Elements: An Eco-Art Conference

Save the Date! June 25, 2010 in Berkeley, California

The Pacific Region Women’s Caucus for Art invites the public to  Elements: An Eco-Art Conference, a visual conversation with artists and other professionals concerned about local and global environmental issues affecting our planet.

The conference intent is to stimulate dialogue and contribute to promote eco-art as a global practice. Venue: David Brower Center Berkeley California 2150 Allston Way Berkeley, CA 94704

Accompanying the Conference,  Blue Planet,  an art exhibition is scheduled at SOMARTS, San Francisco, CA from June 18 to June 30, 2010.      Juror: Kim Abeles.

Click here for the engaging presentation “Eco- Art, What is it?,  prepared by the artist Deborah Thomas.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter

Getting to the Elements Eco-Art Conference

What’s the best way to get to the Elements Eco-Art Conference at the David Brower Center? We encourage you to think of creative ways to get there without driving alone in rush hour traffic. Some possibilities:

Take BART. A roundtrip between San Francisco and Downtown Berkeley costs $7.30 roundtrip. Rates vary within East Bay cities.

Take AC transit. A roundtrip between San Francisco Transbay Terminal and University/Shattuck costs $8.00 roundtrip. A bus ride in the East Bay costs $4.00 roundtrip.

Bicycle if you live nearby.

Or best of all, walk.

If you must drive, carpool. It costs $15.00 to park all day at the Oxford Garage under the David Brower Center.

What will be your green day strategy for the Elements Eco-Art Conference? http://elements.eventbrite.com/

Conference Panelist and Performers

Detailed information of Panelist and Performers here

Mail Art: slide show presentation

Mail Artists: Thank you very much for your participation in the Mail Art Exhibition, part of the Eco-Art Conference.

Click here to see the received  electronic postcards and remember: you can bring your postcards to the Conference, Friday June 25 at the David Brower’s Center, Berkeley, California.

To register for the conference click here.

2010 Art and Activism Awards

The 2010 Art And Activism Awards were announced on June 11, 2010 by the Pacific Region Women’s Caucus for Art. They will be presented on Friday, June 25 at the conclusion of Elements, a one day eco-art conference at The David Brower Center in Berkeley.

2010 Califia Awardees are artists Lita Albuquerque and Andrée Singer Thompson. The Califia Award takes its name from the legend of a mythical island ruled by a black queen “who accomplished great deeds, was valiant and courageous and ardent with a brave heart.”  It is given for outstanding career achievements in the field of eco-art activism.

Lita Albuquerque of Santa Monica is an installation and environmental artist, painter, and sculptor who places elemental concepts for a functional 21st century cosmology within public view. Since the 1970s, Albuquerque has created many public works and site-specific, ephemeral projects from the Badlands and Death Valley to Egypt, Japan and China in 2009. In 2007, she traveled to the North Pole for Stellar Axis: Arctic Project to map the stars onto the ice. She has had many solo exhibitions and received numerous grants and awards. Her work is in the collections of the Smithsonian, the Whitney and other major museums. She teaches at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. www.LitaAlbuquerque.com

Andrée Singer Thompson of Berkeley is an artist and eco-art teacher who exhibits internationally and nationally. Much of her sculpture, interactive and educational site-specific installations deal with individual and communal survival issues. She often collaborates on public art projects involving community participation. Her 50’ Golden Trout, Guillermo adorns the Richmond Civic Center. She serves on the board of directors for WEAD, lives in Berkeley, teaches at Laney College and gives workshops around the country. www.andreesingerthompson.com/

The 2010 Catalyst Awardees are artists Jennifer Colby and Susan Leibovitz Steinman. The Catalyst Award is given for making a strong impact in support of the environment with exemplary projects, artworks or collaborations.

Jennifer Colby of Aromas is an artist, curator, educator, community activist and co-founder of Galeria Tonantzin. Her Watershed Multimedia Team received two California Stories grants from the California Council for Humanities and she received the 2007 Monterey County, Arts Educator Award. She founded the WCA Monterey Bay chapter and served as National WCA president, 2006-08. She is a lecturer at California State University, Monterey Bay. Her personal artwork explores themes of deep ecology and women’s stories. http://ls.csumb.edu/site/x15764.xml

Susan Leibovitz Steinman of Berkeley melds art, ecology and grassroots activism in her professional activities. Her widely exhibited sculptures, paintings and installations marry found and organic materials, commenting on personal/political issues, and she frequently engages multi-group collaborations in street-front installations with the goal of revitalizing blighted natural and cultural landscapes. She received the National Park Service Art & Community Landscapes residency and the Potrero Nuevo Fund Prize. Steinman is the editor/co-founder of WEAD, the Women Environmental Artists Directory. www.SteinmanStudio.com

The contributions of five WCA members – each selected by their respective chapter – will also be acknowledged for exemplary contributions to their WCA chapters. The chapter honorees include: Karen Gutfreund of San Jose, a political artist, curator and fine art consultant from the South Bay chapter; Ann Isolde of Santa Monica ,  a painter, book  and eco-artist, former museum professional and long time feminist from the SoCal chapter; Judith Shintani of El Granada, an installation and mixed-media artist and workshop facilitator from the NoCal chapter; Mary L. Warshaw of Monterey Bay, a prolific painter, printmaker and eco-artist and Ruth Waters of Redwood Shores,  a sculptor, teacher and museum director from the Peninsula chapter.
URLS  to use – you’ll need to add http:  to them – for hyperlinnks.

www.karengutfreund.com/

www.scwca.org/ar (Ann)

www.judyshintani.com

www.marylwarshaw.com

www.ruthwaters.com.

2010 Art and Activism Awards (via create, revision, recreate)

The 2010 Art And Activism Awards were announced on June 11, 2010 by the Pacific Region Women’s Caucus for Art. They will be presented on Friday, June 25 at the conclusion of Elements, a one day eco-art conference at The David Brower Center in Berkeley. 2010 Califia Awardees are artists Lita Albuquerque and Andrée Singer Thompson. The Califia Award takes its name from the legend of a mythical island ruled by a black queen “who accomplished great d … Read More

via create, revision, recreate

Attention Artists and Elements Conference Attendees:

While you are at the Elements Conference on June 25, 2010 indulge your urge to create by stopping at the postcard trading wall. Make a postcard and trade it for one already made and on display.

For this art-making event, donations of collage materials suitable for postcard art are most appreciated. You can bring what you have and drop what you bring to the art table at any time before the conference begins or at the breaks.

Looking forward to seeing you all there.

Victoria Q. Legg

Curator for the MailArt Show and Postcard Trading Wall

Press release for Eco-Art conference and Blue Planet, art exhibition

http://www.prweb.com/releases/Brower/eco-art/prweb4099654.htm

Eco Art Supplies: How green is your studio?

As a painter and a long time nature-lover, I try to shun the pangs of guilt when painting, not for the art I am creating, but for the resources I use and toss away after the creativity burst subsides and I am cleaning my California studio. I began to wonder if it is worth supporting the standard style of creating art, with paint, paper, and canvases.
I turned my eye to the paint manufacturers and decided to do an investigative piece on what seems to be the best of the best at being green and still produce quality paint. I chose Golden Artists Colors. I started by making the trek out to their paint factory. Because the elder Golden restarted his paint manufacturing career after he retired upstate NY, the large Golden paint factory grew in the middle of a bucolic country setting, surrounded by 10-foot tall waving sunflowers.
There every worker has some degree of haz-mat costuming, from simple goggles to full white, zip-up suits. They hired an efficiency expert to streamline production floor work habits, filter all their water run-off for re-use, and hood any bin that could waft pigment powder into the facility. They take it a step farther and go to the county hazard waste recycle center to pick up all wet paint. Back at the factory, they reconstitute acrylic-based paints into house paint then repackages it into 5-gallon buckets for donations to whomever needs free house paint. The oil-based paint gets re-routed to an incineration facility that reclaims the generated heat as energy.
There is also a page on their web site to help the studio artist stay environmentally safe, when using their paints. A paper posted on their website, goldenpaints.com/justpaint/jp3article3.php, shows you how to assemble a fairly simple water filter to clear out paint solids from your rinse water. Great! That assays my initial pang of guilt. I can remain a painter and not sully my local water plant with dirty rinse water.
Golden Artists Colors is not trying to become the poster-child for eco-friendly paint manufacturers. They are just trying to be good corporate neighbors and employers. Mark Golden said, “This is the right road to sustainability,” and after all, isn’t that what is at the essence of living in harmony with the world?

Capacitor at the Elements Eco-Art Conference

Capacitor, San Francisco’s interdisciplinary dance company, is renowned for conceptually- rich, bound-breaking performances. Capacitor artists collaborate with members of the scientific community to create mind-expanding, heart-gripping live performance.

From the movement of the human diaphragm to the story of evolution, from the behavior of electricity to genetic manipulation, from the birth of the moon to the cycles of digestion – natural and synthetic processes form the basis for Capacitor’s study of performance. Capacitor encourages contact with scientific concepts in ways which allow audiences of all ages to see patterns and relationships inherent in nature and the cosmos. Through performance, Capacitor personalizes large, abstract concepts and in doing so, transcends cultural barriers – widening the scope of basic human experience.

Capacitor will perform an excerpt of their new work, “The Ocean Project” at the Elements Eco-Art Conference.  Don’t miss it, sign up here: http://elements.eventbrite.com/.

For more about Capacitor, visit http://www.capacitor.org/.

Tierney Thys: Collaboration and Community Panelist

Tierney Thys has worked with the National Geographic Society in numerous ways:  as a filmmaker, science media product developer and consultant, research grantee, expedition leader and as a lecturer. She served as Director of Research for Sea Studios Foundation that co-produced with National Geographic the acclaimed PBS series, Strange Days on Planet Earth and The Shape of Life. The Strange Days project won Best Series at the Wildscreen Festival–the environmental equivalent of the Oscars®.  A world expert on giant ocean sunfish, the ocean’s heaviest bony fish, Tierney is also an active researcher and member of the Census of Marine Life.  She serves on the braintrust for the annual Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED.com) conference and on the exploration task force for Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.  She is currently working with National Geographic Kids Entertainment to develop a large-scale transmedia project about water for children ages 3-6 and their parents.

Sign up for the Elements Eco-Art Conference at http://elements.eventbrite.com/ and hear panelist Tierney Thys discuss her collaboration with National Geographic, Sea Studios and others. A segment of Strange Days of Planet Earth will be shown during the eco-film festival.

For information about Tierney Thys, visit http://www.oceansunfish.org/t2.php.

Deborah Munk

Deborah Munk Director of the Artist in Residence Program at Recology San Francisco Deborah Munk is the director of the Artist in Residence Program at Recology San Francisco and has spent the last ten years working with artists who make art out of garbage. She was the assistant editor of “Parallels and Intersections, Women Artists in California” published by UC Press, in 2002 and is a graduate of San Francisco State University and holds a Masters Degree in Educational Technology focusing on art and media. Deborah also manages the Environmental Learning Center at SF Recycling & Disposal where she teaches children and adults the importance of sustainability and recycling.

Recology Sculpture Garden: http://www.recologysf.com/AIR/sculpturegarden.php