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Dymaxion Sleep is a hammock-like structure created by designers Jane Hutton and Adrian Blackwell. Part of the International Garden Festival at Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens in Quebec, the installation invites visitors to relax while lying above beds of aromatic plants – e.g., lemon geraniums, lavenders, and peppermint. Smile when you breathe in. Smile when you breathe out.
Hat Tip: treehugger.com Photo by the artists.
Always on the lookout for new and interesting ways to reuse garbage, we stumbled upon the works of Tim Noble and Sue Webster – two contemporary artists who have managed to cast trash in a whole new light. Literally.
If you’re passionate about serving an organic wedding cake and you live in Chicago, check out Bleeding Heart Bakery. Their mission is to “use local, sustainable, organic ingredients and to make you the best damn cakes and pastries you have ever had!
This covers our ingredients: flour, butter, eggs, nuts, chocolate, milk, fruits, vegetables, oils and more.” We’re confident their cakes taste every bit as good as they look.
Edina Tokodi uses moss to create street art in Brooklyn. “As a cultivator of eco-urban sensitivity, I usually go back to the sites to visit my plants or moss, sometimes to repair them a bit, but nothing more generally as they tend to get enough water from the air, condensation, and rain – especially in certain seasons. I am curious about how people receive them, if they just leave them alone, or if they want to, take care of them or dismantle them. This is what makes my work similar to graffiti, although I am searching for a deeper social meaning.”
HAT TIP: vayaverde.blogspot.com
This Friday’s Focus is POETRY. It begins with some well-composed thoughts from a fifth grader in Hawaii and ends with, “I think that I shall never see…” Six elegant posts, with no poems from your hosts. Whoops, we take that back.
Global Warming
Burning hot temperatures
More gases in our air
Over flowing Mother Nature
Does anyone really care?
The Earth will need a fan or two
When the time comes near.
Are we out of control with our oil spills
I think that we must fear.
The factories not listening to what we have to say
We must save our Earth.
A poem by Kira, a student in Ms. Dore’s 5th grade class, Hawaii
Karma Repair Kit, Items 1-4
1.
Get enough food to eat,
and eat it.
2.
Find a place to sleep where it is quiet,
and sleep there.
3.
Reduce intellectual and emotional noise
until you arrive at the silence of yourself,
and listen to it.
- Richard Brautigan
Untitled
One thin September soon
A floating continent disappears
In midnight sun
Vapors rise as
Fever settles on an acid sea
Neptune’s bones dissolve
Snow glides from the mountain
Ice fathers floods for a season
A hard rain comes quickly
Then dirt is parched
Kindling is placed in the forest
For the lightning’s celebration
Unknown creatures
Take their leave, unmourned
Horsemen ready their stirrups
Passion seeks heroes and friends
The bell of the city
On the hill is rung
The shepherd cries
The hour of choosing has arrived
Here are your tools
- Al Gore
ｎｏ ｏｎｅ ｓｐｏｋｅ，
ｔｈｅ ｈｏｓｔ， ｔｈｅ ｇｕｅｓｔ，
ｔｈｅ ｗｈｉｔｅ ｃｈｒｙｓａｎｔｈｅｍｕｍｓ．
- ｒｙｏｔａ
This Friday’s Focus is MUSIC. Eight lyrical posts to follow. Rock on.
Adam Gardner of the band, Guster, speaks about what he and the band are doing to do their part to help the environment, and about REVERB, the company he created to help other musicians go green.
Musician/composer, Diego Stocco, created this music with a tree in his backyard. The track is also available as a high-quality download on his Bandcamp page.
HAT TIP: Neville Burtis
The unique sounds of humpback whales are songs that can be heard over great distances. All the whales in an area sing virtually the same song which is constantly and slowly evolving over time.
What do you call an art museum with no walls and no actual art on display? The Greenmuseum was created by a group of environmental artists as forum for presenting and discussing a variety of environmental art around the planet. Instead of establishing one big museum filled with art, the site offers “many tiny boxes (monitors) that encourage visitors to go out to experience art in the context of their own communities and ecosystems.” Enter here.
Artist Dianna Cohen uses plastic as her primary medium. She’s also a co-founder of Plastic Pollution Coalition, an organization whose mission is “to create a global community and ignite a social movement that will eliminate the toxic impacts of plastic pollution worldwide.
You can visit Dianna’s online gallery at diannacohen.com. Plastic Pollution Coalition lives here.
Chilean designer, Camila Gimeno, believes that “Christmas can be a beautiful time for us, but a really hard one for environment, considering the massive increase of energy and material we consume.” She points out that even Santa is taking steps toward saving energy and suggests that we all follow his example.
Hat Tip: designboom.com.
This bus shelter made of buses is a work by Christopher Fennell & Doug Makemson, two local Atlanta artists. The seat is made from a decommissioned city bus. HAT TIP: superuse.org.
Aqualta: 5th Avenue & 35th Street, NYC, originally uploaded by bldgblog
The Aqualta Project – a spectacular series of images depicting a hydrologically transformed metropolis – is a product of Studio Lindfors, a design-oriented, full service architectural firm. To see more, visit their site at studiolindfors.tumblr.com.
Meanwhile, one to grow on:
Instead of tossing out cell phones and other electronic devices, artist Boo Chapple suggest that we should eat them. In a pamphlet titled, Consumables, she says that “if electronic devices were edible, we could save on petrochemicals and solve the global food crisis in one simple move. In place of e-waste, there would now be e-food. There would be no more photo essay exposés of towns in China piled with PCB’s, dusted in plastic and beset with birth defects. There would be no more African famines.”
Hat Tip: fastcompany.com/blog
All images are from Consumables, a project by artist Boo Chapple, with photography by Bo Wong.
“Flower™ lets you take control of the wind as you explore and navigate beautiful, lush environments using only the SIXAXIS motion controls.”
Flower is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. ©2008 Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. Developed by thatgamecompany.
On October 11, Cirque du Soleil founder, Guy Laliberte, returned from a trip to space during which he presided over an earthbound, 14-city media event designed to draw attention to the issue of water conservation. The spectacle featured U2’s Bono, actress Salma Hayek, and former Vice President Al Gore. For details, visit news.yahoo.com.
British rock group Duran Duran, heavy metal band Scorpions, Senegalese star Youssou N’dour, Irish singer/composer Bob Geldorf, Chinese singer Khalil Fong, and South African archbishop Desmond Tutu are among 55 world celebrities who have joined in recording a song as part of a mass media campaign on the threats of climate change organized by the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum.
The song entitled “Beds’r Burning,” was originally recorded by the Australian group Midnight Oil and will be available for download, for free, following a public launch in Paris on Oct. 1.
Hat Tip: green.yahoo.com.
Andrej Blazon’s “Charity Chair,” represents a unique approach for green products: design globally, manufacture locally. A finalist in the One Good Chair competition, it can be cut from a single sheet of recycled material (from hard rubber to plastic or metal sheets), then bent into shape using slits and flaps. Pretty much anyone can make the chair, which means there’s no manufacturing or transport involved.
Hat Tip: Peligro Films & www.fastcompany.com.
Working with the World Wildlife Fund, Brazilian artist Nele Azevedo created 1000 miniature ice people in a public square in Berlin.
The figures, which melted in the hot sun, were meant to highlight the melting ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica.
HAT TIP: blog.metroparkusa.com
Following the ancient tradition of using rugs as a means for communication and a cultural record, the Mexican design collective NEL produced a global warming rug that depicts a small polar bear surrounded by the sea.
The rug is manufactured by the Spanish rug and carpet company Nanimarquina. You can read more about NEL at their website: http://www.nel.com.mx.
Camper Bike, a functioning sculptural piece, built in April 2008. A stand alone piece and the subject of a series of paintings.
Namaste: www.kevincyr.net
The Haute Trash Fashion troupe is a group of progressive fashion designers who have put on over 100 shows all over the Western U.S. Their fashions are made from a variety of salvaged materials, from construction fencing to inner tubes and plastic containers.
Robin Worley (aka Rayona Visqueen), an original member of Haute Trash, explains that their fashion shows help break down “the boundaries of stereotypical beauty and fashion by celebrating bodies of all sizes, shapes and ages through humor and satire. We might change the way you see the world. “
Hat Tip: re-store.org
Asked to design an ecological business card for an environmental consultant, Fischer Portugal decided not to print any cards at all. Instead they created a rubber stamp to turn re-usable material into business cards.
Advertised brand: Andrea Romani – Environmental Consultant
Advertising Agency: Fischer Portugal, Lisbon
Namaste: theinspirationroom.com.
Mossenger is a project by Anna Garforth. She used a mixture of natural yoghurt and sugar to glue these words made of moss to a wall. Sustainable graffiti!
Namaste: crosshatchling.co.uk.
IC:Earth Prize – October 08 – Original Art from ETSY artist, ART ON THE MENU, originally uploaded by mkecupcakequeen
Artist Patianne Stevenson creates the ultimate, all-natural foods – completely free of calories – from recycled cardboard. If you’re hungry for me, visit Patianne at her shop on Etsy.
Namaste: inhabitat.com
Artist in the Rain, originally uploaded by Mr-Wild.
This ad/poster was created by VVL BBDO Belguim for the World Wildlife Fund. The copy reads: “The first signs of global warming are now clearly visible. We urgently need to limit greenhouse gas emissions.”
A fishing trip, originally uploaded by slavishtubesocks.
In 2007, a blog called “Fishes Feed Us,” was created by Art & Science Collaborations, Inc., and hosted by One Ocean, as a way for youth in New York City and the Indo-Pacific Region to exchange views about the fish crisis, telling their stories from the “fishes’ perspective” as well as from their own viewpoints. Here is some of what they had to say:
One day we will have to go to a museum to see a fish because we are eating up our ocean’s supply too fast, too soon. (Sameena – New York City)
Since the big commercial fishing vessels started coming into our local waters, there are fewer fish, and more pollution. If we can barely survive now, how are the future generations going to? (Francine – Malaysia)
I wish some groups would help fishers’ children so that they could go to school. It is every child’s right to be educated. (Angelica – New York City)
Boom! Everything seemed to stop. Then I saw fishes floating. Dead. With one dynamite explosion, the reefs, our home, were completely demolished. (Kristine – Philippines)
Education is the key. If people understand the human consequences of losing the world’s fish stocks, they will try and help stop the depletion. (Jasmine – New York City)
Chris Jordan is an artist who takes photographs that “portraits of American mass consumption.” His book, Running the Numbers, is a collection of huge, zoomed-out shots of the things we discard every day, e.g., this photo above that represents the 2 million plastic beverage bottles we Americans use every five minutes.
Terroir: A Sense of Place is the inaugural exhibition for an exciting new venue in Marin County at The Marin French Cheese Company. Originally a French term, the word terroir expresses the special characteristics that a specific landscape contributes to growing foods. For this exhibition, the definition has been co-opted to express the Sense of Place that these artists experience of nature.
For more information and directions, visit http://artatthecheesefactory.blogspot.com/.
