Eco-Visionaries EFA Artist Salon Jan 2020

by Patricia Frischer

January 11, Sat from 2 - 4 pm . Eco-Visionaries Artist Salon
California Center for Creative Renewal, 1905 Crest Drive, Encinitas, CA 92024

Our thanks to Ellen Speert, moderator par excellence and host as well as Paul Henry. Both prepared their fabulous CCCR garden for this Artist Salon.

The presentation by the charming Ashley Mazanec was inspiring and interactive. We sang, we even moved!  Check out her EcoArts Foundation and the program where she teaches eco-art at Del Sur Elementary. Here are some more of the organizations she recommends: Parachute Arts, the Artists and Climate Change blog based in New York City and the Climate Science Alliance affiliated artist program based here in San Diego. Ashley was particularly good at naming eco-artists including those interviewed in her Let’s Talk About the Weather podcast: Diane Burko (glacier and climate photo and paint); Zack Rago from chasing coral; eco-artist professors Andrea Polli, Beverly Naidus, and San Diego-based Ruth Wallen; The arctic cycle climate change theater, Israeli artists Doron Gazit and Noam Bedein, comedian Peterson Toscano, and place-based environmental artist David Buckley Borden.

Ellen, William Lesley, Alessandra Colfi and Becky Cohen are hoping to start a branch of Extinction Rebellion  in San Diego and will be visiting the branch in Los Angeles to check it out. Hopefully they will report back on their progress.

We all had a chance to introduce ourselves and talk about our art and our passions. Then our open discussion covered topics related to how can you use your art to advance solutions for environmental concerns.

• Our own personal pain can affect the society as a whole.  That could be a starting place for healing.
  
  
• Another starting place is a sense of place. Broken pieces can be brought together for a new life. Recycling, upcycling are important but more authentic when personal stories are included.
  
  
• Look for appropriateness in your materials, sharing resources and creating balance. The art we make should be made responsibly with eye to the environment and even personal safety.
  
  
• Interactive art is essential element. How you get the public to respond to the work beyond empathy all the way to action.
  
  
• We should integrate art in everything we do: for example for gift giving, using handmade cloth instead of wrapping paper that can used again and again.
  
  
• There is a place for both open aggression and gentle persuasion but a bunch of humor is always a good way to lighten the mood and open the mind to positive suggestions.
  
  
• If you can combine your grants application with other benefit agency grants in collaboration, you could have better luck in succeeding. So look for environmental grants and add art components.

Our next meeting March 14: Portia La Touche Moderator, The Good, Bad and Ugly of art criticism. Please send idea for other Artist Salons to Angela Jackson

You can see a report about the current Endangered: Exploring California's Changing Ecosystems at California Center for the Arts Museum Escondido by Patricia Frischer