Project: Environmental Art

As previously mentioned on my blog, we worked with Martin Hill and Phillipa Jones to create our environmental sculptures. The focus of these artworks was to tie in nature and humanity in a way that would not permanently affect the landscape. After hearing about how important flax was to the development of Maori culture in New Zealand, I decided to feature all life stages of the flax plant in my work. The outside of this work is made of the old, dead, hard "reeds," then the leaves fade from yellow and brown to a brighter, healthier green, tied together with flax strings.

It was a lot of fun to work with Martin and Phillipa. I had no plans for what I wanted to make before reaching the wetlands, so I just played around with the materials I found. I attempted to stand it upright in the water, but the water was too rocky to allow the posts to stand securely. I floated it as a raft instead, and noticed that I had unintentionally created what looked like a half-sunk canoe. Weaving flax together was one of the methods Maori people used to make rafts, and I had followed in their footsteps (however, I definitely would not recommend using mine as an actual boat). I tinted the photos to make them look warmer, as if taken by an older camera. When editing, I chose a more sepia tint over strict black and white to highlight the detail of the different flax leaves used, but to still give off a vibe of being much older than a few weeks ago. The rain I captured added to the sinking effect and also created a neat ripple pattern. The final image of this sculpture just happened by coincidence, with the way the rain and the need to float turned my work into half of a canoe. I think all environmental art happens like that, with natural coincidence and the artist's adaptations becoming huge factors in the final product.

Environmental art as a genre reflects ideals found in many of the articles we read for our environmental ethics course. Freya Mathews wrote about a Taoist perpective in her article "Letting the World Grow Old: An Ethos of Countermodernity." She champions the idea of letting nature be the strongest influence in our interactions with it, and letting "whatever happen, happen." By choosing a sculpture inspiration from the materials available, then leaving the work exposed to the elements to float away, sink, or decompose, we are also reflecting this idea. This also matches Moana Jackson's description of Maori philosophy and natural resource ownership in "The Treaty and the Word: The Colonization of Maori Philosophy." We use the resources available to us when they are available, and let them return to nature when we are done. We do not go around digging up flax plants, or trying to take more than we need "just in case" while preventing our neighbors from sharing in the wealth. We do not claim particular plots of land and create flax plantations to produce all the sculptures we could possibly want. Instead, we take what we need as we need it and share with everyone, then stop using up flax leaves when we are done. We do not claim absolute ownership over the water, plants, or land we used once. We also enhance the aesthetic of the wetland as mentioned in John Fisher's "Environmental Aesthetics" and Allen Carlson's "Nature and Positive Aesthetics." They both question the ability of humans to better the aesthetics of nature without leaving a damaging impact. I would argue that environmental art, when done sustainably, increases the aesthetic value by bringing attention to the intrinsic value. People see the artworks, understand the process of ephemeral art and its low impact on its surroundings, and begin to think about their own appreciation for the landscape that provided the beautiful materials for the art.