Friday, April 15, 2016

Environmental Art 102- planning our own- By Larkin B.

In early March, Tucker River Fellows met with environmental artist, Hollie Berry, at the Chattanooga WorkSpace to discuss the plans for their own environmental art project. After a tour of the building and Hollie's art studio, we gathered and decided to create a flower mandala. The mandala is an informational project in which we collect flowers to form a geometric design. In this meeting we decided the design, size, and flowers of the mandala.

 
To create the piece we will collect native (not too many!) and invasive flowers in our local area. Once the flowers are collected we will press them in a plant press for a few days. After this step we will take two thin pieces of glass and seal the mandala design. These projects will be hung around our GPS campus; to ensure the color will last the pieces will be put out of direct sunlight. 

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Environmental Art 101- by Charlotte V.

In February, Hollie Berry came to talk to us about different forms of environmental art. As an environmental artist, Hollie creates art that can be made out of land, made on the land, or art where nature is the subject and is suited to address issues in our environment. She showed us pictures of her “dew-dles” that she creates at Coolidge Park when there is plenty of dew on the grass.

T is for Turtle- Hollie Berry
Hollie told us about the four different types of environmental  art: manipulation, disruption, interaction, and intervention. We discovered that artists like Cornelia Conrad, Simon Beck and Andres Amador take what is already there on the land and rearrange it to form an image, forming the manipulation category of environmental art. 

Rowan leaves around a Hole- Andy Goldsworthy


The second category, disruption, is made up of artists who take man made objects outdoors to form images, well represented by the famous Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas. 

Cadillac Ranch- Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels

Interaction are personal interactions with nature that form images, such as Richard Long’s “Line Made by Walking”. 

Line made by walking- Richard Long 

The last type of “earth art”, intervention, includes artists such as Alan Sonfist who change the environment in order to improve it. 

Circles of Time- Alan Songfist
What most people don’t realize though is that we make environmental art more than you think. Flower crowns, snowmen, igloos, sandcastles are all forms of earth art that we create all the time! We began to discuss ideas for our own environmental art project and might need your help with it, so stay posted!
Snow art by Simon Beck 

Monday, April 11, 2016

Original poetry- Just in Time for Earth Day by Claire C.

After being inspired by the poetry from the first session with Ms. Williams, we then sought to create some of our own. When writing poetry about nature, there are a variety of directions you could go with your ideas. Some choose to create a stunning visual with romantic detailing of their encounters with nature by painting a picture of the scene in the reader’s mind. You could also choose to turn natural objects or their actions into symbols for more abstract ideas such as peace, happiness, change, etc. Possibly, you could bend words so that the beauty and grace of nature is used to advocate for conservation or heightened consciousness of our environment. There are many ways you could incorporate the elements into poetry, it’s just a matter of understanding the natural world and how it balances with the human language, as well as your own perception. Here are a few of our own poems:

Flow
By Larkin B.
The wind burns my face leaving the tops of my cheeks chafed.
Cloth covers my body allowing only two watery eyes to show;
gazing up, I see the trees sway back and forth greeting me.
The naked limbs of the tree allow the sun to creep through and touch my face,
warming me against the bitter cold.
The sound of water racing down the stream whispers in my ear,
trying to be louder than the screams of the wind.
Answering the call I shuffle to the creek,
the mud grabs my foot pulling it deeper and deeper into its murky depths.
Yanking my foot away I reach the water and place my feet into the chilly stream;
I glance to my left and see a beaver dam has succumbed to the untamable force of the water.
 I let the river hold me and the flow of the creek takes me away



Evergreen Trees
By Charlotte V.

Evergreen trees in the winter blue,
Give vibrant rays of color to the barren landscape.
They seem like summer balled up into bark, leaves, and branches.
They are bright, colorful, and inspire happiness even on the dreariest of days.
Their branches, they dance in the rain,
And grow in the mild sunlight,
Their needles perch lazily,
Bathing in the sun’s raw, pale light.
Their roots stretch far beneath the surface,
Twisting a tortuous path among themselves,
To get the water they desperately need into their veins.
Their trunks stand firm, even in the worst winter storms.
They are the glue that holds the branches, needles, and roots together.
These components are what make the tree whole,
They are what makes the tree give life to the death of winter.


While on my nature walk, I found a clump of evergreen trees. I was shocked by how much vibrancy they brought to the dark and barren forest. I began to think of each element of the tree and how it relates back to the tree as a whole, which led to the lines referring to each individual element, the branches, the needles, the roots, and the trunk. I used personification for each element because I think of a tree being more alive, than dormant plants.

Untitled
By Lauren K.
Flowers in her hair
Clouds in her mind
Water in her veins
Lava in her head
Us in her soul
Storms in her heart

She is our mother, Mother of the Earth