Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 21
Environmental Art as Eco-cultural Restoration
LILLIAN BALL WITH TIM COLLINS, REIKO GOTO,
AND BETSY DAMON*
Many artists concerned with the environment have created interventions dependent
on the restoration of ecosystems. These artists not only comment on environmental is-
sues, they also intercede to halt degradation and nurture environmental health. They
are passionately involved in processes that restore a variety of ecosystems worldwide.
They question assumptions about what is possible, and they work with scientists, gov-
ernment officials, and planners to bring their visions to fruition. These works aim to
escape the confines of the “white box” to implement sustainable principles and actu-
ally influence policy. This chapter presents three projects that invited public interac-
tion by initiating community projects. All have significant human dimensions of cre-
ativity and interaction within a restoration setting.
Although I have been an artist for thirty years, when I started activist efforts for wet-
land preservation and restoration seven years ago, art just seemed superfluous. It grad-
ually dawned on me that the only artwork one could make had to concentrate on en-
vironmental issues. I had become an eco-artist, joining others who had been working
this way, in many cases, for decades. The underlying concepts of science and com-
munity values had become indispensable to the success of any visual object. Quoting
from the ecoartnetwork.org, this type of work “focuses attention on the web of interre-
lationships in our environment—the physical, biological, cultural, and historical as-
pects of ecological systems.” These working methods reflect principles of “Social
Sculpture” established by Joseph Beuys, an artist and one of the founders of the Ger-
man Green Party in the 1970s. His ideas about community involvement and activism
used art as a vehicle—a concept now echoed by many eco-artists worldwide.
In 2007, I curated an exhibition entitled, “Called to Action: Environmental Resto-
ration by Artists” at ArtSites Gallery in Riverhead, New York (Ball 2008). The exhibit
included the work of twelve artist teams, collectives, or individuals. That exhibition
and the roundtable discussion on opening day presented a wonderful opportunity to
*Lillian Ball introduces this chapter, which describes three projects wherein artists interact
with the environment and the community in a restoration setting. Project authors are Tim
Collins and Reiki Goto (Project I), Betsy Damon (Project II), and Lillian Ball (Project III).
 
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