Reading Summary
Eco art materials have been a concern of mine throughout my practice. In the book, To Life: Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet, Linda Weintraub’s assessment and categorizations of eco-materials are helpful for concisely organizing the various aspects to consider. When I fired my own ceramic I used electric kilns powered by 100% wind power. Reducing material impact is one reason I wanted to learn more about painting.
The concepts of ecological materialism are a solid counter movement to consumerism. The practice of planned obsolescence to increase wealth accumulation angers me. For over a hundred years automobile, oil and tire industries have fought against electric and mass transit in order to profit from their resource intensive industries.
Weintraub’s discussion of enchantment fits with my own ideas derived from Surrealism. Surrealists sought enchantment and the marvelous through creativity beyond the rational. Rationalism has led to the hyperreal, as described by Baudrillard, that many experience as their reality. An enchanted environmental materialism could now be used by artists to awaken that subconscious intuitive knowledge known by many ancient cultures. Eco-surrealism makes material relationships, environmental and ecological realities a contemporary means of enchantment beyond the hyperreal.
Assignment
Make a list of 10 materials that you had not considered art materials. Select 2 from this list and design a sculpture using that material as primary -other materials could be used for connecting or structuring. Sketch and write about these two sculptures. Come to class ready to participate where you will be sharing your theoretical sculpture.
This was a challenging list because I have seen and considered many unconventional art materials. I often evaluate materials and processes that I use and encounter as potential art media. The challenge was to think of things that I had not yet been considered.
Material List
- Spit
- The microbiome
- Restaurant grease
- Feral and stray cats
- Civil defense sirens
- Venom
- Bite impressions
- Artificial sweeteners
- Cockroaches
- Compressed pine sawdust pellets
Sculpture #1
Cat Cremains Acrylic Sphere
This sculpture combines relational aesthetics with life and matter, addressing several levels of reality and interaction with the world. In the center of a Gallery the sculpture is large clear acrylic sphere containing the cremains of all animals euthanized over one in a city or shelter.
Upon entering a gallery visitor will be handed a small transparent sphere containing the cremains equivalent to one euthanized cat. Visitors will be given a document giving them the option of writing on to with a marker on their capsule and either taking it home or placing their sphere under the curvature of the larger sphere at the center of the gallery.
Also inside the gallery are 33 free roaming shelter cats and kittens chosen for their good temperament. Cat furniture and toys are place around the perimeter allowing the animals to interact with the standing people.
Sculpture 2:
Compressed Pine Pellet Pillars
Compressed pine pellets are made from dry compressed pine saw dust. Dry, they are hard compact. Wet, they expand to more than double their size and crumble into loose saw dust.
My sculpture using these will consist of a pillar shape container of quarter inch hardware cloth about 1 foot in diameter filled with the pine pellets. The pillar would be of average human height or multiples could vary in height to give a human like metaphor. On “arms” above the rim of these pillars is a vat of water with a continuous drip.
As the pellets absorb the water they would expand internally and the water would find various paths but not spill out on the floor eventually the saw dust would push out through the mesh at various points fall to the floor and begin piling up around the base.
Multiples could be started at different times or have different drip rates. Pellets and water could be replenished with cone of sawdust accumulating at the bottom.
