'Dear Ms. Pineda, Thank you for writing your fearsome, enlightening book DEVIL'S TANGO. We here in the states and the people of Japan and the whole world are fortunate that you responded to your dying friend's request.' TURNING 80 Turning 80 this fall represents...
Magazine
A Photo Essay: Nuclear History, Nuclear Destiny
In the 1950s, Major Hank Henry was one of the top fighter-bomber pilots in the United States Air Force, and a member of the 4925th Test Group (Atomic). At the group´s 1986 reunion, he mounted one of "his" nuclear weapons, the casing for a 500-kiloton atomic...
Shifting Terrain
On April 5th 2012 Parsons The New School for Design in NYC sponsored a day-long feminist conference titled 'Art Practice, Activism, and Pedagogy: Some Feminist Views.' It was organized by painter and writer, Mira Schor, Associate Teaching Professor in the MFA Fine...
ATOMIC LEGACY ART
INTRODUCTION Artists have the ability to manifest images that give face and voice to consequences of both action and inaction that affect us all. Such is the continuing debate over use and abuse of atomic power/energy (safe and sustainable vs. dangerous and...
Anti-Nuke EcoArt
I. MINDSHIFT POST-FUKUSHIMA THE FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR DISASTER HAS caused me some mindshifts. Especially about what works and what doesn't when attempts are made to engage art with activism. And if (or when) encouraging activism through art, to shut down...
In Plain Sight: Betty Beaumont
I. THE CAMOUFLAGE AND CONCEALMENT OF CELLULAR TOWERS WITH A FLAWLESS BLUE SKY AND HEAT bouncing off its parched desert backdrop, an awkwardly straight and unusually tall saguaro cactus conceals a cellular phone tower. These hidden towers, also referred to as...
Global: Art For Social Change
INTRODUCTION I'VE BEEN EXPLORING THE ABOVE QUESTION THROUGH many lenses my entire professional life. From the personal to the political, I've worked to learn how art can be an effective means for engagement and enlightenment—all while maintaining the highest...
California Dump: Nexus for Ecoart
INTRODUCTION LOCATED AT THE SAN FRANCISCO Solid Waste Transfer and Recycling Center, the Recology San Francisco Artist in Residence Program is a unique initiative that provides artists with studio space, a stipend, and access to materials in the public dump...
Ends of the Earth: Camille Seaman
INTRODUCTION Camille Seaman is a TED Fellow, an award-winning photographer who travels to the ends of the earth, the most frozen polar regions, to photograph the lives of icebergs as they calve, float, change shape, and appear to vanish.1 Far from seeing them...
California Prisons: Art as Sanctuary
I. CREATING A PRISON STUDIO IN 1984, I ENTERED THE WORLD OF A WOMAN'S prison—as an art teacher. The first class I taught was drawing, and that first night, 23 women inmates showed up and sat at card tables set up in a hallway of California Rehabilitation...
Colorado: The Flood Marker Project
Dedication announcement for Flood Level Marker. Photo by Marshall Frech, July 2011. INTRODUCTION GILBERT FOWLER WHITE, CALLED "THE MOST renowned geographer internationally of the twentieth century," was my father. The Flood Level Marker public art...
Ruptures In Technoculture
INTRODUCTION IN FEBRUARY OF 2010, AN ARTICLE APPEARED IN WIRED Magazine on the further militarization of bioengineering. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) included an item in its 2011 budget for the creation of a militarized living...
Performative Public Art Ecology
INTRODUCTION WHEN ADDRESSING ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES THROUGH artistic practice, contemporary artists often find themselves in the role of educator, leader, and performer. Leading by example, they go out in the world and create works that remediate or revise sites,...
Ohio: Turkish Ecoart Exhibit
SISH-KEBAP, Eden Ünlüata, installation, 2010. EDITOR'S NOTE In 2010, artists Nanette Yannuzzi and Arzu Ozkal brought ecoart by thirteen contemporary Turkish activist artists to America. The collaborative exhibit, RELIEF VALVE/SUBAP, was installed in a unique...
Bringing Ecoart to Taiwan
Editor's Note WEAD honors Wu Mali as Featured Artist for Issue #4. For twenty-plus years, she has worked throughout Taiwan to disseminate awareness of community-based feminist and environmental art. A quintessential multi-tasker, Mali wears multiple art coats: a...
NO COMPLACENCY
I. PROLOGUE PART 1. OCTOBER 2011 THREE WOMEN won the Nobel Peace Prize: In Yemen, Tawakkol Karman founded Women Journalists Without Chains. She led sit-ins and street protests demanding press freedom and human rights for marginalized groups. Her...
Northeast US: Lily Yeh Interview
ABOUT LILY YEH BORN IN CHINA IN 1939, LILY YEH CAME TO the United States in the early 1960s and attended the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Fine Arts. A very successful painter, she eventually became a professor at Philadelphia's University of the...
Scotland: PLEIN AIR, Ethics & Art
INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND: 'EDEN3' IS THE TITLE OF A five-year research initiative, with artists and musicians working with technologists and scientists to reveal the biogenic interaction of trees with the changing atmospheric chemistry and climate of cities. The intent...
Mexico: Elina Chauvet Interview
ABOUT ELINA CHAUVET ELINA HAS EARNED NUMEROUS AWARDS, including two at the Biennale Noroeste and a grant from the Culture and Arts Commission of Sinaloa for the 2006-2007 edition of her project, The Reality of Realities. In the United States, she created the...
Northwest US: The Dispersal Project
INTRODUCTION THE DISPERSAL PROJECT USES THE CONCEPTUAL model of dispersal in botany to examine aspects of contemporary art and culture. Its essential character is focused on connections between science, art practices, and social relations. At the...