paulo, in
Brazil. Look where I live. Gomringer was secretary to Max Bill and so on. You have to
remember we had quite different lives. My life has always been on the outside.
How would you describe your life; would you call it a life of a concrete poet; of an artist;
of a cultural classicist?
I think all of these things are to do with composing. What you compose with is neither
here nor there, you compose with words, or you compose with stone plants and trees, or
you compose with events; the Sheriffs officer, or whatever. It is all a matter of
composing and order.

NOTES
[Note 1] See Bob Perelman, The Marginalization of Poetry, (Princeton: Princeton
University press, 1996), also see, Charles Bernstein, Contents Dream, (Los Angeles, Sun
& Moon, 1986).

[Note 2] Ian Hamilton Finlay, Letters to Ernst Jandl, Chapman, no. 78-79, 1994, p.12.
[Note 3] Ian Hamilton Finlay, Letter to Pierre Garnier, 17 September, 1963, Concrete
Poetry: A world View, Mary Ellen Solt (ed.), Indiana University Press, (London, 1970),
p.84.
[Note 4] Eugen Gomringer, From Line To Constellation (1954), World view, Mary A.
Solt (ed.), p.67.
[Note 5] Charles Jencks, The Moral In Art: Reflections On The Finlays Wars,
CHAPMAN, double issue No. 78-79 (Edinburgh, 1994), p.165.
[Note 6] Linda Hutcheon, Theorizing The Post-Modern: Towards A Poetics, The PostModern Reader, Charles Jencks (ed.), Academy Editions ( London 1992), p.76.
[Note 7] Duncan Glen, Some Thoughts and Reminiscences, CHAPMAN, double issue
No. 78-79 (Edinburgh, 1994), p.23.
[Note 8] Stuart Mills, The Implications Of Poetry, AKROS, Vol. 6, March (1972), p.29.
[Note 9] John J. Sharkey, Mindplay: An Anthology of British Concrete Poetry, Lorrimer
Publishing (London, 1971) p.16.
[Note 10] Ian Hamilton Finlay, interviewed by Nicholas Zurbrugg, Art & Design, profile
No. 45 (London, 1995), p.47.
[Note 11] For example, see Yves Abriouxs Eye, Judgement and Imagination: Words and
Images from the French Revolution in the Work of Ian Hamilton Finlay (1994), p.156,
and Thomas A. Clarks The Idiom of the Universe (1985), p. 131, in Wood Notes Wild,
Alec Finlay (ed.), Polygon, (Edinburgh, 1995).
[Note 12] Ian Hamilton Finlay, Letter to Pierre Garnier (1963).

Nagy Rashwan is the author of Cultural Consciousness and the Myths of Conception
(Cairo: GACP, 2000) and Ian Hamilton Finlay and the Postmodern Impulse under
consideration for publication in 2002. He is currently working on a study entitled
Language Poetry and the Aesthetics of Postmodernism, from De Montfort University,
Leicester, UK.
Photographs of Ian Hamilton Finlay's garden by Philip Hunter, 1995. You can see more of
his photographs from Little Sparta at this site:
http://www.perlesvaus.easynet.co.uk/hippeis/gallery/little_sparta/
above copied from: http://jacketmagazine.com/15/rash-iv-finlay.html

Interview with Alan Sonfist, John K. Grande

NATURAL/CULTURAL
Considered a pioneer of public art that celebrates our links to the land, to permaculture,

Alan Sonfist is an artist who has sought to bridge the great gap between humanity and
nature by making us aware of the ancient, historic and contemporary nature, geology,
landforms and living species that are part of "living history". With a reawakening of
public awareness of environmental issues and of a need to regenerate our living planet
Sonfist brings a much needed awareness of nature's parallel and often unrecorded history
and present in contemporary life and art. As early as 1965 Sonfist advocated the building
of monuments dedicated to the history of unpolluted air, and suggested the migration of
animals should be reported as public events.

Alan Sonfist, "Time Landscape of New York City", outdoor installation, 1965- present.
In an essay published in 1968 titled Natural Phenomena as Public Monuments, Sonfist
emancipated public art from focussing exclusively on human history stating: "As in war
monuments that record the life and death of soldiers, the life and death of natural
phenomena such as rivers, springs, and natural outcroppings need to be remembered.
Public art can be a reminder that the city was once a forest or a marsh." Alan Sonfist
continues to advocate, in his urban and rural artworks, projects that heighten our
awareness of the historical geology or terrain of a place, earth cores become a symbol of
the deeper history or geology of the land. His art emphasizes the layered and complex
intertwining of human and natural history. He has bequeathed his body as an artwork to
the Museum of Modern Art. Its decay is seen as an ongoing part of the natural life cycle
process.
Sonfist's art has been exhibited internationally at Dokumenta VI (1977), Tickon in
Denmark (1993), and in shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1975), the
Museum of Modern Art, N.Y. (1978), the Los Angeles County Museum (1985), the
Osaka World's Fair (1988), Santa Fe Contemporary Art Center (1990), the Museum of
Natural History in Dallas, Texas (1994). Best known for his Natural/Cultural Landscape
Commissions which began in 1965 with Time Landscape in Greenwich Village, and
include Pool of Virgin Earth, Lewiston, N.Y. (1973), Hemlock Forest, Bronx, N.Y.
(1978), Ten Acre Project, Wave Hill, N.Y. (1979), Geological Timeline, Duisburg,
Germany (1986), the Rising Earth Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. (1990),
Natural/Cultural Landscape, Trento, Italy (1993), a 7-mile Sculpture Nature Trail in La
Quinta, California (1998), as well as Natural/Cultural Landscapes created for the Curtis
Hixon Park in Tampa in Florida (1995) and Aachen, Germany (1999). Sonfist is currently
working on a three and a half-mile sculptural nature walk in LaQuinta, California, an
Environmental Island outside of Berlin, and The Great Bay Fountain for architect Richard
Meier in Islip N.Y..
JG: From the mid-1960s you established a name as one of the first environmental artists
who, unlike land artists Michael Heizer and Robert Smithson, did not emphasize a
minimalist aesthetic in the creation of artworks and monuments. What do you feel
brought you to environmental art?
AS: My art began in the street fires of the South Bronx, late 1950s, when I was a child.

Gangs and packs of wild dogs were roaming the streets where I was growing up. The
neighborhood was a landscape of concrete, no trees. The Bronx River divided the two
major gangs, and the river protected a primal forest. It was my sanctuary as a child. The
human violence didnt enter the forest - it was my magical cathedral. I would skip
school to spend every moment I could in this forest and replenish my energy, my life. The
forest became my life, and my art.
JG: When you first turned your attention to art making, what inspiration did you draw
from the art world? Were there certain artists or teachers who drew you in the direction
you wanted or was it self-learning?
AS: It was self-directed. I have always been tuned to collecting and gathering fragments
of the forest. Labelling it as "art" or "not art" was never an issue. It was more the
uniqueness of these elements that attracted me. Even when I went to school in the midwest, later, I brought with me some of the seedlings of my Bronx forest after it was
destroyed by an intentional fire.
JG: As early as 1965 you produced a work called Time Landscape involving actual
living growth in art. Indigenous animals were reintroduced into an urban setting.
AS: The reconstructed forest was a way of going back into my childhood forest in New
York as it would have been, initiated in Greenwich Village. I transplanted living tree
species such as beech, oak and maple and over 200 different plant species native to New
York, selected from a pre-Colonial contact period in New York. These are still there on
site. Besides experiencing the indigenous trees of New York City, Time Landscape
allowed me to experience and interact with foxes, deer, snakes, eagles and this was part
of my experience.
JG: "Interactive" is a word that has been appropriated by many artists who are simply
working with images on a screen. When you worked on the nature theater as early as
1971, the interactions were real involving nature and sound orchestration in the forest.
AS: The "Nature Theater" idea was to construct a physical fragment of a forest (I have
done several including one at Goethe University) and then allowing the nature itself to be
the sound, for instance, as opposed to constructing noises of a forest. And allowing the
animals themselves to become the performers - the migration of the birds becomes a
special event.
JG: And animals for you have souls just like we do?
AS: Exactly. Trees do too. They definitely do communicate with each other and they also
communicate with humans if they are willing to listen.
JG: And your photo work is related to this and various other projects. I know your
photographic works have inspired other artists. How are they presented in galleries?

AS: I showed photographs in my early exhibits in the 1970s. The photos are more
observations of nature, trying to understand how we see and relate to the environment.
My first art dealer didnt; even want to exhibit my photographs because he did not
consider them art. Now, there are several artists who have creating works similar to these
early photographs. Each photographic event is an exploration of human interaction with
nature. For instance, From the Earth to the Sky and Sky to the Earth , is more about
walks through the forest and how we see the forest, how the movement of the landscape
shifts as we relate to it and the light quality. Examining natures interaction with urban
life was a radical concept at the time.
JG: In a way, every environment is unique. We talk about bio-regionalism and the global
culture, for instance. The irony is that quite often there is this idea that elsewhere is exotic
and where we live is not. New York City vegetation is actually as exotic as South
American.

Alan Sonfist, "Time Landscape of New York City", (detail) outdoor installation, 1965present.
AS: Exactly. It is always easy for one to look at another environment and say that is
special. The clich goes the grass is always greener on the other side of the hill, instead
of looking at one's own environment. I have always been concerned about the particular
location I am working with, because each is unique and has fascinating vegetation to be
discovered. The forest I witnessed as a child ended up being bulldozed and set in
concrete. That was the end of my forest, and the beginning of my art.
JG: The idea of the continuity of time has almost been erased in this culture. Yet there is
this ever present physical continuity between the various elements in the environments
that surround us. We are not often aware of this. By presenting nature as a presence in
your work you are allowing us to see how integration of our culture with nature will
become one the keys to development in the 21st century in technology, science and the
arts. Technologists will have to develop new forms of transport, products which use less
and renewable resources, which emphasize a cyclical resource system rather than an
exploitative, one-way non-renewable system. Your work is less that of an ideologist than
that of a bio-historian who works with the culture/nature cross-over.
AS: Bio-history, as in the Circles of Time is the layering of nature in time. Each area of
the project represents an unique event in the continuum of Tuscan History. We look at
each fragment of time and begin to realize this layering is a continuum. It's not one fixed
moment. The photographs I take, for instance, emphasize that it is not an absolute. Within
this continuum one can select out different unique events. The Tuscan landscape had been
so radically changed over the centuries that the original forests history had been
virtually erased.
JG: Isn't that one of the problems with parks and nature sites in many cities? Planners
bring in so many foreign plant and tree species that are not native to the land in an effort

to make their parks and public places exotic. In Oslo, Norway, interestingly, the tree and
shrub species replicate the nature that surrounds the city of Oslo. You see large fir trees,
nesting places for birds, that mirror the natural landscape of the region in Oslo. There is a
kind of relief in that idea that the nature of the city reaffirms the landscape which
surrounds the city.
AS: One of the earlier artworks I created for the New York City Parks Department was a
landscape with natural flowers and artificial flowers. This was for the first Earth Day at
Union Square Park in 1970. The question was which is real and which is artificial. My
project in the Mojave Desert is similar to what you mentioned. Most landscapes there use
plants taken from lush environments that need continuous watering, such as a grass lawn.
One of the issues that came up when I said I was only going to introduce indigenous
plants in this desert environment was that some of the local people said, "That's ugly!
How could anyone respond to that!" When I started to select out and go back into the
historical plants native to the region, people were shocked and amazed how beautiful the
spectrum of flowers. There was such a diversity that it became a visual laboratory of
understanding of the environment.
JG: Undoubtedly, the work stimulated thought and controversy as well as providing a
cathartic living environment for the people who live there. Your Rock Monument of
Manhattan (1975-2000) recently exhibited at the Dorsky Gallery (2000) in New York in a
group environmental show involves cross-section samples, what we do not see; the
hidden landscape the geology under New York City.
AS: These samples were taken from the underlying strata of New York City geology.
Over the years, I have created similar artworks throughout the world, but predominantly
in Europe and North America. They are cylindrical cross-sections of the Earth, now in the
collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario. I have been commissioned to do similar projects,
such as the one for the opening of the Ludwig Museum in Koln.
JG: This idea that there is a permanent culture that exists underneath the man-made
culture or environment is an interesting one. It undoubtedly will persist for much of this
new millennium and plays an important role in providing us with a sense of
permacultural geological time. Understanding this permacultural context can help us to
design our urban environments with a sensitivity to the brief history of our civilization
vis-a-vis natural history.
AS: Exactly. A key to our understanding of the environment we live in is literally locked
into the rock formations under our cities and the evolution of our solar system above us.
JG: I was going to ask you about the less well known crystal works you did in the 1960s
and 1970s. These growing crystal projects seem to be fascinating.
AS: I created a series of what I would call Micro-Macro Landscapes. The crystal
structures were to illustrate the fact that within everything there are the micro-structures
of an element. From a practical point of view, by taking elements that are very unstable, I

was able to put them in a vacuum and allow them to inter-exchange so that they
transformed from dense solids back to this crystalline form. When exhibited, the viewer
could see this interaction occurring within the structures, themselves.
JG: The effect was always constant. You could actually see it occurring?
AS: It was continuous. Again, it was occurring in relationship to the environment. If the
sun was hitting the structure it would heat it up and therefore it would create more
pressure inside. Therefore the crystals would dissipate and then, as they cooled, they
would condense onto the surface. At the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (1977), I created a
window for them which was on display for many years. The window itself would move
as the sun moved during the daytime. It would gravitate to the movement of light. This is
something that occurs in the natural world, and yet many people have never seen it. My
intention was to integrate these things directly into the path of human interaction.
JG: Your Heat Paintings from the late 1960s again involve the volatility of internal
structures. As the metal transforms, the alloys change color.
AS: The Heat Paintings parallel the crystalline pieces, so you see the internal molecular
structure of the metal.
JG: Heat circles transform the alloy into color variations. The physics of nature actually
transforms the artworks, kind of like Andy Goldsworthy's pigment and snow drawings...
AS: This is a real time event. The artwork allows you to see the composition of the
material. I created a series of different artworks, decoding the process of the materials.
JG: Your series of micro-macro landscapes titled Elements Selection from the 1960s to
the early 70s, are structural changes that are part of a natural physical cycle. This
natural entropy became a reading of the environment. Did you select the elements that
would cause these changes or was it left up to nature to decide the course of these works?
AS: I unrolled the canvas, and as the process began, I selected the elements as exactly as
they existed. The canvas was then left in the natural surroundings, so that the twigs and
leaves that were selected as well as the canvas would go back to its natural state in nature.
I also created a series of paintings, where I selected a series of slices of the earth such as
fall leaves, which was titled, Leaves Frozen in Time. These artworks have ended up in
numerous museum collections.
JG: The Pool of Virgin Earth created in the early seventies at the Lewiston Art Park, in
upstate New York regenerated a section of what was, and still is, a chemical wasteland...
AS: The area was a toxic waste dump for several years before it was given over as an art
park. The area was a desert of toxicity. Through the consultation of specialist, I was
determined to create a pool of virgin earth that would show the rebirth of the toxic dump.
The pool was so successful that eventually they used my method to create the entire site.

JG: The plants would help purify this area of earth?

AS: Yes. The plants were selected to help heal the earth.
JG: Natural/Cultural Landscape created for the Curtis-Hixon Park in Tampa, Florida in
1995 is a more recent cross-over work. I know you have created many commissions
through out the world concerning the natural evolution of the land, as you said in your
early writings that was published in 1969, that with in Landmark cities that you plan to
create "Landmark Nature Monuments." Do you feel your more recent Natural Cultural
Landscape project involves a compromise in working with landscape or city architects?
AS: No, all my public projects involve the community. I always have public meetings to
discuss my ideas. I invite the local artist as well as architects and landscape architects.
They became part of the process of creating the artwork.
JG: Why were four classical columns integrated into your Natural/Cultural Landscape in
Tampa, Florida? It seems curious as you are often working with natural, as opposed to
human history.
AS: The columns correspond to the human history of the site. The first Europeans there
were Spanish, and they built colonnade buildings. The columns represent the human past
and were planted with plants that represent the natural history from early human
intervention to contemporary landscape.

Alan Sonfist, "Circles of Time", aach ring represents the narrative natural and cultural
history of Tuscany, 3 acres, Villa Celle, Tuscany, Italy 1989.
JG: What sort of species of plants and what kind of configuration did you finally arrive at
for this living landscape work?
AS: All the plants in the site represented different historical events from human to natural
history and how they both intersect. The pathway represents these intersections.
JG: So did it become a kind of community exchange, a point of encounter and learning
for the local citizens?
AS: Yes. I think when one involves the community there is a kind of inter exchange of
ideas. The park becomes the community. For me that is what determines the ultimate
success of a public sculptures. When I create private commissions I am responding to the
corporate structure.
JG: There is always this problem of designers moving into an area where they don't know
the history of a community. They will place the benches in the wrong place; people don't
walk in that area or whatever. Involving a community helps to create a kind of ensouling

or consecration of a place.
AS: Exactly. Everything from the seating areas to the walkways will all correspond to
community needs.
JG: So the process was quite democratic.
AS: It was democratic, and from my point of view as an artist, it was almost like a
palette. In other words, I had a palette maybe several hundred images that could be
utilized for the project and had to select out which ones would be most effectively
integrated into the project, visually and culturally.
JG: And these pathways you designed going through the grassy landscape are non-linear
in shape-like motifs.
AS: The pathways were designed to correspond to the natural history from the ice age to
the present.
JG: A kind of histology, a history of nature and culture brought into a living dynamic.
There is a patchwork design to it, using colored brickwork and slabs, various grass
species and walkways. It becomes a nature/culture quilt that references various eras and
epochs.
AS: A quilt where each section is interconnected by its own uniqueness in history. Seen
from the air, the leaf structures in the pathways are most evident. If you knew the leaves
you would know that each leaf represents a different time frame within the ecology of
that region. The pathways are a 21st century view of the land not a typical landscape
concept that parks are being created at this time. Walking through the park, the entrance
becomes an echo of our understanding of the history of the community. The park
progresses to the water where we see a reflection of the ice age.
JG: When you exhibited at Documenta VI in Kassel, Germany (1977) you created a
series of photographic essays which were like a composite of a forest, with relics of a
forest underneath the photographs. Can you tell me about this.
AS: The photographs became the forest. Each photographic artwork exposed multi layers
of the forest. Through each one of these artworks, one viewed a special moment within
the forest. Some of the more significant artworks of the 1970s is where I created 180
and 360 degree "Gene Banks", with real time fragments of the forest.
JG: We are the Gods of our own consumption and we are now eating ourselves. There is
also this confusion between technology and experimental science. The two are fusing.
You are getting an involvement of new technologies with experimental science.
Sometimes the blurring of these two disciplines means there is a further manipulation of
science. The technologies are forming the processes whereby the scientists are working.
In other words the lenses, the ways that science is evolving are technologically controlled

which may not allow more creative solutions to be arrived at. In other words we may not
be seeing as much as we think when we involve ourselves in pure science.
AS: There are two levels of reality, we want to create an alternative fuels but the same
time we are also consumers of fossil fuel. Through my art, we have to understand our
relationship to our community, our world and our universe.
JG: Which would be much better for the environment and for us.
AS: Exactly.
Writer and art critic John Grande's interviews, reviews and feature articles have been
published extensively in numerous publications and books. This interview is an excerpt
from Art Nature Dialogues: Interviews with Environmental Artists (www.sunypress.edu)
by John K. Grande (www.grandescritique.com).
above copied from: http://greenmuseum.org/generic_content.php?ct_id=284

BIOLOGICAL MODELS, C. John Holcombe

Overview
Living organisms may provide better models for artworks than current philosophical
concepts or the reductionist approaches of the physical sciences. Living models display
two important characteristics. One is a nonlinear nature: their structures are not fixed but
continually build on previous states. The other is structural discontinuities: organisms
operate on different levels (cell chemistry and interaction with environment) that are not
directly linked.
Comparisons
Because they evolve and influence later artists, we sometimes talk about the 'life' of a
work of art or art movement. Before dismissing this as a figure of speech, we might
compare the two: {1}
characteristic poem living cell
autonomy artistic autonomy discrete entity
reproduction multiplies through reading and printing multiplies by breeding
respiration controls reader expectations controls energy transfer
nutrition converts reader interest into fascination converts food into energy
excretion suppresses inappropriate meanings ejects waste products
growth understanding of reader shifts in time grows into maturity
responsiveness changes with appraisal and context reacts to changes in its surroundings
movement expands in consciousness of reader exhibits motion at some level
interaction interacts with and modifies social environment interacts with and modifies
environment

evolution movement evolves with new writings population evolves over time
information content increases local organization/information content forms local centre of
negative entropy
Detailed Comparisons
The analogies go deeper. To look at a few processes:
:Modus Operandi
How do cells carry out their complex processes? Although extraordinarily complicated in
detail {1}, the molecular processes have simple strategies. They employ chemical
interactions and goodness of molecular fit to create their necessary constituents.{2}
When, for example, an enzyme creates a compound from two constituents, A and B, it
does so in specific steps. Through its shape and the attraction of surrounding weak forces,
the enzyme first induces two molecules to 'dock' on its surface. One is the constituent A;
the other is an ATP (adenosine triphosphate) molecule. By careful positioning, the
enzyme transfers one of ATP's phosphates to the A constituent, and then discards what
remains of the ATP molecule. The enzyme then takes the second constituent B into a
nearby docking site, breaks off the phosphate joined to the A molecule, and transfers the
energy created to a bond between constituent A and B. The spent phosphate is then
discarded (to form another ATP molecule in time), and the new compound, A-B, is
released by the enzyme. The process repeats with another AB creation, conducted
mindlessly but efficiently by the laws of physics.
Communication between cells proceeds in much the same way, involving interactions
between compounds that obey the laws of game theory, and which are governed by flow
of information considerations. There is no 'invisible hand' operating at cell level:
molecules have simply 'learned' to operate together through trial and error over the eons
of geological time. Success on the molecular level is explained by the laws of physics.
Success on the species level is explained by the theory of evolution. No other process is
needed.
Essentially, we don't know how poetry makes its appeal, or why we find certain things
beautiful. We can name certain characteristics that make a poem successful originality,
deep feeling, masterful expression, etc. but we can only frame these characteristics in
words than are used more generally than their deployment in poetry.
Moreover, we cannot by logic convince a skeptical reader that they apply in a particular
case, nor use these characteristics to directly build a poem. Composition is invariably by
trial and error, the 'rules' of prosody, rhyme, stanza shape, imagination, freshness etc.
being applied later to understand why the piece is not fulfilling its potential. As is said in
poetry workshops: ' what works, works.'
We respond mentally to poems, through brains that operate through loosely connected
units with multiple feedback {3}. Brains evolved like other organs, and natural selection

no doubt played its part. It is therefore very unlikely on principle that reductive laws will
provide the appropriate model for consciousness, aesthetics and social interaction, living
organisms in fact providing closer parallels. Life accepts discontinuities, partial
interactions, diversity in representation and chaotic behaviour.
This indeed is what close textural readings of poems disclose. They don't entirely exhibit
the organic unity that the New Criticism wanted. Too much can be made of difficulties,
but some elements are often discordant, or can only be made harmonious by following
cultural expectations. It's at least to the credit of deconstructive critics that we realize how
poems can be misunderstood if the social or cultural contexts are removed, or we are
willfully perverse in our readings. Appreciation of poetry comes slowly, moreover, and
the enthusiasms of youth have to give way to a more measured and generous assessment
that gradually involves our whole social being.
:Organization
Living things are marvellously organized. Hormones, for example, secreted by specific
glands, carry instructions to all parts of the body through the blood stream. The pituitary
gland receives signals from the brain, and in response sends out its own hormones, which
turn on or off the hormone production in other glands. In the growing foetus, compounds
called morphogens affect cells over a wide area, directing the preferential growth of limb,
nerve or skin cells in accordance with the concentration of those morphogens. These
different cells then migrate to their various sites by following chemical pathways, just as
ants do to reach a food source. Organization indeed operates at all levels, but is not
centrally directed according to some prepared blueprint. The DNA in chromosomes
carries detailed instructions, certainly, but these are codes that create proteins, which then
cooperate mechanically.
Crucially, DNA also controls what is not produced. Much of the coding produces proteins
that switch off other production processes, either altogether or when the right level is
reached.
So it is in poetry. No one supposes that even the perfect lyric has an equal organization,
but poems do carry instructions for appropriate reading. We see short lines on a page, and
do not read them as prose. We hear the rhymes that mark the line endings, and expect the
line entity to bear some relationship to the poem as a whole. Many of the instructions use
social and cultural codes, but poets often have to attend readings and workshops to ensure
that the piece is performing as planned. Proof is in the eating.
:Energy Considerations
Life is a local exception to the Second Law of Thermodynamics {2}, which states that the
entropy (disorder or uncertainty) {3} of a system can never decrease. {4} But if life
creates local knots of greater organization, the Second Law ensures by way of
compensation that byproducts are dissipated more widely. Animals and plants are eaten,
their living matter broken down into simpler constituents, which are then absorbed as
food, the unwanted parts excreted.

In this connection we note that poetry, and great art generally, is often a wasteful process
produced in times of great personal and social upheaval. Chaucer lived through
murderous court intrigues. Shakespeare wrote against the deep divisions in the religious
and political fabric of his age. In contrast, tutors at adult education classes have learned
not to expect masterpieces from law-abiding folk retired on comfortable pensions. Good
work usually draws on dangerous matters and entails a high personal investment.
:Information Considerations
Information theory is a branch of mathematics that deals with the problems of
transmitting information efficiently. Shannon's famous entropy function {5} represents
the least number of symbols required to code for the outcome of an event regardless of
the method of coding. It is therefore a unique measure of the quantity of 'information',
this 'information' being a decrease in entropy.
Originally developed at the Bell laboratories for electronic transmission, the function has
been widely applied to computer science, linguistics, cryptography, cognitive psychology,
the biological sciences and sociology. Information approaches can be used to solve
hermeneutic problems of manuscript authorship {6}, for example, and to provide
measures of the surprising precision of molecular events.
Seen through information theory, living things incorporate an enormous amount of
'information' into their tiny cells. Life seems one of the most information-laden forms in
the universe, and it would be laughable to claim the same for poetry. But if poems are
seen as knots of higher 'information' content in the web of language then many of the
troublesome issues of aesthetics can be sidestepped. We don't have to arbitrate between
intellectual content and emotion in a poem, or assess the shaping power of metre and
imagery, etc. True, 'information' in this sense is hardly useful to the literary critic,
particularly as information theory has nothing to say on the meaning or interpretation of
the message transmitted, but the approach does open the door to the questions
mathematicians like to ask of life processes e.g. how is the 'information' content of
cells to be measured? why is the metabolism so efficient?
Shannon's key entropy function is fairly straightforward. The entropy is proportional to
the negative product of p and log p, where p is the probability that the event observed is
purely a matter of chance. How that applies in individual cases can be immensely
complicated, but for our purposes we see that lines written in tight rhyme and metre are
far less likely to arise by chance than lines of simple prose. Vocabulary is also important.
Something like I was at the President's this afternoon is less common in everyday
conversation than I was at the drugstore this afternoon. And being less likely, it conveys
more 'information'.
Looked at this way, the unexpected vocabulary and fractured syntax of Modernist poetry
may be trying to push more 'information' into poetry. When successful, Modernist poems
made sense as words on a page, and as references to a wider and more contemporary
world. (Green ideas sleep furiously, for example, makes sense in one way but not the

other.) They organized on both levels, a difficult undertaking that we applaud with such
approbations as freshness, convincing originality, and telling authenticity.
But only on one level do strict verse forms convey more 'information', and allow the
better poetry to be written. We have also to consider a second level, that of vocabulary
and contemporary relevance. If the besetting sin of free verse is the prosaic, poetry in
strict forms tends continually to lapse into verse. Free verse may convey less
'information' on the rhythmic level, but its aims are larger at the level of context.
Accordingly, it is judged not on its craftsmanship (which is often elementary, despite
protestations to the contrary) but on its organization of everyday language. Tone,
naturalness, aptness to the occasion, expression of emotion and motive traditional
aspects of the novelist's and the playwright's craft become more vital. Done well, free
verse comes over better in readings, particularly in our informal age.
Postmodernism is a natural progression. To repair free verse's deficit of 'information' at
the rhythmic level, Postmodernist poems may be using a richer rich bric-a-brac of
contemporary images. A larger vocabulary, therefore, even if the information' concept
requires that vocabulary to say something relevant. When it doesn't and that is often
the case in amateur work then the poet is forgetting that originality is only a means to
an end, not an end in itself.
Is 'information' a valid concept in literature? Probably, and for this reason. Seen as
biological entities, human beings are animals that use language as guides to action.
Information is essential to us, and we dislike lies and misrepresentation. Poetry is not
exempt from 'Information' demands, though we may look for a tighter fusion of text and
context.
: Operation Levels
Is evolution purely blind, just random mutations filtered over time by breeding
advantage? Reductionists believe so, but must allow a caveat. At the molecular level (the
blind watchmaker view {7}), the process is purely mechanical. Thousands of processes
take place every minute in and around the cell, with only the rarest mistake benefiting the
organism and so being retained by evolution. But at higher levels the process is a
different one, with natural selection applying to the interaction of organism with
environment. The two processes operate independently a point worth emphasizing
because current thinking in the humanities has blurred the distinction.
Consider literary theory. Prior to Saussure, linguistics could not account for the random
nature of linguistic change, in which there seemed no pattern or purpose. After Saussure,
the puzzles remained, but the emphasis was on how languages actually functioned in
practice. Like pieces on a chess board, words simply fulfilled certain rules and functions.
A language may well have mutated by chance, such random changes being retained
because they served useful purposes, but that was beside the point: linguistics did not
need to speculate on matters for which the evidence was largely missing.
Unfortunately, Structuralism then applied the reductionist approach, and tried to subsume

language under extended binary codes, lumping together the very different modes of
communication between human beings as 'texts'. Predictably, Poststructuralism
overreacted, still keeping the simplification to texts, but denying that words could have
any referential function at all. They argued that Saussure had shown that words fulfilled
certain rules and opportunities, and these rules and opportunities were the only reality.
But Saussure had not shown this. Like the molecular biologist focusing on cell
operations, he had simply concerned himself with how language operates on the level of
language. That he had largely left out account the social purposes of language does not
mean that those purposes do not exist, and indeed the games that deconstruction can play
with meaning shows how truly important they are.
Perhaps it wasn't science that inspired the radicals. The Russian formalists (whose
concepts were adopted by Jakobson and Structuralism) studied the ways in which literary
language differed from speech and normal prose, but it suited the polemics of the
Poststructuralists to ignore those differences. Once flattened into texts, literature
belonged to the people and could be removed from privileged groups. From the rules
governing all texts could be deduced ways of detecting social, racial and gender
discrimination in individual cases, allowing guidelines to be established for political
correctness in publishing and the media.
Consider a less contentious example: rhythmic analysis. The aim of Cureton and others is
to distinguish between what is acceptable and what is not acceptable as verse. The
approach derives from Chomsky's universal grammar, and the end product is rules: the
elegant and comprehensive rules that science requires, mathematically expressed if
possible. Yet the science here is again reductionist. The life sciences are not exempt from
the laws of physical science, but the laws operate differently over time, with elements
of randomness and selection by distinct levels of criteria. Cureton's approach may or may
not be successful, but is of limited use to the practising poet. Good lines are not created
by rules, but out of the auditory imagination, the rules serving later to check what the ear
discerns.
:Feedback and Interaction
Viewed as populations, organisms do not simply occupy an environment, but operate as
complex systems that interact with and modify their surroundings {7}. Nowhere is this
obvious than with human beings {8}. And unlike other animals, humans have language
and consciousness: they create concepts that modify their behaviour.{9}
That is the view of biologists like David Sloan Wilson, {10} who have criticized the
'tough-minded' approaches of recent years that would make genes, and genes only, the
determining factors. Even the simplest organisms, bacteria, can cooperate so closely that
the colony is the only meaningful unit. Altruistic behaviour in groups is also well
documented the lookout animal that gives the warning cry though putting itself at risk
by attracting the predator's attention. Reductionist theories provide neat solutions, but life
is not so tidy.
It was for this reason that Edwardian literary critics studied poems in the contemporary

setting. To judge a particular work, something had to be known of the poet's life,
circumstances, and aims. Understandably, perhaps, given the science of the day, the New
Critics wanted sharper rules, and appealed to psychology to remove the larger
considerations. But whatever the justification, the analyses were not wholly successful,
becoming only more ingenuous and artificial. Poems grow in the interconnecting web of
words used by living people, and that must always involve issues beyond the mere
complexities of language itself.
If poems resemble living organisms, where's the evidence that poems do indeed interact
with and modify their environment? First there is the phenomenon of artistic movements:
formality in eighteenth century poetry, reflected in architecture, painting and private
correspondence, a twentieth century preoccupation with the common man, seen in the
debunking of idealism and the preference for the demotic voice in literature. Today we
find an eclecticism in architecture, collages of received images in contemporary painting,
the abrupt juxtaposition of styles and unliterary elements in Postmodernist poetry.
But if broad artistic movements need no amplification, interaction of those movements
with other events is harder to document. Contemporary poetry has become a coterie
interest, and we have to go back to Tennyson to see how his Idylls of the King influenced
the Pre-Raphaelites, and through them not only styles in interior design but the highmindedness in civic life brutally extinguished by the First World War.
:Community Considerations
Limited space and food supplies ensures that only a few species will occupy any given
ecological niche, and in fact evolution often proceeds by fits and starts. For millions of
years species remain unchanged, but then suddenly evolve to take advantage of changed
conditions. But though life may repeat itself in general (insects, bats, pterodactyls, and
birds all developed flight) the exact same forms do not reappear. New species face new
types of competition, and have inevitably to be slightly different.
Literary genres and examples also have their ecological niche. The public has limited
time to appreciate an incessant supply of artwork, and the artwork itself must also join a
community of interests: what doesn't illuminate that community's beliefs is not accepted.
Poems written in outmoded forms may be aired in workshops but are not easily
published. There may be nothing intrinsically wrong with them, and it's unhelpful to call
them pass or pastiches, but they simply don't draw on the communality of interests and
expectations that make up the contemporary literary scene. The literary community is
every bit as conservative as the scientific, moreover, and for the same reason. To accept
the aberrant poem risks undermining the paradigm of 'right thinking' that presently holds
sway, and so weaken the standing of work in which authors, critics and the reading public
have invested a good part of their lives.
:Rate of Change
But why are there shifts in taste at all? Why do we value the poetry of Gngora, say, or
Csar Vallejo, far more highly than did their contemporaries? What causes such an
evolution in taste?

From a reductionist perspective, no foresight enters into evolution. Populations evolve as

genetic variations appear and the ecological niches to be exploited. Nothing more is
needed. Each individual of a particular species has its own set of genes, moreover, which
permit variety within the general need for interbreeding. The sum of all genes in a
population is the gene pool, and it is the change over time of the gene pool that
constitutes evolution.
Now the key point. Small gene pools are more readily influenced by genetic change than
are large ones obviously, as the changes are not so easily swamped by others. And
since it is overall change in the gene pool that counts, evolution naturally proceeds faster
in small populations, which is a theoretical deduction supported by the facts.
That may explain the dizzy rate of change in the twentieth-century. By rejecting the
conventional, avant garde artists forced the pace. They restricted what could be accepted,
and what sectors of society could be served. Most importantly, they restricted
membership, thereby diminishing still further the 'gene pool' of beliefs or practices. It was
the very thinness of the work, and its limited appeal, that fostered novelty, therefore, not
simply a 'necessary response to a changing world'. Sometimes the movements espoused
change for change's sake, when they rapidly burned themselves out. Sometimes they
found a congenial niche generally helped by the media and consumerism when
they became a dominant style, ruthlessly destroying the remnants of earlier standards. In
the visual arts the process is much clearer, of course, and critics developed a plethora of
labels to protect movements from 'unenlightened' criticism. The work was insubstantial?
minimalism. Only raw daubs of emotion? expressionism. No focus or seriousness
all over art or Postmodernism. Modernism's aristocracy of taste was extended to the
informed gallery-going public, provided that public was ready with its cheque-books.
Philosophical Dimensions
The above is a straightforward reductionist account though we should note many
different views on entropy. Nonetheless, the sheer scale of complexity in metabolism has
encouraged the search for alternative outlooks. Some biologists, influenced by
complexity theory, see life as an emergent form. Others, usually Catholic philosophers
building on the work of Thomas Aquinas, go back to Aristotle's notion of 'substantial
form'. {11} The notion is difficult for the modern mind to grasp, but 'substantial form' is
the primary actualization of a substance, which combines with 'primary matter' to give
the 'unified actual substance'. Substantial form is what makes the substance the kind of
thing it is and so act the way it does. And where the reductionist method breaks a
substance into simple parts that can be represented mechanically, 'substantial form' takes
the complex operating substance (e.g. cell, organism, community) as the primary,
irreducible entity.
Of course that helps a rapprochement between religion and science, and there is indeed
some awareness that cell operations cannot be understood in isolation. {12} Their
individual processes depend on the processes surrounding them, and so on the unified
operation of their enclosing cell. The DNA of a dinosaur could be unravelled, for

example, but a dinosaur couldn't be grown by inserting manufactured DNA into the cell
of a living animal, but only into the cell of a living dinosaur. More prosaically, genome
studies have learnt that genes operate in tandem with each other, requiring cells to be
studied in their life operations, and computer models built to capture the cyphered text
that genes follow. Nonetheless, the individual components, structures and dynamics of
genes have also to be identified, so that genomics is not adopting substantial form
exactly.
The importance for poetry? Perhaps that the approach of the New Criticism was not
essentially wrong, but only much too simple. Living cells are not harmonious structures
throughout, but have time-dependent elements that operate in odd ways that can be
disruptive. We need to appreciate how and why exactly the various elements of a poem
pull together, and for this we need a better understanding of brain physiology, human
communication and social behaviour. Nonetheless, until then, we can still grant autonomy
to a poem, and perhaps be more cautious in believing that quality is the sole reason for a
poem's survival.
Conclusions
These are speculative suggestions, but important ones. As noted in complex systems,
sociology, metaphor research, and brain functioning, literature needs to understand the
sciences better if it wishes to borrow its methods and kudos.
References
1. Any elementary biology textbook, e.g. Michael Roberts, Michael Reiss and Grace
Monger's Biology Principles and Processes. (1993), Mahlon Hoagland and Bert Dodson's
The Way Life Works. (1995), and Alan Cornwell and Ruth Miller's Biology: A-Level and
AS-Level. (1997).
2. Werner R. Loewenstein's The Touchstone of Life: Molecular Information, Cell
Communication and the Foundations of Life. (1999).
3. See Chapter 7 of Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart's The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering
Simplicity in a Complex World. 1994.
4. Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart give some (speculative) reasons why the Second Law is
not as usually stated, arguing for a more contextual approach in science.
5. A helpful introduction to Shannon's work, entropy and information measures looked at
from the gambler's point of view is given in P. Fraundorf's Gambling Theory Origins of
the 0th Law: http://www.umsl.edu/~fraundor/gamblaw0 /sld001.htm (10/1/2002). A
simple mathematical treatment is provided by Tom Schneider's Information Theory
Primer at http://www.lechb.ncifcrf.gov/toms/ paper/primer. (Jan. 2002).
6. Chris Hillman's Entropy in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
http://www.math.psu.edu.gunesch/Entropy/soc.html. (5/7/2001).
7. R. Dawkin's The Selfish Gene. O.U.P. London. (1976) and The Blind Watchmaker.
(1986).
8. Niles Eldrege's Reinventing Darwin: The Great Evolutionary Debate. Weidenfeld and
Nicolson (1995).
9. Walter Truett Anderson's Evolution Isn't What It Used To Be: The Augmented Animal
and the Whole Wired World. (1996).

10. Richard Sloan Wilson and and Elliot Sober's Unto Others. Harvard University Press
(1999).
11. Michael J. Dodds' Top Down, Bottom Up or Inside Out? Retrieving Aristotelian
Causality in Contemporary Science.
http://www.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/ti/dodds.htm (Jul. 1997)
12. Our Vision: Genome Studies as a Change of Paradigm in Biology
http://www.hkupasteur.hku.hk/hkuip/vision.html and Cohen and Stewart.
Internet Resources
1. Cell Biology. http://www.surfnetkids.com/cells.htm. Very fully-featured section with
articles and flash demonstrations on all aspects of cell biology.
2. BioMedia Teacher. http://ebiomedia.com/teach/vizlinks.html. Not systematic, but
excellent listings for cell physiology and related matters.
3. Biology Links. http://www.scienceman.com/pgs/links_biol.html#anchor2. Another
good listing for cell biology sites.
4. Second Law of Thermodynamics. Brig Klyce.
http://www.panspermia.org/seconlaw.htm. Extended article on common
misunderstandings, with extended references.
5. The Second Law of Thermodynamics, Evolution, and Probability. Frank Steiger. 1997.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo/probability.html. A more mathematical treatment
of entropy and probability.
6. Second law broken: Small-scale energy fluctuations could limit minaturization. Ed.
Gerstner. Jul. 2002. http://www.nature.com/nsu/020722/020722-2.html. Exceptions to the
second law at the cell level.
7. Maximum Power. Jay Hanson. Jan 2001. http://www.dieoff.com/page193.htm.
Evolution applied to competitive human societies.
8. Visiting Darwin's Cathedral. Varadaraja V. Raman. Sep. 2002.
http://www.metanexus.net/metanexus_online/show_article.asp?7175. Review of David
Sloane Wilson's book on religion and evolution.
9. Claude Shannon. http://www.nyu.edu/pages/linguistics/courses/
v610003/shan.html. Introduction to Shanon and his work.
10. Biological Information Theory and Chowder Society. Tom Schneider. Aug. 2001.
http://www-lmmb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/bionet.info-theory.faq.html. Forum for information
theory in biology: listings and faqs.
11. A Short Course in Information Theory. David J.C. MacKay Jan. 1995.
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/info-theory/course.html. Mathematical
treatmement in pdf files.
12. Information Theory and Creationism: Classical Information Theory (Shannon). Rich
Baldwin. http://home.mira.net/~reynella/debate/shannon.htm. Extended series of articles
on informationa theory: technical.
13. Introduction to Evolutionary Biology: Version 2. Chris Colby. 1996.
http://www.empowermentzone.com/evol_bio.txt A standard but clear account.
14. Evidence for Evolution: An Eclectic Survey. Chris Colby. 1997.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-research.html A linked series of postings.
15. Saint Thomas Aquinas. Ralph McInerny. 1999.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry

mentioning substantial form.

16. Form. K. Knight. Sep. 2003. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06137b.htm New
Advent entry on substantial form.
17. Meme. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme. Wikipedia entry on memes, cultural
information transferable from one mind to another: an analogous concept.
C. John Holcombe 2007. Material can be freely used for non-commercial purposes if
cited in the usual way.
above copied from: http://www.textetc.com/theory/biological-models.html

EARTH SENSITIVE, John Grande

2000)
In developing a nature-specific dialogue that is interactive, rooted in actual experience in
a given place and time, with nature the essential material and ingredient of the process,
artists are ultimately developing a new language of expression. The emphasis is holistic,
bio-regional and mutualist. Above all, it displays a respect for our integral connectedness
to the environment. The earth is a living breathing organism whose elements - climate,
geography, geology, other life forms - are an inviolable part of the human creative
process. The inflexible stereotypes of art history, outmoded notions of avant-gardism and
modernist aesthetics in general are the legacy of an era where progress was defined in
purely economic terms. The land is no longer just a subject we represent through art. An
essential freedom comes from identifying with the life process itself as art. It is one
chance we have to ensure a viable art of the future. The imperial stereotypes of an art
based in formal language, the segregation of humanity from nature, the platitudes that
accompany the art object and nature subject have now passed into the catacombs of our
museums and art galleries. Let us leave that labyrinth behind and celebrate nature whose
presence is very much there, very much here. Essential for our psychological and
physical sustenance, nature is here in your garden, there in your forest, can be found in a
city park. A resurgence of ritual and respect for the cyclical process of life, an earth
sensitive vision reaffirms nature is the art of which we are a part. The challenge is to
break out of the limited conception that humanity is the centre of earth-based activity, to
broaden our perspective, realize that other species, organisms, animals and plants are
equally earth sensitive, the biogenitors of ecological diversity. They may even perceive
the earth and us in ways we could never conceive.
From a native point of view, landscape cannot be characterized as either wilderness (i.e. a
place in which human activity is not naturally present) or a scene (i.,e. a representation of
a site) or a framed subject that embodies an idea of nature. The line between human
culture and the culture of nature are indivisible. The Mtabetchouane Centre for History

and Archaeology on the south shore of Lac St.-Jean in northern Quebec, with its replica
of a Hudson's Bay trading post, is a place where on July 16th, 1647, the Jesuit founder
Jean Dequen, a native of Amiens in France, arrived by boat from Tadoussac. Mike
MacDonald, a self taught artist of mixed descent (Micmac, Beothuk, Irish, Portuguese,
Scottish) whose nature works explore ways of healing cultural and biospecific
differences, found a variety of introduced and indigenous species of plants growing in the
surrounds of this historic site, a traditional native meeting place for centuries in precontact times. During the summer of 1996, he gathered and transplanted species of
Native medicinal plants that included sweetgrass, northern sage, native onions, Iroquois
ceremonial tobacco, Virginia tobacco, evening primrose, milkweed, Joe-Pyeweed, and
Dyers camomile. These indigenous plants with medicinal properties were planted directly
around the museum's walls to create a butterfly garden. Naturally growing varieties of
viperine, wood strawberry, and hawthorn trees introduced by European settlers centuries
ago, plants that have outlasted the early settlement buildings and continued to flourish in
the wild were likewise "discovered" by MacDonald whose role was more that of an
ethnobotanist than artist. Rock assemblages shaped to form footprints (an allusion to Jean
Dequen's original "discovery" of this site in 1647) placed in the garden enabled visitors to
move through the site without damaging the plants.
MacDonald's thesis that most plants that attract butterflies have medicinal, healing
properties has resulted in subsequent reconfigurations of the butterfly garden that are a
source of inspiration and healing, and painlessly beautiful. MacDonald's latest butterfly
garden installed amid the ruins of Our Lady of the Prairie Church at the St. Norbert Arts
Centre this summer, brought living colour to this site of a former Trappist Monastery,
south of Winnipeg, in Manitoba. This heart-shaped garden was replanted with blue and
white flowers, the colours used in the Catholic Marian Garden tradition. The place
became a work of contemplation and healing, where past Judeo-Christian traditions
brought over from the Old world were brought into perspective by a native intervention.
An empty plinth overlooking the garden marks the spot where a statue once stood. The
10th in a cycle of 12 related works Patria (Homeland) by the world renowned
environmental writer, educator and composer R. Murray Shafer will be performed there.
The cycle relates the journey of two principal characters through the labyrinth of different
cultures and social situations.
Located on the Pacific Flyway and the Fraser River Basin, the City of Vancouver has a
particular environmental legacy and opportunity. To raise consciousness of songbird
populations in city and country, and provide positive enhancement programs for songbird
habitats in urban centres, artists Beth Carruthers and Nelson Gray, conceived of
Vancouver's SongBird project after hearing the clear song of a robin rising above the
background cacophony of industrial noise. Biologists, landscape architects, musicians,
artists, planners, sustainability consultants and community groups assisted with the
project, as did the Douglas College Institute of Urban Ecology and the Roundhouse
Community Centre. Environmental concerns were expressed by specialists and city
dwellers in the Living City Forum (1998 & 1999), and nature walks encouraged an
awareness of urban bird habitats. FLAP (the Fatal Light Awareness Program) likewise
made citizens aware of how millions of birds are killed annually in North America by

collisions with office and home buildings that are unnecessarily lit up at night.
A broader than usual spectrum of the public has thus become involved in re-imagining
the Georgia Basin's place in the world environmental spectrum and Vancouver has
become a "songbird friendly" model for other North American cities. The core annual
event of the SongBird project is the Spring Dawn Chorus Festival held in May. Begun in
England 13 years ago these gatherings of people who await the songbird's dawn chorus
are now celebrated around the world. The Babylon Gardens Initiative presented at the
Roundhouse Community Centre, aimed at introducing to the public ways of encouraging
bird populations in the city. Citizens were taught how to build feeders, nesting boxes,
introduce ivy, trellises and bird baths into their home environments thus providing
temporary food, habitat and water supplies for birds on balconies, rooftops, in window
boxes and gardens. The Gardens of Babylon Balcony Challenge has now run for 3 years
and winners are recognized for their positive bird friendly environmental interventions.
The Nest, a structure woven out of willows and dried grasses by French artist and
landscape architecture student Claire Bedat with assistance from public volunteers was
installed outside the Roundhouse Community Centre in the fall of 1998 to celebrate
humanity's connection to home, community and songbirds. As Claire Bedat says: "The
making was in its essence a very intuitive rendering, as dedicated as a bird, I used each
part of my body to shape and build the Nest. A nest is supposedly round, round like life,
round like the body of a bird. Unconsciously I was participating in the making of a
shelter, a refuge, the house of my body (...) Growth is often assimilated to change, I
changed during the making of this project and feel emotionally empowered and bounded
to a greater cause: preserving biodiversity on Earth."
Alan Sonfist, a pioneer of eco-sensitive projects in the 1960s and 1970s, for which his
Time Landscape (1965) in Soho New York is perhaps the best known. For this project
Sonfist introduced pre-contact plants, trees and vegetation to a site in New York. As
Sonfist states: "One would observe, within each of the environmental sculptures, the
struggle of life and death, as well as the human interaction in a historical forest. That's
what the 19th century concepts were about. That is really what I am involved in, and
what my thought process is trying to create. The natural cycles as opposed to doing an
ecological model from a scientific point of view, or using pure history."
In the Mojave Desert at the main park in La Quinta, California, Sonfist completed a
seven mile nature trail (1998) in a region of California otherwise encumbered by the
introduction of non-native, northern species of trees and plants that consume unnecessary
amounts of water. California bio-history is like bio-history anywhere, involves a layering
of living species in the cyclical theatre of nature in time. ghost flower, bee balm, blazing
star, desert star, cream cup, woolly daisy, Indian paintbrush, yellow cup, desert sienna,
Devil's claw. The flux and flow of elements causes nature to reinvent itself in a myriad of
ways. Sonfist's project involves reassessing each fragment of time, realize this nature
layering takes place in a continuum, not one fixed moment. The locals who live near the
site, seemed to favour non-natural nordic landscapes with maple trees, and grass lawns.
Foreign plant and tree species are planted, landscaped into our cities and suburbs because
they bring an "exotic flavour" to a place. How different is this from changing the channel

on your TV in an endless search for "novelty"? Artificial environments, in this case in a

desert region, require heavy watering, and are a desperate attempt to reduce biocultural
diversity. Since the local indigenous plant species have been introduced to the region, the
initially negative response, has been replaced by an enthusiasm about how beautiful and
diverse the spectrum of flower arrangements Sonfist has brought to the place actually are.
Sonfist's nature trail has become a visual laboratory of environmental understanding. The
work has stimulated thought and controversy as well as providing a cathartic living
environment for the people who live there. Plans are on for sculptors to introduce
artworks along the trail at a later date.
For the Coast Salish Squamish nation on the West Coast of British Columbia whose
numbers dwindled from 60,000 to a low of 150 after intitial contact with the white man,
the world is conceived as a forest. The community of trees that grow in a forest is like a
community of peoples whose health and history are inextricably linked together. Artist
and activist Nancy Bleck and carver Aaron Nelson-Moody (Tawx'sin Yexwulla) have
embarked on an intriguing project called Cedar People. The first stage of the project
involves Nelson-Moody's carved rendition of the Society of Women in Stewardship of
the Land, a "society within a society", raised from birth to act as leaders who look after
the land. As Nelson-Moody states "There is no equivalent in non-Native society, as the
women were as much medicinal doctors as they were environmental lawyers, as much
libraries as they were land managers." A traditional ceremony has already been held to
bless the log, and invitees witnessed the first stage of the transformation of this cedar
wood into Slyn'i (cedar woman). Being the first of many such Welcome Figure carvings,
it will be raised in a sacred site in the upper Squamish wilderness region this August.
Culturally modified markings on the outside bark of ancient cedar trees can be found in
such sites that indicate these places have been visited for thousands of years. Using
traditional native tools, Nelson-Moody has created a twelve by three foot carving whose
installation will be witnessed by the Coast Salish Squamish people and non-natives. The
traditional society of women this work is dedicated to, are likewise "witnesses" who have
participated through ceremony as "keepers of history". Other welcome figures will be
made elsewhere, in collaboration with local carvers and participants - on site in Quebec,
Germany, and Australia - locals carving traditions and motifs will be part of these
initiatives.
In 1992 at Mru in the Oise region of France, Jean-Paul Ganem created his first
"agricultural composition" and this was soon followed by others in the Vende,
Champagne, and Midi-Pyrnes of France and the 150 hectare Mirabel airport project
in Montreal, Canada (1996). This summer, Jean-Paul Ganem has been involved in a large
scale environmental sensibilization and community participation project titled Le Jardin
des Capteurs. Created in collaboration with the Cirque du Soleil and Jour-Terre Quebec
Le Jardin des Capteurs occupies a 2.5 hectare waste area adjacent to the Cirque du
Soleil's permanent headquarters in the north of Montreal. The site referred to as the
Miron Quarry, contains human waste excrement up to 100 feet in depth. Gas emission
pipes (up to 400 feet below the surface), sporadically dot the surface of the land like
periscopes. Operated by Gazmont Plant nearby, the gas pipe emissions provide natural
gas/methane power for 10,000 homes. Ganem's art project involves youth from the St.

Michel region of Montreal and volunteers from Montreal's Botanical Gardens. Thus
beautified, Ganem's site intervention changes public perception of garbage and waste
dumps, not only for the volunteers, but equally for those who visit the place or see it from
the air. An end of the world wasteland becomes a beautiful rendition of the circus Big Top
with colourful wedge-like land marks and overlapping circular motifs in varying
dimensions. All this is made of living plant and flower species: red and yellow Cosmos,
pink and red petunias, colza, beard-grass, wild heliotrope and buckwheat.. The colourful
land markings and motifs overlap, with varying circular dimensions and shapes. An
undulating path makes its way through the planting... Directional markers point to the
more formidable areas of the Miron Quarry/Dump that will, over the coming years, be
landscaped and transformed into a more substantial city park with a hill at its centre. Next
year perennials will replace the present planting. Le Jardin des Capteurs introduces the
notion that sites for human waste, the detritus of our urban consumer society can be
recycled and beautified as sites, just as the goods and waste that end up there can be.
Approaching such initiatives from the aesthetic and design perspective Belgian artist Bob
Verschueren is an artist who specializes in making vegetal art out of vegetal matter. His
most impressive works include the Wind Paintings which are nothing less than
spectacular. The Wind Paintings comprise lines of natural pigment that are dispersed by
wind action. It was the unpredictability of the result that initially attracted Verschueren to
this kind of art making. The experience came about after Verschueren quit traditional
painting and found himself "no longer confronted by the limits of this horrible rectangle.
The subject extended beyond any traditional aesthetic framework. A battle lost before you
start one could say! One could not measure a work, one does not know what comprises
the last grain of pigment, where it will go..." Vershueren lays variously coloured pigments
in lines along stretches of sand for his Wind Paintings. Nature does the rest. The action of
wind on the pigment turns the land surface into the canvas for these artworks.
German artist Mario Reis makes "nature watercolours" by placing a base material in
flowing water and allowing the mineral and vegetal sediment transported in the water to
accumulate on its surface. Water is the paintbrush that moves and dispaces the sediment
and colour on these square canvases. Reis finds these configurations of silt, sand and
sediment drawn from rivers all over North America in places as varied as the Yukon,
British Columbia, Idaho, Ohio, New Hampshire, Nevada, Michigan, Alaska, Wyoming
and Kansas to be as confounding in their variety of hues, shades, textures as any old
fashioned artwork and much more challenging. Reis' likewise enacts such works in
Mexico, Europe, Africa, and Japan. They are a powerful reflection on natural diversity.
His approach is rigorous and truly global in scope.
The growth of an interactive approach to working with environment implies an
acceptance of ourselves, as much as nature. These artists' actions carry a narrative on
human history within their work, but circumvent artistic conventions of reproduction,
containment and mimesis. Nature and art are less critically segregated, life takes
precedence over the art. Links are established between human culture and the culture of
nature. With each successive experimentation this new language of expression that
involves understanding our place in nature become better understood. Elements from

nature are the paint and nature is the canvas. Artists are the catalysts. There is no subject
or object. This earth sensitive language of expression is tactile, physical and plays
visually with various organic and inorganic elements in a given site. The creative growth
experience is interactive. As we enhance our understanding of nature's place in our
society, our civilization, our personal lives, so we better understand that our society's
future will inevitably involve understanding and respecting nature's processes. Nature's
endemic role as source and provider is what will enable us to achieve sustainability for all
forms of life the earth in the future.
John K. Grande
- previously published in Public Art Review (Vol. 12, No. 1, Issue 23) Fall Winter 2000
issue
Writer and art critic John Grande's reviews and feature articles have been published
extensively in Artforum, Vice Versa, Sculpture, Art Papers, British Journal of
Photography, Espace Sculpture, Public Art Review, Vie des Arts, Art On Paper, The
Globe & Mail, Circa & Canadian Forum. The author of Balance: Art and Nature (Black
Rose Books, 1994), Intertwining: Landscape, Technology, Issues, Artists (Black Rose
Books, 1998) and Jouer avec le feu: Armand Vaillancourt: Sculpteur engag (Montreal:
Lanctot, 2001). John Grande has published numerous catalogue essays on selected artists
and has taught art history at Bishops University. He co-authored Judy Garfin: Natural
Disguise (Vehicule Press, Montreal, 1998) and Nils-Udo: Art with Nature (Wienand
Verlag, Koln, Germany 2000) and his latest book is David Sorensen: Abstraction From
Here to Now (Centre culturel Yvonne L. Bombardier, Valcourt, 2001) Mr. Grande's Art
Nature Dialogues will be published by SUNY Press in 2003.
2009 greenmuseum.org
above from: http://greenmuseum.org/generic_content.php?ct_id=109

Alan Sonfist: a natural history, John K. Grande

Interview conducted by John Grande Montreal, Canada, October, 2008
Public nature: public art
Alan Sonfist is a visionary figure whose 40-year carrer in art has explored the
relationship between natural history and human history. His works are driven by a sense
of the past existing within the present. In the US, his most recognised piece of work is
Time Landscape, situated on Houston Street in Manhattan. Here in the UK he's been
working most recently with the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World in
Devon. Curator and art writer John Grande caught up with Alan Sonfist recently in
Montreal, Canada.

A pioneer of public art that celebrates our links to the land, Alan Sonfist is an artist who
has sought to bridge the great gap between humanity and nature by making us aware of
the ancient and contemporary nature - geology, landforms and living species - that are
part of "living history". With a reawakening of public awareness of environmental issues
and of a need to regenerate our living planet Sonfist brings a much needed awareness of
nature's parallel and often unrecorded history and present in contemporary life and art.
As early as 1965 Sonfist advocated the building of monuments dedicated to the history of
unpolluted air, and suggested the migration of animals should be reported as public
events. In an essay published in 1968 titled Natural Phenomena as Public Monuments,
Sonfist emancipated public art from focussing exclusively on human history stating: "As
in war monuments that record the life and death of soldiers, the life and death of natural
phenomena such as rivers, springs, and natural outcroppings need to be remembered.
Public art can be a reminder that the city was once a forest or a marsh."
Alan Sonfist continues to advocate, in his urban and rural artworks, projects that heighten
our awareness of the historical geology or terrain of a place, earth cores become a symbol
of the deeper history or geology of the land. His art emphasizes the layered and complex
intertwining of human and natural history. He has bequeathed his body as an artwork to
the Museum of Modern Art. Its decay is seen as an ongoing part of the natural life cycle
process.
Here we are in Montreal after a visit to the Laurentians and we have just heard of Barack
Obamas victory. How are you Alan?Great. Its a beautiful day and I am looking forward
to the United States future president Barack Obama taking office. He is a visionary of
change in our society and has addressed in numerous speeches that we are entering into
global warming because of our complete dependence on fossil fuels. In Kln, Germany I
am creating a sculpture about global warming and the rhythms of our planet. The
sculpture will visualize, for the viewer, the fragility of our planet.
Water has also become a major environmental issue in our society. Are you working on
any projects concerning water?I proposed in New York City to create a park where the
original water source of the city would be flowing. The sculpture would filter the ancient
water and allow the public to engage in the historic streams of the city. I first proposed to
expose the natural springs of New York in 1971 for Earth Day.The early land artists there
was nothing ecological at all about their situational events. It was basically after
Minimalism, it was getting out of the galleries. Actual nature had not much to do with
it Landscape as real estate perhaps.
Exactly. The essence of my art began in my childhood when I witnessed the destruction
of the forest, walking in the Bronx. I was and still am captivated by the magic of the
ancient forest. People in the community set fires and destroyed the forest. I realized at
that moment that my life would be dedicated to educating people about the value of
natural areas within urban environments. My art is consistently about the environment
and calling attention to natural events that occur in urban and suburban environments. I
see my art as a social discourse within a community. All great public art creates

conversation within the community. We have to make a decision about how we create
public art. Is public art going to just be a decoration that has very little meaning for the
community or will it engage in a dialogue with that community? That is the important
difference between my projects and those of the early land artists I have always
interacted with city residents while other artists were involved in creating remote land
interventions in places where there was no connection with the community. A flight of
geese could be celebrated instead of a war as a public event, and hence a living
monumentWe should celebrate natural events as opposed to wars. I propose to create
within every community public art that celebrates its unique natural history. An early
quote of mine stated, We have landmark buildings, we should create landmark nature
within urban and suburban areas. Since we are actively destroying the worlds natural
heritage, I propose that public art be created to celebrate the lost natural environments of
our communities.
Public art need not only reference architecture and the urban site, but it can also reference
nature. In that sense you were ahead of the landscape architects.
Yes, I was invited to MIT as an artist by the architectural program to set up a dialogue
with the architects on how nature could be brought into architecture. Collaboration with
the community, architects and landscape architects, is a crucial element of my work and it
always has been.And what evolved from the MIT experience?
I found at MIT an enthusiastic forum of scientists and architects who all wanted to work
together with me to create large-scale civic projects. We all worked together on an
ecological project for the Charles River.
So the crossover is very important especially in the realm of art at this stage isnt it?Over
the years I have collaborated with experts throughout the world. I am currently working
with scientists and architects in creating a new section for the city of Florence, Italy. We
are creating a large environmental sculpture that will bring back the ancient vegetation of
Tuscany. The park will be surrounded by the evolution of the citys human history. Thus
the collaboration will bridge the contemporary buildings with their ancient past,The Time
Landscape you created in New York City near Washington Square in New York How
did it all start? How did the project get going? I approached the community and said I had
an idea to create a historical landscape within the historic boundaries of Greenwich
Village which is one of the earlier settlements in New York City. Immediately I got a very
strong endorsement from the local residents. Within that community there were two very
strong advocates of creating green spaces - Jane Jacobs and Ruth Wittenborn. They had
not thought about the idea of history but they wanted to create more green spaces. To me
both were pioneers. They were the ones who literally stopped Robert Moses massive
highway system from going through Greenwich Village, and they substituted my Time
Landscape for what would have been the Moses Highway. The Time Landscape is a
historical natural landscape showing the juxtaposition of the indigenous people, and the
colonials how they interacted in the land using the context of a natural flora. Is there
some reference to the early Dutch settlers in your plantings? The Dutch and English
colonial diaries provided me insight into the native vegetation on the island in the earliest
European period of settlement.In more recent projects such as the Florida Natural

Cultural landscape in Tampa you literally create living landscapes that reference different
geological and natural historical eras by planting the various living species from those
eras. It all becomes a composite and multi-layered natural history that spans centuries and
reflects changes from human intervention in a landscape.The city of Tampa invited me to
collaborate with a landscape architect and architect to develop a public waterfront area
for the city. We had numerous meetings discussing with the community and the
government about how the area could be made into a unique public space. My
contribution was to create an environmental sculpture with a relief mural carved into the
concrete sidewalk reflecting the historical evolution of the city. I juxtaposed the original
natural landscape with the contemporary skyscrapers. It started with a traditional Spanish
garden leading to an ice age landscape. The crucial element is that each one is selfsustaining.Was that in the Spanish colonial historical area of the city? Yes it is connected
to the Spanish colonial areas. I paid homage to the early settlers by using the traditional
Spanish columns and then creating living versions of them. The sculptural columns were
living systems with ancient and Spanish vegetation growing on them thereby becoming a
living testament to natural history. And the walkways are in the forms of leaf shapes Is
that right?Everything echoes the historical evolution. Each leaf form represents a
different forest, or type of vegetation that existed in Tampa. It starts with contemporary
and then goes to a prehistoric waterfront landscape where I planted trees that would have
grown there several thousand years ago. So each little niche in the leaf, creates another
form of the historical landscape The walkways themselves are not just walkways. They
mimic the movement of the trains through the area. They mimic the footprints of the
indigenous peoples of the area, the movements of the colonial people. It has multiple
layers, and impressions on the land.Is there a link to the shoreline with the walkways?It
connects directly to the shoreline so that people can walk from the street to the water.And
in at Ludwig Forum in Aachen, Germany you presented a natural history installation in
the park area. I was paying homage to Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor. I was
inspired by the original fortification of Aachen, which I miniaturized and placed in the
forest that would have existed during Charlemagnes time. Thus the fortification becomes
the protector of the forest. In the art gallery shows you often reference your natural
historical approach as well. You did core samples under the city of Kln, I believe, for
instance.In Kln I was invited to do a commission for the opening of the new Ludwig
Museum. I was commissioned by the museum to uncover the geological history of the
city. It was a living history, covered by concrete. By drilling in different strategic
locations of Kln, I was able to expose this living geological history. Then I laid the
corings out like a tablet, revealing the geologic secrets of the city. Journey to the Centre
of the Earth with apologies to Jules Verne And your Circles of Time project in Italy, is
one of your most innovative and fascinating. Very often in landscape architecture natural
features or topography is referenced, but very seldom do they build a narrative out of the
intertwining of natural and human history as you have there. Can you comment?The
Circles of Time was an echo of the rings of a tree. It became a metaphor to show the ages
of the earth, each ring or circle represents a different time frame. It starts out at the central
core with the original forest that existed in Tuscany, then moves to the Etruscan use of the
land, where they would plant various herbs and forms of vegetation for their own food
sources. The environmental sculpture then continues through the eras of the place. Each
stone was laid into the site as if this were a geological history of the area, and the layout

mimics the hills of Tuscany. The last ring was in an agricultural area, containing olive
trees and wheat fields. The local farmers actually would collect the harvest, thus it
became a truly public sculpture.So these last elements have a function. The olive trees
and wheat fields establish a significant role, by linking with the agriculture and the local
community.Exactly. So that is the crucial element for all my projects, that they do not
disconnect from or impose on the community. The public art integrates with the city. I
was pleased that the workers and community on the Italian project had a picnic party
afterwards to celebrate the public art, as they did after my project in Denmark.Yes, Let's
get to Denmark, At Tickon on the island of Langeland in Denmark which has a number of
major works by Andy Goldsworthy, David Nash and many others artist who work with
nature, you made a work that reference that bio-region of the world. Tell me about thatI
spent several months observing the topography of Denmark. I observed ancient burial
grounds that contained stone ships. I thought Why dont I create a stone ship and instead
of paying homage to the humans again, pay homage to the oaks that created the ships.
Again, as with so many human events, the Danes overcut the timber for the ships, so this
particular oak used for the Viking ships was almost extinct. The lands became deforested.
So here I am, again, within this stone ship planting over one thousand oaks of this
endangered species, so now the stone ship instead of protecting a burial ground, becomes
a life force, and a protector of the forest of the future of Denmark.
And Alan, did Joseph Beuys influence your work?I was always a great admirer of his
work. I will never forget, we were in Documenta 7 together. I shared a space next to him.
Beuys was exhibiting his classic, wonderful Fat Machine and I had my presentation of
my Time Landscape that I had just completed construction of in New York. My space in
Documenta was a series of cubist photographs representing the ancient forests of New
York. He spent much time in my exhibit discussing the ancient trees of New York. I feel
we had a very common bond in our understanding of the environment. We also talked
about our childhoods and our connection to nature. I think if he had lived we would have
had a collaboration.As the landscape is becoming increasingly transformed, imposed
upon, and so on, by human intervention, do you believe the role of the artist, and the
public artist, in particular, could be to reinvigorate an idea of nature, as much as the
nature itself, within the public art project? Nature is all around us, transformed, but often
doesnt look like nature. Do you think it should look like nature?I agree with you. That is
why I called my work a Time Landscape, because nature is constantly changing. We are
going into global warming now, and we had various ice ages. Nature is not a fixed object,
its in transformation, existing in a continuum. I select different elements of time in these
natural cultural landscapes. I am now working with the City of Florence. The team and I
are creating a Time Landscape, visualizing the ancient olive tree. What does the word
integration mean to you?It means that I am working with the community, the landscape
architect, and the architect. Furthermore the art piece itself interacts with the people. I am
very excited about the la Quinta, California nature trail you created in 1992. You are
actually designing and creating the walking paths and routes in the landscape at la
Quinta, as well as reintroducing indigenous species. The waterworks part of the
government had built a one hundred year trench that was intended to prevent flooding on
the community. The trench was simply dumped on the desert. The community was up in
arms because they could see this dump area from their windows. So they demanded all

this material be removed. I was invited to work with the Waterworks people and the
community, so this is where the integration comes in. Immediately the Waterworks
people said it would cost us over million to remove the rubble. They said, We cant do it.
Can you come up with a solution? I came up with using indigenous plants, which
needed minimal care. It cost less to do my project and it created a beautiful nature walk.
The public schools as well as nature groups are now utilizing the park.
I think of those early bronze tree forms you made that were assemblages of various trees
species spliced to form one tree. Again it was about endangered trees. Similar to my
original statements saying we have to create nature monuments, I thought who are the
heroes of our society but trees. So trees are monuments we should pay homage to. The
bronze sculptures were all relics of trees that I collaged together. They are exact replicas
of fallen limbs, paying homage to the endangered trees of the earth. At an exhibition in
the Ludwig Museum in Aachen, I created a series of natural and the bronzed copies or
limbs. They were displayed together, the original natural limb or branch was worth 3,000
dollars and the bronze was worth 3 dollars. We must place more value on our natural
heritage. How important is the visual in these assembled public art landscapes?I am an
artist first, so the visual is important but the message is equally important. It has to be
beautiful. A review of my art at the Albright-Knox Museum said that my work is quite
beautiful and people enjoy it. So I wrote to the critic who wrote that, and I said Thank
you. He called me up and said that he meant that as a criticism. And I said, To me it is
not a criticism. Art should bring a sense of life and a positive force in the community.
And so a work made at Three Mile Island, Pool of Virgin Earth made at Lewiston, New
York
That was done in the early 1970s, before they understood the technology of how they
could seal a toxic area. I worked with scientists on that project. They actually expanded
it, and it became a whole landscape. They then grew a forest on the landThe motor car
seems to be part of the problem. There is no accounting for the transport and resource
costs for these new developments and no future vision.I think these are some of the
causes that need to be addressed by artists. Walking and observing is one of the crucial
elements that I use in my work. My original proposal for the city of New York in 1965
was to create a series of integrated historical landscapes in every community throughout
the city, and the would be connected by a path represented by the ancient pathways of
pre-European Manhattan. And I believe there was a forest that played a major role in
your work.I grew up in the south central Bronx where there was a hemlock forest, which
has been totally destroyed. The city is actively trying to restore it.The forest and nature
influenced you positively. Nature can be something that can move us in a positive
direction and pubic art projects using nature as well.Swedish sociologists did a study on
urban nature, and they asked the citizens what they liked. And an overwhelming
percentage of respondents said, We want more trees. This became the essence of my
planning projects for Sweden.Your photo collage works exhibited in art galleries are so
different from the works of Hamish Fulton or Richard Long. They arent concept-based
but are like multiple moments in a walk through a landscape. These are not individual
views of a forest interior, but multiple time sequenced views that exist together, like a
metaphor for the continuum nature exists in.That is what I am trying to do. Each one of

these collages is not formulated. It is more my body movement in relation to the

photograph, my body as it moves through the forest. The photographs are an active
element, and present the way I observe the forest. The photographs become cubist
photograph of time.There is a strong link between performance art, with artists like Allan
Kaprow, yourself and many others, and an art that embraces ecology. Performance art
was very much was one of the keystones for an art working with nature and the pubic
earth art that came in the future. I agree with you. Kaprow to me was a very important
artist because he tried to integrate art back into the community in a performance manner.
In some ways, you could say these photo collage landscapes, open the door for people to
walk into them. So you believe in a social or cultural context for art.There has to be a
social commitment. People have lost the idea that public art means public and that is the
crucial element. For my projects to be successful they have to involve the enjoyment of
the public, not just the art community. One of the most important comments that was said
of my first public project, was a local baker who came from across the street to see my
Time Landscape. He said, I dont know if this is art, but I like it!A lot of your art moves
us away from the idea of art as object, even from the idea of image as object in an
electronic era of data communication. The image as object does not go much further than
the physical object really. Integration in a living community of art and nature, and people
in a society could be the real art.I think for art to function in the 21st century it has to be
involved in the community. I call it the markers of time, or markers of understanding
ones environment. The Time Landscape was not conceived as just one element. I wanted
it to be integrated throughout the entire city. I wanted it to be a balance between historical
nature and vegetation and contemporary architecture a dialogue and this is what the
function of public art is.C.P. Snow talked about the links between science and art, and
their creative connectivity. Do you agree with this?
Absolutely. One of the crucial elements of our society is trying to understand ourselves.
Science, like art, is one of the measures of how we become aware of who we are. I utilize
that in my work all the time.
I am thinking of the survival of civilizations as Jared Diamond describes in his book
Collapse. Dont we have to consider the relation between nature and society, in the way
we build, invent, design our lives.
One of the classical examples, was Ephesus, a city and one of the eight wonders of the
world. They had a choice, whether to build more sculptural and religious icons or to clean
their harbour. They didnt clean their harbour. All they did was build more and more
religious icons and sculptures. And now historically the city is abandoned and its twenty
miles away from the ocean. That is where you have to take time into consideration as you
are creating your environmental public artworks. That is why is my recent landscape
projects I have been taking into consideration global warming on how I create these
landscapes.
With a view to where things will be in the future, and climate, and water.
Water becomes a crucial element in these landscapes as well as the climate change and

how it affects the vegetation. I am currently working on a global warming sculpture for
the city of Koln Germany. The sculpture captures the past present and future rhythms of
our planet.
Can you tell me about your project in Devon at the Centre for Contemporary Art and the
Natural World enacted this past summer?
The sculpture involves the head forester of the community as well as the cultural
committee. The issue is that they now have a contemporary exotic forest and they want to
bring back the ancient indigenous forest. Because my art is about integration I am
currently collaborating with a local architect and historian to create an island connecting
the ancient human population to the vegetation that exited in that time. I am creating a
Celtic icon that will protect and provide space to regenerate the ancient indigenous forest
of England. The chief forester is so enthusiastic about the proposal that he wants to
integrate into other forest areas as well as into the community schools.
Do you think there is a cultural specificity to the way cultural landscapes are designed, as
for instance with the Japanese Garden, which is severely orchestrated and has its own
aesthetic. Do you think there is a particular aesthetic with North American land art and
landscaping?
I admire the Japanese landscapers. It has a very absolute view of a landscape. I find it to
be challenging and magical as it equally would be looking at the French or English
landscape, which is very much what the American landscape is about. It is an offshoot of
that. In that sense what I do is totally not referential to either Japanese or to the European
landscape. What I am using is scientific knowledge to create these landscapes. Science is
what dictates the actual landscape and not formal or aesthetic of landscape design.
Formal design comes secondary to the actual scientific understanding of the land.So you
would recommend as a strategy for young land and earth artists involved in the public
sphere, to try venues outside the art world, natural history museums, botanical gardens
and so on and so forth?All my art involves a clear understanding of environmental issues
and their unique relationship with the local community. Within the 21st century we have
to redefine the role of the artist as an individual who is actively seeking solutions to
improve our world.
Sonfist's art has been exhibited internationally at Dokumenta VI (1977), Tickon in
Denmark (1993), and in shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1975), the
Museum of Modern Art, N.Y. (1978), the Los Angeles County Museum (1985), the
Osaka World's Fair (1988), Santa Fe Contemporary Art Center (1990), the Museum of
Natural History in Dallas, Texas (1994). Best known for his Natural/Cultural Landscape
Commissions which began in 1965 with Time Landscape in Greenwich Village, and
include Pool of Virgin Earth, Lewiston, N.Y. (1973), Hemlock Forest, Bronx, N.Y.
(1978), Ten Acre Project, Wave Hill, N.Y. (1979), Geological Timeline, Duisburg,
Germany (1986), the Rising Earth Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. (1990),
Natural/Cultural Landscape, Trento, Italy (1993), a 7-mile Sculpture Nature Trail in La
Quinta, California (1998), as well as Natural/Cultural Landscapes created for the Curtis
Hixon Park in Tampa in Florida (1995) and Aachen, Germany (1999). Sonfist is currently

working on a three and a half-mile sculptural nature walk in LaQuinta, California, an

Environmental Island outside of Berlin, and The Great Bay Fountain for architect Richard
Meier in Islip N.Y..
The curator of Earth Artshows at the Royal Botanical Gardens (www.rbg.ca) this past
summer and autumn, John Grande has contributed to many publications over the years
including Artforum, Art Papers, Art on Paper, Vie des Arts, Canadian Art, Border
Crossings, la Revue Espace, Arts Review (UK), British Journal of Photography and
Photoicon (UK), John Grandes recent publications include Art Nature Dialogues (SUNY
Press, New York, 2004 www.sunypress.edu), Dialogues in Diversity: Art from Marginal
to Mainstream (Pari Publishing, Italy, 2007 www.paripublishing.com), and Art Allsorts:
Writing on Art & Artists (2008 available at www.lulu.com). Visit his website
www.grandescritique.com.
Original post: http://www.artsandecology.org.uk/magazine/features/alan-sonfist

Interview with Sin Ede, William Shaw

Use and beauty | Sin Ede unravels preconceptions about the purposes of art
Sin Ede is Director of Arts at the Gulbenkian Foundation in the UK. There she initiated
a ground-breaking Arts and Science programme, encouraging artists from all art forms
to engage with science and technology. With broad experience in fine arts, drama and
literature, she frequently chairs and speaks on panels about science and art. She's also
the author of Art and Science, and the co-author of Strange and Charmed: Science and
the contemporary visual arts.
What, we wondered, did she think of the objectives of the RSA Arts & Ecology Centre?
How "useful" is art when it comes to creating social change?
Sin Ede talks to RSA Arts & Ecology's William Shaw.
In Art & Science you write about how scientists talk about the elegance and beauty
of a project, but also from the 20th century onwards, you say that artists never do.
How has that come about?
I think it's because scientists have a vision of the world as something that is implicitly
perfect, and it is their job to find out how it works. This would be particularly true of
physicists and mathematicians because they're Platonists, and you can't underestimate the
effect of classical thinking - Plato and Aristotle being, in a way, the two sides. This is my
philosophical take on it, but I can talk it through as well.
Plato does have this idea of the perfect world that came with the ideal forms. And in
mathematics you get people like Marcus du Sautoy, all the time saying he's looking for
pattern, and the pattern is an indication that there is a mega-pattern to be found. And I
think they go off with a spring in their step every morning because they find things that

somehow confirm this and then sometimes don't. But even when they don't they're still
finding it. I think that biologists are more Aristotlean and they are more about, "What do
my senses tell me?" and "How do I find things out every step of the way?" But I still
think there's an implicate way of thinking about things, even though evolution, as we
know it, is what biology is based on, it is about the accidental. Physicists would say that
it's only responding to the implicate universe.
In the arts we are rooted in the experience of being human. It's a subjective experience.
And ultimately we know we die. That is at the heart of it. And so even a concept of
beauty has a kind of sense of time passing in it. I did an event at the ICA the other week,
Can Art Make Us Happy?, and I said, "Look, there are four latin phrases: tempus fugit,
mememto mori, carpe diem and vanitas. And they are all about the poignancy of time
passing."
Even though the Romantics were interested in science and enthusiastic about it, Keats'
Ode on a Grecian Urn is a central poem for me. It's absolutely central! The people frozen
round, "For ever panting, and for ever young", on the point between one thing or another
- yet in life we're full of grief. There's this terrible contrast between the ideal and a
fantastic sadness.
Then you get the 20th century and there's an awareness that the world is full of grief and
wars I suppose there's always been an awareness of that and then since Duchamp, a
world full of irony. So if there is humour, if there is a lightness of heart, it's tinged with
irony and misery.
People think there must be a use for art in issues around the environment and we
believe there is but quite often they misconstrue what that use is.
Yes. Artists never use the word use. What Kant says about art is it's purposiveness
without a purpose. And it is a response to the world in any number of interesting different
ways because all the artists are looking at it slightly differently. So there is a fundamental
problem for me, and I think for the RSA too, and for the Arts Council, about asking artists
to make things that have a utility, that are issue-based, in the jargon. You'll get people like
Cornelia Parker saying "as an individual I am very moved by the politics and the ethics of
environmental issues, but I can't do that in my art." It's not how it works. Because the arts
are much more complex and do not have a particular purpose.
Obviously there will be some artworks that have a particular purpose, and interestingly
the attitude to nature that we hold enshrined because of Romanticism, means that we are
now aware that nature is no longer the nature that it was. Romanticism came about in
response to the industrialisation of the countryside. Now we know nature is no longer the
sublime, the transcendent, the beautiful, the God-given. It is tainted. It is sad. It is ending.
You can't say, "Hail to thee, blithe spirit!" any more like Shelley did, without being aware
that the lark is in decline. If you read the Shelley again you read it with this new
awareness and you bring this awareness to it.
Is there a problem then with a project like Arts & Ecology - or is there only a
problem if you think about it in terms of "use"?
Oh, subtle question. I mean, you could say, arts and sport, or arts and economics, couldn't
you? And arts and anything? In fact my book Art and Science is part of a series of books

that are art and anything... Art and Medicine, Art and Sex, and in a way you're just
making an interpretive selection. "Ok, let's look towards all the art that looks at the
environment, and look at environmental issues." Which is different from being an agenda
given to artists. Of course, how can you not make art about the environment? Nobody's
isolated.
So Arts & Ecology, or Art and Science, gives you a pair of critical glasses through
which to look?
Yes. Yes it does.
I'm going to eat away at this some more because it's obviously of huge concern for
us as a project. Matthew Taylor asks the question, "Given that artists are publicly
funded and educated why should they not then be obliged to look directly at a social
agenda?"
That is an enormously utilitarian question to ask. And it's not one that I could possibly
ask because I think art just is. I don't think anybody said to Shakespeare, "What are you
doing this for?" I don't think anyone said to Samuel Beckett, "Give us a list of your aims
and objectives." Or, "What are the outcomes?" I would never expect artists to answer that
even though I think every brush stroke or word is going to be influenced by the politics of
their time.
Another argument in relation to social change is that artists are individualists. It's
an individualist practice. And it's justified by art. You've got to let them do what
they do because they're artists. But we're in a crisis of individualism right now; you
could say it's individualism that has got us into this mess.
That's very interesting...yes.
So artists have to change at this point? Do they have to think more collectively? Is
there a possibility of a different culture? If art is what it is at any time, can it
change?
I think what you say is a profoundly interesting observation, because art came out of
human development about 60,000 years ago at the same time as religion and it had a
function - if you want to call metaphysics a function. It had a function in giving you a
vision of the other world, side-by-side with religion and probably was shamanistic. And it
was cohesive; it was there to keep the society together.
I think that one of the great turning points in English literature we're talking about the
beginning of modernism is Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech, because I think that's
as much to do with the individual as it is to do with the social responsibility, and the rise
of the individual is something that happened in modernism.
Until then art was about the collective experience, even if Chaucer and others wrote
about the individual. The rise of the individual went through to Freud, which is of course
about the "me", and in the 20th and 21st centuries we have been in the centuries of the
single person - the outsider. "What is my role?" was enshrined by Sartre and Camus and
existentialism. "I have nothing to do with anyone else. I am not part of anyone else."
I am enormously interested in trying to see how far we really are collective and no longer
individual and I think it's very interesting to look at neuroscience. That's why I love this

question. I'm a bit sceptical about evolutionary psychology. I think we are far more about
collective biology than we are willing to acknowledge.
Just before Christmas I did a symposium called Embodied Mind on the neuroscience of
performance at RADA, and Antonio Damasio, who is one of the experts on neuroscience
of emotion and feeling, was there, as was Raymond Tallis, who is again very interested in
the phenomenology of the body, and the playwright Caryl Churchill. We were talking
about what's going on in the mind and the fact that the body and the mind are as one. The
body expresses the mind and the mind expresses the body. Somebody asked Antonio
Damasio about collective behaviour and swarming in animals and he said, well actually
that is what's going on in the brain. There is no ghost in the machine, it is all a mass of
signalling. I think it's the most interesting idea - that there is not a me. There is an illusion
of a me, but it is all swarming and it is better seen as the sum of its parts.
What a great metaphor, at least.
Isn't it? Now it's quite difficult to analyse a society that is complex. We're not living in a
village any more. I think there's a lot of interest in the way in which we communicate and
act as a body.
Now, your question had political undertones. You're saying it's the responsibility of artists
as social creatures, in the global village if you like, to be the voice of conscience. I think
that's a fair comment. They probably are. They wouldn't.... express themselves as such.
(I'm worried about the word express because people think artists are "expressing
themselves". They're not. They're making art.) But I think their interest is very often in
collective issues. Very interestingly at the last Venice Biennale - two years ago - there
was a huge amount of documentary work, photography, art about the Middle East's
problems, the world in environmental crisis. This was shown as art. It's already becoming
the collective responsibility as opposed to the old-fashioned idea of the artists
communing with his muse.
When it comes to discussing the environment, a lot of art becomes naturally
apocalyptic and dark. Is that problematic?
I think what artists like doing is setting up a scenario and then trying to work out what
will happen. It's no accident that a lot of writers at the moment are writing books set in
the near future, Doris Lessing, Paul Theroux, Margaret Atwood. Lots of writers are
projecting into the future and it's almost like they are saying, "Ok, let's imagine what's
going to happen?" Faye Weldon's wonderful at this.
Finally, with the economic crisis, do you see a change coming in art?
Well according to the Art Newspaper, which is my Bible in these things, of course there
will be because a lot of people who buy art are very rich people. You could argue it's not
all bad because some investors - caricatured as the Russian oligarchs - overinflated the
price of art, and bought thoughtlessly. I tend to hope some idea of the idea of value and
price would be separated off. Apparently the historical art marketplace is holding very
strong and it's the more frivolous art pieces - fashion really - which are losing value.
Sin Ede is the Arts Director of the Gulbenkian Foundation and is author Art and Science,

and editor and author of Strange and Charmed, Science and the Contemporary Visual
Arts.
Above copied from: http://www.artsandecology.org.uk/magazine/features/interview--sinede

The rise of climate-change art, Madeleine Bunting

Artists are waking up to climate change. But what good can they do and how green is
their work? Cornelia Parker, Gary Hume and Keith Tyson reveal how they're dealing with
the threat of catastrophe
Image - Biospheres - Toms Saraceno's Biospheres at the Rethink exhibition in
Copenhagen. Photograph: Anders Sune Berg
A floating plastic bubble, so hi-tech it is lighter than air, is attached by ropes to the walls
of the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen. As I step gingerly on to its seethrough floor, I can peer down at the gallery 100ft below. When I'm joined by one of the
museum staff, I become unsteady. We crawl around this airborne plastic yurt like babies
and then, feeling giddy, stop to sit and talk about how our children might end up living in
a city of such bubbles, sealed off from a contaminated earth; about who might be lucky
enough to have such a refuge; how they might sing their children lullabies of a lost earth.
It's an eerie conversation to have with a stranger, both of us imagining a deeply tragic
future that seems highly plausible.
This installation, by Argentinian architect-artist Toms Saraceno, is the biggest in
Rethink, a series of contemporary art exhibitions taking place across Copenhagen ahead
of next week's climate change summit. When I tell Saraceno of my experience in his
bubble, he is delighted. "Perfect," he laughs. This, he says, is the role art has to play in
tackling climate change. "Art is about trying to rethink the things you take for granted."
Saraceno is one of several artists appearing at Copenhagen and in the Royal Academy's
Earth show, which opens in London this week. Some activists have wondered why the art
world has been slow to grasp the significance of climate change, so you could argue that
these exhibitions represent a dramatic awakening. Curators on both sides of the North sea
say the response from artists has been so enthusiastic that they could have filled their
spaces twice over. And both report unusually enthusiastic support from governments: the
Department of Energy and Climate Change has paid for a free guide for every visitor to
Earth. It's as if politicians, recognising the limits of their ability to engage the public on
this issue, are turning in desperation to other means of communicating the enormity of
what is at stake. "I didn't want penguins or icebergs," says Kathleen Soriano, one of
Earth's curators. "There's nothing literal. We're not offering information if visitors want
that, we have a website. We wanted people to have an aesthetic response."

That emphasis is evident, but with the beauty comes a sinister undertow. In Copenhagen,
Acid Rain, by Bright Ugochukwu Eke, consists of 6,000 hanging plastic bags. They
sparkle, grey, clear and black, like Christmas decorations, but they contain carbon dust
currently choking the inhabitants of the delta region of Nigeria, an area of massive oil
exploration. At first glance, the work of the Chinese artist Yao Lu appears to be an
idealised landscape of mountains and clouds, but look more closely and you'll see that it's
an urban waste dump.
A chilling lecture at Cern
Gary Hume's work, The Industrialist, is a lead tracing of a factory chimney billowing
smoke. He calls it an epitaph for industrialists, but admits he finds the brief a challenge.
"How do you depict global catastrophe?" he says. "I'm too selfish to describe the world's
dilemma, so I describe my own paltry dilemma of what it's like to be alive."
Hume describes his involvement with Cape Farewell an initiative to bring artists and
scientists together, in Hume's case on a trip to the Arctic as "completely beautiful, [but]
hard to relate to my life". He recycles, grows vegetables, has made his house fuelefficient, but acknowledges painful contradictions. "The people who do the most damage
[environmentally] buy my work, and I'm not using ecologically sound paint. I feel like
apologising I can't help the world. Climate change is too big for my art. My painting is
a small thing, like a child might do." Hume talks of the possibility of millions dying, but
he is wary of visual art's long-held fascination with apocalypse. Nature's indifference to
human survival has left him with no grand ambitions only a modest, if deeply
uncomfortable, determination to offer "solace".
Keith Tyson echoes this notion of humility. Nature Painting, an intense work on show in
Earth, was made by mixing toxic chemicals with pigment, echoing natural forms such as
cell formations. "Nature has an intelligence far greater than us," Tyson says. "We talk
about saving the earth, but we're really talking about saving ourselves. The earth can look
after itself." Tyson attended a lecture on climate change at Cern, the European
Organisation for Nuclear Research and home of the Hadron Collider: "It was a scientist
talking to other scientists and it was horrific far worse than people imagine. Terrifying."
The experience clarified his sense of the artist's role. "It is not to advocate solutions. It is
something much deeper and more subtle to make us reflect and rethink what it is to be a
human being in the 21st century. We don't have that much power. It's nature that creates
us. That's the kind of education too subtle to put on a syllabus: that's the important role of
art."
Curator Soriano was aware of these competing perspectives when she put Earth together.
"I didn't want to be preachy," she says, and is nervous of any suggestion that the
exhibition is the most political the Royal Academy has mounted. In fact, says Anne
Sophie Witzke, Rethink's project manager, the galleries involved in Copenhagen have
been cautious: no one wants to be accused of propaganda.

This timidity is a source of frustration for the arts group Platform, which for over 20
years has worked to marry art and activism. "The arts stumble along the fault line
between representation and transformation," says the organisation's James Marriott. "But,
until 50 or so years ago, all art was about transformation and persuasion. Look at Goya:
he wanted to persuade you of the horrors of war."
Art, Marriott thinks, is rediscovering a sense of purpose. In the last 50 days, Platform has
curated 100 events at the Arnolfini Centre in Bristol; many of the featured artists will be
joining activists in Copenhagen during the summit.
Huge carbon footprint
Marriott is delighted that climate change is finally attracting the attention it needs. "The
more the merrier," he says, rejecting the criticism that artists are climbing on a green
bandwagon. He is scathing, however, of the continuing blindness of artists, curators and
institutions to their own enormous carbon footprints. "They lug lumps of wood around
the world for exhibitions. Printing a catalogue on recycled paper is pathetic tokenism
no FTSE company would get away with that." Contemporary art is an expensive, global
business. Artists, curators and the works all end up flying, while galleries themselves
require expensive climactic conditions. Indeed, curators in London and Copenhagen
admit they have no idea of the carbon cost of their exhibitions.
Charlie Kronick is the senior climate change adviser at Greenpeace. "The real role is not
about using artists to leverage our message up the agenda," he says, "but for the artist to
make this agenda their own. It is important they maintain their authenticity." Campaign
initiatives have made a big impact on a number of artists (Ian McEwan and Antony
Gormley have spoken enthusiastically about their Cape Farewell experiences), but many,
such as Cornelia Parker, feel daunted by the need to respond to something so huge.
"I try to do my bit," says Parker, "as a citizen, an artist and in my everyday life." She has
cut down on flying and offsets the flights she takes. But she confesses that her piece for
the Earth show, Heart of Darkness, carbon frag-ments of a forest fire, was not originally
about climate change; she was thinking of Al Gore's election loss and the hanging chads
scandal. Now it is being co-opted into the climate change narrative. Similarly, Field, by
Gormley, takes on a new meaning here: the frightened, gormless crowds of humans spill
out of their room at the Royal Academy, not knowing where to go.
Parker's work has long had a preoccupation with the apocalyptic, but it was while
listening to scientists recount their struggle to communicate the scale of climate change to
politicians that she realised art had a vital role to play. She describes this as "a call to
arms", but isn't keen to be associated with a single issue. She says she has done only one
piece of work a filmed interview with Noam Chomsky, showing in Copenhagen that
deals with climate change, and even then the interview covers a range of issues.
"It was intentionally propagandist," she says, adding hesitantly that perhaps this is what is
required. "After all, the first world war artists were recruited to help fight the war and

this is the equivalent of war."

Earth is at the Royal Academy, London W1, until 31 January 2010. Details: 0207 300
8000. The Guardian is a media partner for the exhibition. Rethink runs until 5 April and
will tour next year. Details are at rethinkclimate.org.
the above copied from:http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/dec/02/climatechange-art-earth-rethink