The Retort

From the Desk of One Baroque College Student: Environmental/Ecological Art

April 19th, 2010 by Lou Donaldson Of The Retort Staff

“To promote ecological restoration as a means of sustaining the diversity of life on Earth and reestablishing an ecologically healthy relationship between nature and culture.”

This is probably the best definition to be found for environmental art, even though it primarily deals with ecology. However, one key point of art is design, Ecological Design by Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan summed up how design fits in by it as “any form of design that minimizes environmentally destructive impacts by integrating itself with living processes.”

While definitions put environmental art in a new and improved light there are still misconceptions about it as a whole. A stigma, if you will, that, though undeserved, is propagated by those not necessarily involved with the works themselves but by those who feel the need and believe they have the right to force their ideas and beliefs down the proverbial throats of others. This is the reason many people groan and roll their eyes at the mention of environmental or ecological art. It brings to mind images of hippies throwing fits about this, that and the other by throwing paint on people, damaging other people’s property, and being physically aggressive with people in an attempt to make them submit to whatever it is the hippies are trying to push.

As I was saying, this is a pretty bum rap. Environmental art was around long before the hippies arrived, though at the time people who made such pieces believed their work was not art but served a specific purpose that has sadly long been forgotten.

The Nazca lines are a prime example of this. They are a collection of “hundreds of triangular, quadrangular, or trapezoidal ‘runways’, networks of straight lines…stripes crossing like roads or forming grids, circles and spirals of all sizes - and more than 100 giant figures of animals, birds and plants which are clearly visible.” So, okay, what’s so cool about some lines on the ground? Well, that is where one has to take the sheer size of the pieces into consideration. Many of the figures and shapes are so massive that the only way to view the complete figures or shape is from an altitude of 1,000 feet or higher. The Nazca lines are located “between the Pacific coast of southern Peru and the Andean foothills” and stretch an astonishing 200 square miles. The way the lines are constructed is also interesting and one of the reasons why they fall into the environmental art category in my belief. “The lines are in fact to parallel rows of pebbles, containing iron and iron oxides,” that’s it; these huge awe-inspiring images are made of continuous piles of pebbles. Something so small and trivial being used to make something so massively majestic is simple amazing.

A little further north, in present day Ohio, the Mississippian peoples were practicing mound building, another form of earthwork. The most famous example of mound building is the Great Serpent Mound, which at nearly a quarter of a mile long is, to date, the “largest serpent effigy known to man.” Unlike its fellow earthwork, the Nazca lines, which are made of piled pebbles, the serpent mound is made of a clay and rock base, with a soil capping that extends four to five feet high. The serpent mound is but one piece in a collection of earthworks created in an area that stretches from present day Ohio to Minnesota, but due to natural deterioration and other factors the serpent mound is the most preserved and therefore the most well known.

These two earthworks are manmade, they flow and move with the landscape on which they were constructed, they are as much a part of the land as the land is a part of them. In truth, should that be what environmental art does and is? Sadly, this is not always the case; many of Michael Heizer’s pieces scar the land they are put into, such as in pieces like Double Negative, which is 1,500 feet long, 50 feet deep and 30 feet wide, or his Nine Nevada Depressions. These pieces cut and tear through the land, leaving the viewer with and almost sad empty feeling upon seeing them.

Unlike Michael Heizer, Richard Long is one of those artists who are able to walk that very fine line of doing environmental art while at the same time being able to keep his “work” from being intrusive and an eyesore. Long summed up his land work pieces with, “I consider my landscape sculptures inhabit the rich territory between two ideological positions, namely that of making ‘monuments’ or conversely, of ‘leaving only footprints’.” Much like the Nazca lines and the mounds, Long’s work flows with the landscape it is on.

Environmental/ecological art has grown in popularity to the point of becoming almost mainstream. Numerous companies have sprung up for the purpose of bringing environmental and ecological works into the cityscapes. I, myself, have certain reservations about these imposed organic areas. This modern age has brought about a rather mechanical and industrialized world. While this is not prevalent everywhere, in the bigger cities it is plain as day. This move to the mechanical and industrialized look has stripped away the life of the area, leaving it cold, sterile and rather unfeeling. And while humans have a would-be “primal” need to have or be around greenery and other types of flora, there is also in many an underlying and irrational need for total and complete control.

This can be seen as far back as the ancient Roman villas with their sculpted manicured lawns and gardens. This imposed organic material that is sculpted and controlled, though it is flora, it is not nature. It is not nature because it is not natural. If humans were to disappear the perfectly green groomed lawns of Las Vegas and Hollywood would very quickly become a thing of the past. Many of the plants and flowers that have been imposed through city areas are not even native to that given area but are there because the humans choose them for their appearance and/or scent. This imposed organic presence has a look and feeling of being almost artificial, and while it may be pretty and a nice break from the black of the asphalt and the grey of the concert, it is a far cry from true and pure.

This mockery of nature known as imposed organic is shown in Kathryn Miller’s compilation pieces entitled Desert Lawns. There are three pieces to her series created with Michael Honer: Desert Lawns: require water brought from long distances, Desert Lawns: require chemicals to look good, and Desert Lawns: require intensive care. The write-up that was given for Desert Lawns is one of, if not the best, argument against this type of imposed organic that I know of to date.

“The Desert Lawn Series questioned Southern California’s insistence on maintaining thick, green, heavily watered lawns as central to the ideal landscape. Lawns are a compulsory landscape element to any suburban and corporate image. But underneath this seamless green carpet lie significant and serious economic, environmental and social costs. This is especially true when you live in a semi-desert where daily temperatures in summer easily soar over 100 degrees F. To keep a section of lawn 12 inches by 72 inches in size alive for a year in Los Angeles, it needs a minimum of 220 gallons of water. In general 60% of urban water is used to water lawns. Much of this drinking grade water is brought to LA from a distance of up to 400 miles. To keep it green and perfect also requires regular chemical prescriptions that ultimately enter the groundwater, or flow into rivers and the ocean. Native plants can be used much more appropriately and do not need the extra water, chemicals and gasoline powered equipment to maintain them.”

The artificial feeling that is prevalent in many of the imposed organic areas found in cities may be due to the fact that introducing any kind of “art work” into the urban landscape is usually an afterthought. This is where problems arise with the location and intention of environmental and ecological art. The trick is a balancing act of maintaining a sense of ambiance with the piece or project that still holds when the audience becomes the public, thus achieving a sense of cooperation rather than aversion.

Millers’s approach to the plague of imposed organic scenery and the level of work it takes to maintain this illusion is what draws me to her work, from her series Desert Lawns to Subdivision, a piece that was created as a site-specific project to bring back native plants: “the soil houses filled with seeds break down over time to become part of the landscape. They leave only mounds of vegetation correctly matched to the local plant ecology. It reversed what I saw going on around me. Plants were chosen that provided nectar for several species of butterflies that were disappearing due to a loss of food source.” One reason why I like Subdivision is because it brings to the surface exactly what a subdivision does. Although they provide homes for people they also “replace the ecology of a large area with buildings, asphalt, concrete and non-native plantings. As a result the wildlife is displaced and the history of the place is erased.” I’m not saying that all the subdivisions should be torn down, they can still be built, they just need to be tweaked a little so as not to completely and utterly rape the area they are going into.

The piece of Kathryn Millers’s that first caught my eye and most draws me to her is Seed Bombs. These are balls of hand compressed soil with the seeds of the local flora inside them. These “bombs” are designed for dispersal into areas in need of re-vegetation. “They were thrown out into areas that were degraded, physically abused, or in need of vegetation. As a form of urban and suburban guerrilla activity, it was a small scale, non-sanctioned intervention in the landscape.” I think my “take-it-or-leave-it” attitude toward the norms and general conformity has drawn me to Kathryn Miller and her seed bombings. For all of its thought-provoking interest it has an aspect of humor that goes along with it. Currently, Kathryn Miller is working as a professor at Pitzer College in Claremont, California. And while what works in California more often than not doesn’t work here, I think that seed bombing might go over pretty well here; hell, I might even get a wild hair and try some of it.