Week 4 Responses

http://news.yahoo.com/man-stole-glacier-cocktails-063000532.html

I found this article and didn’t even link it to the detriment it is to the environment at first, being too busy thinking ‘who would pay that much just to have “rare glacier” ice in their glass?’ Evidently enough for a man to swipe ice from a glacier that has parts over 1000 years old, not to mention the fact that it is one of the world’s fastest receding glaciers. While this is an environmental issue, that can not be denied, what does it say about society? This ring of ice thieves transported 11,453 pounds of glacier ice for the purpose of making money (estimations are around 6,000 dollars.) Making money and catering to the outlandish eccentricities of the wealthy is the only reason for the theft of an environmental landmark that may not be here much longer. Perhaps that is exactly why they justified taking it. Who is to say that that 11,453 pounds wasn’t part of the mile that was going to be gone within the year? They were preserving it in their ice truck, that is at least until the rich could swallow it with their brandy. This act of strange theft is one that speaks volumes about the world. It’s come down to making money and piggy backing of the trends of the rich in order to make it faster. These thieves stole part of an environmental landmark that isn’t going to be around forever just to make a quick buck and facilitate more strange trends for the wealthy.

http://www.janeingramallen.com/Janeweb-environment/Janeweb-environment.htm

I found the work of Jane Ingram Allen to be very interesting. Being a handmade paper artist, her work is not what I would have automatically assumed environmental. But in looking at the “environmental work” link in her gallery, I found her work to be extremely environmental. Her choice to make art that react to nature by being changed by nature is a choice that makes the work well rounded. What she got from the ground, the plants to make her paper, is being returned to nature through the eventual decay that will happen as the works are weathered down. The work I found to be the most interesting was the Earth Day art installation at Tunghai University in Taiwan. She combined her paper making art with nature in order to create a more permanent work that has a real message behind it. That message is saving Earth’s water supplies and not taking it for granted. To make the work she used non-toxic dyed paper pulp with seeds in it, and poured it along the tilled up soil path that was created in the shape of the Earth with a long stream of water flowing off of it. The paper will eventually degrade into the soil, causing the piece to loose its color until the flower seeds that were mixed into that pulp bloom and produce the same colors that were in the papers. The piece will change and adapt to nature over time in order to carry the same message, but be completely integrated into the natural environment in which it rests. The flowers will create a three dimensional piece of art that is a natural statement about environmental issues.