Earth Artists

An overview of eco-art Nings.

If you haven’t heard of it yet, Ning is a sort of DIY social network platform. You pick a title and a logo and boom, you’ve got your own specially-themed, mini version of facebook. Over the past year quite a few nings have popped up specifically focused on arts and ecology. Here’s the digs on a few of them.

Earth Artists Network

Members:61

Earth Artists is an interdisciplinary network of artists, focused on ecology. The coordinators of the group are based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. “Earth Artists,” as defined by the Ning,  “are dedicated to advocacy for art, sustainable culture, and ecology.” Lots of folks posting photos and info about their eco-artwork.

The Art of Engagement

Members: 476

Also a network of eco-artists, this one with a curated online artist-in-residence. This Ning asks: What role can art play in transforming the current cascade of social and environmental crises? Can we develop a way to create culture, to research, learn and teach with/in ecological systems? Lively discussions and reviews in the forums.

CSPA Connect

Members: 126

The social network of the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts. Created to give CSPA affiliates a place to exchange ideas. Interesting forum discussions, plenty of events postings, also reports from conferences and of course, members posting photos of their artwork.

Art + Environment

Members: 200

Created by the Nevada Museum of Art. Many discussions and postings related to that museums’  LAND/ART symposium. Some cross-postings from the excellent Smudge Studio blog.

SEEDS

Members: 89

A conglomeration of folks interested in Somatic Experiments in Earth, Dance and Science, an interdisciplinary summer arts festival. Most recent posts include news of SEEDS t-shirts and footage of performances from the festival.

Go to the Green Museum

California Map Project

{California Map Project, 1969, by John Baldessari}

Somehow I missed learning about this piece until just recently, but it’s my new favorite work of “land art.” In 1969, John Baldessari took the map of California (lower right) and then went to each place on the map where the map letters spelling ‘California’ would be located. At these sites, he spelled out the letter in rocks or some other way, or maybe he found them. I don’t know exactly how he mad the piece, but it’s a pretty hilarious work and definitely in line with my other favorite piece of land art, Bruce Nauman’s untitled text piece which states, “Leave the Land Alone.” (A whole issue of Mammut was devoted to this text piece.)

Unfortunately, the online images of Baldessari’s piece aren’t that great. I’ll keep my eyes open for a better version, maybe in a book image that can be scanned. I also just read an excellent Dave Hickey piece on land art from the September-October 1971 issue of Art in America. In it, Hickey examines the perceived notion that land or earth artists were challenging the status of object production or the space of the museum. This is a viewpoint that still seems to be thrown around today. Hickey points out that the work was marketable and that many museums commissioned land art projects. He goes on to write that

It is not the Earth artists who are challenging the market and the museums, but the magazines themselves. Earth art and its unpackageable peers cannot hurt the market, but extensive magazine coverage can, since not as much object art will get exposure. The magazines have found in this unpackageable art a vehicle through which they can declare their independence from art dealers who invented the critical press, nurtured it, and have tended to treat it like a wholly own subsidiary. Now there is an art form ideally suited to presentation via magazine. Work consisting of photographs and documentation is not presented by journalism, but as journalism—a higher form—needless to say.

The people on the magazines must believe (and I think rightly) that these indefinite art forms might do for the magazines what Pop Art did for the dealers—lend a certain institutional luster,, and with it a modicum of arbitrary power.

It’s a great read of Earth Art and it makes sense to me. And works like Baldessari’s map project or Nauman’s text piece point to movements spawned by Earth Art, such as environmental art, where it’s not about bulldozers and diesel or creating monuments, but instead a use of land in a way that is less invasive. And artists have come up with a variety of strategies to turn that kind of art into careers—whether that means founding their own non-profits, existing on museum commissions or yes, making things for galleries. It’s hard to be a rebel these days, but there are still interesting things to do.

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