Why Science?
As science informs the works of more and more artists, the commonalities between scientists and artists are becoming better understood. A familiar theme shared by many in both professions is a large degree of social responsibility. Artists and scientists are passionate about taking on the causes of climate change, soil erosion, species loss, and factors affecting the warming of earth’s atmosphere. Artists incorporate scientific aspects of soil, water, climate and other elements into their work. Artists study oceans, rivers, and degraded lands and discover aesthetic antidotes in the wake of droughts, over-development, and species loss. Artists take on issues of soil erosion, water pollution, species loss, climate change, sea level rise, and myriad other problems harming our natural and built environments. We create focused and effective responses that make these issues visible to the community.
1. Where Are the Scientists?
Why then, are there not more scientists seeking out artists and choosing to work with them on contemporary environmental issues?
The relationship of science to environmental art is dynamic one. Both professions share similar approaches and processes. Scientists searching for new and artistic ways to express their findings often bring artistic approaches into their realm. But artists seeking scientists to work with, is often a more difficult collaboration to initiate. However, try and imagine a way to move forward with conservation, climate change remedies, soil conservation, species protection, and restoration of degraded lands without relying on multi-faceted collaborations. Artists can, and should be significantly engaged in these collaborations. This artist-as-activist role is an important aspect in actualizing more conservation efforts. It also helps further the most illusive aspect of this kind of work for artists—access to installation sites.
Projects involving artists and scientists are usually highly visible and can lead to other interdisciplinary collaborations. Land owners need knowledge, research and methodologies that can help them improve soil, correct erosion, conserve water, direct storm water. Scientistic research often extends to sociology, demographics, and policy. The big tent of environmental art draws on many companion disciplines, and aesthetics can be a bridge that sheds light on all efforts engaged in a collaboration.
3. Lessons from the Past
As an artist educated at a time when science wasn’t an encouraged academic path for girls and women, I found the need to remedy this educational mistake soon after I began to pursue a career in the arts. The amount of data and research I needed to process for any of my chosen projects gave me a different understanding of our world. The more technical and scientific information I gathered, the more I began understand how much environmental loss we have inherited. And, I became aware of the environmental loss that my generation could pass on.
A few decades ago, lands were maintained biologically, simply, organically. Today, advances in agri-science alter the character of rural lands and waterways. In the urban space, the creation of more and more impervious surfaces fuels pollution and species loss. Prolonged droughts contribute to soil degradation. Fires expose lands to erosion. Climate change now affects the lands, waters, and air that surround all of our homes.
As it has developed, my practice advocates for “softer technologies”, using many of the methods that originated, out of necessity, from the Dust Bowl era. Municipal governments throughout the U.S. are “re-adopting” these practices, advocating for, and in some localities mandating, regionally-based environmental protections through established best management practices (BMPs). But healthy practices for preserving public spaces could also be adopted by private landowners, homeowners, and in general citizens-at-large. Artist have a role here too and this approach opens up more opportunities for environmental artists, by providing access to sites for meaningful art experiences.
While governmental agencies run through lengthy processes for regulatory approvals, funding, and site liabilities, artists can help private landowners reach restoration goals based on those same BMPs. In some of the country’s more politically entangled regions, private landowners are showing the way. In Southern Louisiana small towns, landowners, and Native American nations are taking on the problems of liquefaction and disappearing lands, lot by lot, island by island. Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers and a host of other regulatory bodies struggle to undo the damage of decades of failed policies before new large-scale solutions can be enacted. Will it be too late? Perhaps policy-makers will galvanize behind protections that individual landowners, artists among them, desire to affect.
2. Can Art Leave No Trace?
The National Park Service champions environmental art in their restoration activities advocating that: “predominately placed art can bring a level of awareness to issues”. Charles Tracey, NPS landscape architect believes “Environmental art can capture public attention and animate the goals of community projects”. When artists incorporate science and scientists into their projects, they move beyond creating works “that aim to improve the viewers’ understanding of the natural world,” they actually interact with the natural world. Choosing to make one’s art the change factor in a leave-no-trace manner is a risky, but highly fulfilling quest for an artist.
My partner, Daniel McCormick is fond of saying that we take a watershed approach to our work. I like to think about this in an all inclusive sense, but that is also the way I see the world. The nature of a specific watershed, the history of its ecology, and the characteristics of the natural or built systems, help guide our process. We focus on restorative, remedial works that give advantage to the sites were we work. The work has been described as having a “straightforward and efficient bio-remedial dimension.[]” Some viewers wonder why we let our works “disappear”. We don’t, but the work does change quickly, as does the environment in which it is built. The end result of our work is remedial, and through eventual subsidence, the restoration is established. We believe, given the advantage of an artist’s work, even the most degraded elements of a watershed can support the growth needed to jump-start a naturally occurring restoration cycle.
The “terroir” of an installation site can be a powerful aesthetic consideration for artists and scientists alike. Artists may want to take into consideration local characteristics and regional impacts in their approaches. The geology and geography of an installation site are unique and should influence the aesthetics of solutions. Lands, waterways and ecotones have distinct behaviors, uses, fragility, erosion, productivity and levels of successful regeneration.
The specificity of place is where scientific methods can become most influential in the design of artists’ works. Artists can address restoration issues in both urban and rural watersheds, work in a conservation capacity, address the different regional textures and behaviors of soil, water, climate and species. Whether its dealing with erosion control, urban runoff, flood plain disruptions, wind disturbances, agricultural issues such as over-grazing, suburban development, water use issues, and drought, artists can contribute real and tangible solutions and to the restoration cycle. An artist’s work can also illuminate the restoration process as it evolves.
When artists involve science and scientists in their works, their responses can bring attention to these issues. Artists should be willing to embrace societal issues, varying field conditions, and community outreach. But environmental artists willing to integrate, as well as reflect, scientific research can become an integral part of the solution. Artists have been served by science for centuries. When we flip that relationship and base our work in service of science, we take into consideration the larger body of scientific knowledge. We can address real problems with aesthetic, concrete solutions. As a woman, an artist, and a citizen, these acts of restoration take on personal significance, as I ponder the environmental loss I will inevitably leave behind.
Published by WEAD Magazine, Women’s Eco Art Dialogue Magazine, Volume 9