April 9 at Duke // Author-Activist Barbara Kingsolver To Receive Duke Leaf Award

Full article here // Excerpt below

Critically acclaimed American author Barbara Kingsolver is the 2011 recipient of the Duke LEAF Award for Lifetime Environmental Achievement in the Fine Arts, Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment announced Thursday.

The Duke LEAF Award was established in 2009 to honor artists whose works have lifted the human spirit by conveying humanity’s connection to the Earth, thereby inspiring others to help forge a more sustainable life for all. Actor Robert Redford received the inaugural award.

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In London, Climate Change Comes to the Stage // "Greenland" at the National Theater

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By Matt Wolf

It’s not often that the mundane activities of an audience directly fly in the face of what is happening on stage. But there I was the other night at “Greenland,” the National Theatre’s admonitory potpourri of a drama about climate change, when I became all too aware of my fellow spectators crumpling packets of this or that or popping plastic water bottles like (very) cheap champagne.

“Hang on!” I wanted to call out, as images of the plastic trash-turned-land mass that is gradually despoiling our earth unfurled before me. (The production runs in repertory at the Lyttelton through April 2). “Is no one paying this show any heed?” Or perhaps the sorry truth is that even plays considerably better than “Greenland” can hector till the cows come home, and yet we still aren’t as conscientious as we ought to be. Recycle, recycle, recycle, I muttered all the way home.

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Painting in Deadly Oil // From The NY Times' Lens Blog

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Oil-soaked pelicans. Turtles caught midstroke in black ooze. Floating schools of dead fish. And then fishermen throwing out their catch.

In the visual coverage of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill last year, certain tableaus became pervasive. An image would move over the wires and photojournalists on the scene competed to match it. “Everyone was trying to make the same picture,” said Benjamin Lowy, “because it was very hard to articulate visually.” For one thing, he said, the spill was so vast.

Mr. Lowy, 31, a photographer with Reportage by Getty Images, found another way to capture the story. He focused on the oil itself as it collected on the water’s surface in phosphorescent, psychedelic swirls and paisleys, the result of different chemical mixtures, rates of oxidation and lighting angles.

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Living in Art // At the Met "Big Bambu: You Can't, You Don't and You Won't Stop"

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by Robin Pogrebin

Take 6,800 bamboo poles, seven miles of colorful cord and plans for an art installation that will change every day over a six-month period and ultimately grow to 50 feet high. Add two artists and a bunch of rock climbers who like to listen to the Rolling Stones while they add to the piece, and drink pilsner when they’re done working. And then stick the whole thing on the roof of the esteemed, establishment Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was bound to be a combustible mix.

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Farming as a Spiritual Discipline // Book Review

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By Jason Fowler

I first stumbled onto Ragan Sutterfield's writing in a 2007 Paste magazine. It was an interesting article about the contrasting journey between his peaceful Arkansas farm to the crowds and music of Farm Aid. At the time my interest in agriculture was only a small seed. How fitting that I would personally connect with Ragan several years later at a time when I was feeding on Wendell Berry and living on a farm myself.

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Also click here for Sustainable Traditions' interview with Satterfield when the book first came out.

A Revival of Rural Craft, With a Modern Twist // The Raw Material of Clay

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By Alice Rawsthorn

Seeing villagers digging up clay and turning it into pots in Peru persuaded the Dutch designers Nadine Sterk and Lonny van Ryswyck to do the same in Europe. They planned to collect clay from several countries to show how it changes from place to place, but once they started digging in the Dutch countryside, they were astonished by what they found.

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Japanese Village Creates Art From Hues of Rice // Inakadate's Artistic Rice Paddies

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Nearly two decades ago, Koichi Hanada, a clerk in the village hall, received an unusual request from his superior: find a way to bring tourists to this small community in rural northern Japan, which has rice paddies and apple orchards, but not much else.

Mr. Hanada, a taciturn but conscientious man, said he had spent months racking his brain. Then, one day he saw schoolchildren planting a rice paddy as a class project. They used two varieties of rice plants, one with dark purplish stalks and the other bright green ones. Then it struck him, why not plant the colored varieties in such a way as to form words and pictures?

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The World as Our Studio // Dedicated to Socially Responsible Design Since 1993

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By Ernest Beck

The website for Worldstudio, a New York-based design and marketing firm, proudly proclaims its dedication to promoting “lasting social and environmental changes” through design. Worldstudio, the site says, can help corporations “connect their marketing goals with strategies for corporate social responsibility.” Those core values are certainly part of the Worldstudio story, but social change isn’t the firm’s only business. Consider its logo and signage for a Mexican restaurant in Munich and packaging for a high-end tea company. The reality, says Worldstudio co-principal Mark Randall, is that these clients “pay part of the bills” in a multifaceted company whose client roster includes for-profit corporations, nonprofits and a nonprofit foundation dedicated to promoting social-change initiatives.

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Images from the Field // The "New Normal" in the Gulf

The following is a photo and description from Kara Slade, a Duke Divinity School student (MTS '11) who is interning at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Daphne, AL.

I grew up in this diocese, and spent many summer days at Camp Beckwith - sailing, canoeing, and swimming in the waters of Weeks Bay, an ecologically sensitive estuary of Mobile Bay. It was a shock for me to see the lines of protective boom running down the shore here. Although it has been a common sight in the area this summer, somehow it seemed worse at Beckwith, where both children and adults of the Central Gulf Coast have come since the 1930's to spend time with each other and with God. This is our "new normal:" hoping and praying that places which have not yet been touched by oil will survive this disaster, mourning for those beloved places which have, and wondering if young people like our campers this week will know the same way of life and culture that we did.

Camp Beckwith (Episcopal Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast), Magnolia Springs, AL

First day of 6th and 7th grade camp

Eighty-sixth day of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill

69 Salvum me fac

1 Save me, O God,

for the waters have risen up to my neck.

2 I am sinking in deep mire,

and there is no firm ground for my feet.

3 I have come into deep waters,

and the torrent washes over me.

4 I have grown weary with crying;

my throat is inflamed;

my eyes have failed from looking for my God.

(Book of Common Prayer, 1979)

"Crude Greed" by David Wilcox // Bluesy Tune Mourns BP Oil Spill

Singer-songwriter, acoustic guitarist and storyteller David Wilcox has penned a (ironically) greasy funky song about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. If you like good music with a social conscience and are concerned about the situation in the Gulf, check this out.

Your Voices, Your Stories // Share with Speaking of Faith

Click here to share your story, image or video related to ecology, sustainability and/or climate on Speaking of Faith. "Paint a picture for us — in words or with photographs. It could be a place — a prairie night sky or an urban garden — or an interaction with a neighbor or a local farmer. Something that makes you contemplate the deeper meanings of possession of land and its care."

Monet The Gardener: Life, And Art, Grow At Giverny // From NPR Morning Edition

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By Susan Stamberg

By the time painter Claude Monet moved to Giverny, 45 miles outside of Paris, he and his first wife, Camille, had already lived in Le Havre, Paris, Etretat, Argenteuil and Veutheil. In fact, the Monets moved around a lot — sometimes at night to avoid angry landlords — but it wasn't until the painter spotted the village of Giverny from a train in Normandy that he began to build himself a home.

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Bonnaroo: Behind the Music, The Effort to Keep it Green // From the NY Times ArtsBeat

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By Ben Sisario

MANCHESTER, Tenn. — At Bonnaroo, everything exists on a vast scale. The hundreds of acres of camping. The tens of thousands of sweaty bodies shoving against one another for a better view of the Kings of Leon. And, as at any big festival, the volume of trash, which overflows from bins and by the end of each night lies scattered, crushed and muddy throughout the grounds.

One of the more remarkable things about Bonnaroo is how it handles the waste. Since it began, in 2002, it has hired Clean Vibes, a company in North Carolina, to manage an extensive greening program, involving a network of about 500 volunteers, on-site composting and trash sorting, as well as incentives for fans to sort trash. Last year Clean Vibes — one of a handful of similar companies, which also handles the trash at festivals like Mountain Jam in upstate New York and Allgood in West Virginia — kept about a third of Bonnaroo’s 489 tons of waste from going in a landfill, according to its owner, Anna Borofsky.

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Also see this article about Bonnaroo's energy wave cresting.

Land, Life, and the Poetry of Creatures // Ellen Davis and Wendell Berry on Speaking of Faith

Yesterday on Speaking of Faith:

"Biblical scholar Ellen Davis is helping to shape a new approach to thinking about human domination of the Earth and its creatures. With her friend, the farmer and poet Wendell Berry, they speak to our collective grief at destruction of the natural world and nourish a 'chastened' yet 'tenacious' hope."

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Water with a Conscience at Annenburg Space for Photography // "Water: Our Thirsty World"

As the world faces the challenge of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, we have renewed cause to contemplate the role of water in our lives. A good place to start is at the Annenberg Space for Photography’s current exhibit, “Water: Our Thirsty World.”

The exhibit is in partnership with National Geographic Magazine and features photos from a special issue of the magazine. It’s split into six themes, each of which explores the role of water in human life and its relationship to our survival and that of the planet. The documentary-style images are bright, bold and arresting and serve as vivid guideposts to the complicated social and ecological issues surrounding water resources and arid lands.

The Annenberg space is the photographic equivalent of theater in the round, with pictures arranged in an aperture-like circle around a multimedia presentation space. The “Water” exhibit begins its journey on one side of the sphere. with photos from a series called “The Big Melt,” which examines what’s called “the great melt of the Tibetan Plateau,” an endangered glacial source that reportedly supplies nearly 40% of the world’s water.

In a caption, 16-year-old Vinay says, “‘If you throw money here, no one would have time to grab it. Water is more important to us.’ “

Despite many images of bright-blue liquid, the exhibit is more about the desperation generated by thirst.

Some of the exhibit’s most breathtaking images come from the series “The Burden of Thirst,” in which photographer Lynn Johnson follows the daily journey of Kenyan women as they walk through miles of stark desert -- colorful skirts and headdresses flapping around their thin, dark legs -- with bright yellow containers of water on their backs. A drought in that country has made retrieving safe drinking water even more difficult, and as the caption points out, “If the millions of women who haul water long distances had a faucet by their door, whole societies could be transformed.”

More familiar is “California’s Pipe Dream," in which pictures by Edward Burtynsky show vast expanses of suburban land with cookie-cutter tract homes that have been abandoned, their once-verdant lawns returning to a natural, arid state. Other images show Los Angeles freeways and sprawl, a desert region fed by imported water.

The exhibit comes full circle with touching pictures from the series “Sacred Waters,” which documents humanity’s communal, religious and ritualistic use of water. A giant print by John Stanmeyer depicting half-naked men and women rolling, bathing and dancing in the crisp, cold water of the Saut d'Eau waterfall in Ville Bonheur, Haiti, during the Festival of the Virgin of Miracles seems to embody the almighty, life-giving power of water.

"Water: Our Thirsty World": The Annenberg Space for Photography, 2000 Avenue of the Stars, No. 10, Los Angeles. Wednesdays to Sundays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., through June 13. Free. (213) 403-3000, www.annenbergspaceforphotography.org.

-- Jessica Gelt

Of Compost, Molecules and Insects, Art Is Born // Natalie Angier

Full article HERE // Excerpt below

The word organic means different things to different people. To the gardener it means compost heaps. To the chemist it means carbon compounds. To the artist Fabian Peña, it means American cockroaches, those chunky nocturnal charmers often seen skittering around drainpipes or on the street. “I have collected cockroaches from many different places,” Mr. Peña said. “From Cuba, Mexico, Miami, Houston, everywhere I travel.”

He kills the cockroaches with a spray, pops them into a jar, takes them back to his studio in Florida, and then puts their parts to work in his art. He glues their legs together into long, lacy cylinders that look like giant larval casings. He arranges their wings into medically precise images of a human skull, foot bones and hand bones, all scaled to his own head and appendages.

Mr. Peña likes the medium of cockroach aesthetically, the way he can use the different tones in the wings as his palette to convey light and shadow. He likes it metaphorically, how we are disgusted by something with which we have so much in common — the same taste in foods, the same easy adaptability to every possible niche. “Cockroaches are a witness to our daily lives,” Mr. Peña said. He also likes his medium pragmatically. “It’s a material that I can easily find,” he said, “and it’s cheaper than buying paint.”

Mr. Peña is among the growing ranks of artists who have gone natural, who are scavenging the world’s vivarium and rummaging through the life sciences in search of materials, ideas, cosmic verities, tragicomic homilies, personal agency, a personal agent, a way to stand out in the crowd.

[Continued...]