Location: Healdsburg, California

FIRST, A PERSONAL CALL TO COLLECTIVE ACTION

Historically, WEAD has worked to support the broadest umbrella of earth and social justice feminist artists. It’s integral to our philosophy that good can emerge from different soils. While ecologically this approach remains smart, it has proven politically complex in the current world crisis. WEAD never assumes our members have identical viewpoints. Diversity makes us strong. We need to unite specifically to safeguard diversity. Today in the U.S., ecological, cultural, and constitutional protections are being destroyed. Innocent people are being killed, decent people are being deported, and unwarranted wars are spreading globally. Embracing our differences, we can and must work together to preserve all life and to dislodge those bent on doing harm.

Bahar Celebration, Minoosh Zomorodinia, 2025, The David Ireland House, San Francisco.

ISSUE 15: PLACE SETTING

PLACE SETTING is our poetic analogy for community-based, site-specific art. Each essay explores working in a specific community, as a guest or local artist, collaborating with that community to represent its history and culture, goals, and needs.

Featured Artist: Andrée Singer Thompson

In this issue, we honor the deeply respected California artist Andrée Singer Thompson. In San Francisco’s East Bay communities, we call her our ecoart pied piper. She has logged more than half a century of teaching time with all ages and grades, from elementary to college classes. We call her a pied piper because students follow her heartfelt paths to healing environmental and social justice wounds. She epitomizes the power of teaching for the survival of future natural resources and generations. She is a local treasure and a global model of how to inspire students of all ages.

Andrée Thompson with students in the EcoArt Matters classroom at Laney College, Oakland, California, Fall 2015.

The Central Essays

Ecoartist Residencies

Four essays share the commonality of being written by artists working within artist-in-residence programs in alternative community settings. They exemplify the high value of such programs to communities and artists.

Mallery Quetawki (member of the Pueblo of Zuni Tribe, New Mexico) is artist-in-residence for the College of Pharmacy, Community Environmental Health Program, at the University of New Mexico. She writes The Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Art as Scientific Translation for Native American Communities Affected by Abandoned Uranium Mines.

Across the U.S., in its most northeastern corner, Downeast Maine, Stephanie Garon (Maryland) writes about another abandoned mine’s negative effects on the ecology and cultural lives of the Passamaquoddy Tribe’s land. Mining here has impacted the water supply for five townships and two reservations.

Climate change and colonization in New Zealand have endangered environmental relationships and cultural values of the Maori people. Laura Donkers, as a non-Indigenous New Zealander, examines the idea of Home in the Hokianga Community (Northland, Aotearoa/New Zealand) through a public drawing project she led as an artist-in-residence there.

A veteran of community art programs in alternative settings, Carol Newborg (California) writes how that history led her to San Quentin Prison in 2010, where she was hired as the new arts program director. She found San Quentin to have its own sense of community. Her work had two core components: facilitating access to art and bringing that art to the public. The program continues to be a huge success and a model for other art-in-prisons programs.

The Soil is Alive

Two essays in this issue investigate a sense of place via the microbial activity in soil.

Rhonda Janke (Kansas) and Deanna Pindell (Washington) write about separate and collaborative projects that derive from burying cloth in soil, as artworks and as scientific experimentation.

Salma Arastu‘s essay, Soil and Soul, traces her personal history. Arastu was born in India, has moved several times, and now lives in Berkeley, California. Her current artwork is based on her studies of the attributes of soil, and she writes about how it has influenced her contemporary calligraphic paintings. Her mission is to unite humanity and spirituality, soil and soul, with soil as her teacher.

Department Essays

Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer: An Appreciation
A New York Times piece by Alexandra Alter, November 29, 2024

I first read this essay in the New York Times (NYT), published on the occasion of the release of Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s latest book, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World (2025). Her books have almost cult status among ecologists and are hugely popular with the broader public. They are the kind passed from peer to peer, friend to friend, and among family members. Her previous book, Braiding Sweetgrass, spent five years on the NYT bestseller list. WEAD thanks the NYT for generously allowing us to republish this article.

Becoming Ecoart Elders
Bee (Beverly) Naidus and Ruth Wallen

Two longtime, highly respected WEAD Seed Artists and friends, Bee (Beverly) Naidus and Ruth Wallen, are now elders in the ecoart field. With more than 40 years of ecoart projects, installations, teaching, and writing, they take the time to sit down together to reflect on what aging means personally and how it affects continuing projects and future plans.

Spirit Gleaning Review: Minoosh Zomorodinia’s Experimental Installation at 500 Capp Street
Sharon Siskin

In 2024, Minoosh Zomorrodinia was awarded the prestigious artist residency at 500 Capp Street, the former house and studio of the iconic conceptual artist and sculptor David Ireland (1930-2009). Zomorrodinia’s work paid homage to Ireland’s legacy of investigating and inviting participation from the local community. Sharon Siskin reports on the multiple presentations and community collaborations Zomorrodinia offered at 500 Capp Street.

Next Issue

Proposals for essays are accepted on a rolling basis. The magazine publishes approximately once a year, with a very loose deadline for publishing. Authors of accepted essays receive an honorarium of $100 and our profound thanks.

Artist Portfolios

Submissions to the Arist Portfolios section of WEAD Magazine are limited to WEAD members. Submit 5+/- excellent images with a few paragraphs about them and your work. Approximately 10 artists are included in each issue. There is no remuneration. Inquire via info@weadartists.org.

Poetry, A Fresh Opportunity

Beginning with the next issue, WEAD Magazine will include poetry. Please submit your poems dealing with ecology, social justice, nature, women’s experiences, and life motifs. Write info@weadartists.org if you have further questions.

Recommended Reading

We depend on our large community of readers to alert us to the books most worth reading.  And if you personally have written one, send us the information. We thrive on recommendations. Send via to info@weadartists.org.

Closing

I founded WEAD Magazine in 2009. An undergraduate journalism major, I’d always wanted to produce a magazine, and WEAD was a golden opportunity. Wrapping up Issue # 15 in 2026, I am past 80 years old. No matter the problems, I’ve had the fortune of a good life. While I can, I want to mentor a new editor or editorial team, wherever you are in this world. Due to the wonders of Zoom and similar programs, the editorial team doesn’t have to be in one place.

If you’ve ever wanted to produce a magazine that champions the values of eco and social justice art, this is your own golden opportunity. Email me at steinmanstudio@gmail.com and be sure to copy info@weadartists.org. I’ll tell you the pros, and honestly, the cons. In the balance, the work has been amazingly rewarding. It has deepened my own ecoart and social justice education, and introduced me—and our readers—to artists working all over the world, doing incredible, meaningful work. Let’s keep it going.

Thank you,
Susan Leibovitz Steinman

This publication is made possible with funding from the California Arts Council, Alameda County Arts Commission, Berkeley Civic Arts Program, and individual WEAD donors. Thank you for your support!