Posts Tagged ‘Conservation’
My sister went to Maui, and I got these cool pictures!
Sarah & Jeff had their belated wedding honeymoon in the Hawaiian Islands. A few cloudy days sent them exploring. These massive willow sculptures are installed on the grounds of Hui No‘eau Visual Arts Center, in Maui’s Upcountry. If you’ve visited Maui, you know the island’s landscape changes dramatically, depending on where you are on the island. Upcountry reminds me of Scotland’s Highlands, with its rolling mists, farms, livestock and stone walls. Hard to believe you’re on the slopes
of Haleakala volcano.
Hui No’eau’s art studios are the only public art studios on Maui. The facility offers year-round classes to island residents and visitors. It occupies an expansive historic estate, Kaluanui, designed in 1917, ”by the distinguished architect C.W. Dickey for Harry Baldwin and his wife, Ethel, who founded Hui No‘eau in 1934. The late Colin Cameron, grandson of the Baldwins and former president of Maui Land & Pineapple Co., generously granted Hui No‘eau use of Kaluanui as a visual arts center in 1976.” The center’s website says classrooms, studios, exhibiton space and offices are in the main house, while an “in-house dairy serves as Maui’s only public photography darkroom space.”  Kaluanui’s former den is a gift shop and gallery.  www.huinoeau.com
You had to know an art exhibit inspired by the fracking debate would pop up. Â For every exhibit we hear about, my guess is dozens more exist.
I and my family have friends and colleagues in the oil and gas industries. They’re great people and are very earth aware, work hard, and are damn smart. Â They are scientists, geologists, capitalists and entrepreneurs, and they provide me with a sense of what is going on from their expert-in-the-field perspectives. Â I can only relate what I learn, from both sides of the issue. So, to those good friends: Thank you.
The situation pictured above looks bad, doesn’t it? Â The image, by the way, is courtesy of Exit Art; that organization posted it courtesy of photographer Jacques del Conte.
FRACKING: Art and Activism Against the Drill, opens at New York’s Exit Art on December 7. Â An opening reception takes place 7-9 pm that day, and the show runs through Februrary 5, 2011. Its goal is to explore the myriad controversies surrounding “fracking”, the process of extracting gas from “new shale.” Natural gas weaned from shale deposits is hailed by many as being America’s way out of foreign oil dependency; it’s also considered by the industry and supporting business and governmental entities as an economic saviour for those living in shale-rich regions. The economic benefits of a booming gas drilling industry would build coffers in any state engaged in significant drilling activity. Regions with dense drilling activity tend to be remote, lacking diverse industries capable of providing adequate jobs. Drilling derived income can turn lives around; it can also lower private property values when individuals lease acreage out to drilling.
Take Wyoming, for example.
By the way, a revealing—but still very well balanced—portrayal of the pressures, tensions and dealings connected to drilling in Louisiana and Pennsylvania appeared just a few weeks ago in the Times. Â In New York State, notes Exit Art, a drilling moratorium is in effect until the D.E.C. issues fracking regulation, which could happen as soon as 2011.
Proponents of natural gas drilling say it is safe. Critics say that chemicals used in fracking are dangerous because they contaminate water supplies. In some drilling locales, water is being piped in from other communities–a process draining water from its source. “Fueling” the conflict is the fact that so far, gas industries are not legally bound to reveal the names of the chemicals used in fracking. This new exhibition, a project of SEA, looks to create dialogue and educate the public via “documentary videos, photographs, commissioned works, public responses and literature…” Exit Art issued a call to artists and the public to submit original artwork on postcards, with written statements “verso,” on the topic of fracking. The responses are on view in this show. Submissions are accepted for the show through its duration.
(Hear that, Ricki Arno? Get the Adorables in on the project! Â Love you!)
That invitation is extended to Wyoming artists, of course.
If you are in NYC on January 12, 2011, 7-9 pm, you can attend a panel discussion on fracking and its effects, led by Actor/Activist Mark Ruffalo. In addition to Ruffalo, participants are:
Moderator: Tracy Carluccio, Activist.
Panelists: Joe Levine, Lobbyist / Activist; Michael Lebron, Grassroots Organization; Al Appleton, Policy; Michel Boufadel, Civil Engineer; Christy Rupp, Artist; and a representative from the documentary film, “Gasland”.
Support for this exhibition was provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Bloomberg LP; Jerome Foundation; Lambent Foundation; Pollock-Krasner Foundation; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn; and public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.
Check out www.exitart.org; Â phone 212-966-7745 Â for information.
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Lately, plein air painter Jen Hoffman has been screeching. “Scree!” I suspected she’d mistaken herself for a hawk, but she’s just excited about the National Museum of Wildlife Art’s upcoming exhibit, Birds of Sage and Scree. Twenty-seven paintings by artist Greg McHuron with correlating text by writer and conservationist Bert Raynes will be on display. The show opens Thursday, March 4, 2010 and as Raynes and McHuron wouldn’t think of not having a party, there is one! The party starts at the Museum at 5:30 pm, with a targeted end time of 7:30 pm.   I predict a packed house.
Are there two more admired and loved men in Jackson? Two figures whose passions are never dimmed, whose work is more purely motivated…devoid of narcissism? I don’t think so. Franz Camenzind is the only activist/conservationist/artist who holds a candle. These spiritual leaders follow their muse, waking up daily considering and honoring the natural beauty surrounding us. They wonder what they can do next to help it all along, and they don’t think about how they might benefit professionally or politically.
Back to the point, the show.  McHuron’s paintings and Raynes’ text are combined in a book, also titled Birds of Sage and Scree. This party celebrates that book’s upcoming Spring 2010 release, the finish line to a collaborative quest.  All proceeds derived from book sales will benefit the Meg and Bert Raynes Wildlife Fund. That organization’s mission is to “…initiate, augment, or simply fund projects or activities to help maintain viable and sustainable wildlife populations into the future, especially in Wyoming and Jackson Hole, through support of research, education, habitat protection and habitat restoration.”
A Raynes-McHuron collaboration provides an excellent in-your-hands example of the power of connection between nature and art. Wildlife art nurtures love for, and engagement with, the natural world. This show and the book are beautiful, and they are a tool. The exhibition is also an opportunity for NMWA to “…highlight two long-time supporters of the Museum,” says Museum President and CEO James McNutt. “The show furthers the Museum’s mission to inspire visitors to examine both fine art and humanity’s relationship 
with nature.”
Raynes, with his late wife, Meg, have been recognized for their dedication to conservation and wildlife issues by the National Museum of Wildlife Art, the Wildlife Heritage Foundation, the Wyoming Chapter of the Wildlife Society, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, and the Town of Jackson.  As the book profile on Raynes notes, he “….noticed that some promising bird habitats with difficult access got (little) attention. In particular, Raynes found that students in beginning birding classes tended to avoid scree slopes and attempting to cross expanses of sagebrush. Thus, birds that inhabit these ecosystems are lesser known. (Raynes) has long thought that these birds should be better understood.”
Greg McHuron especially delights in painting en plein aire in locations ranging from northern Alaska to the Grand Canyon. McHuron regularly participates in the Museum’s Western Visions® show and received numerous awards and special recognition from his peers and the Museum. In 2009, his painting Alpine Flush won the Trustee’s Purchase Award.
“I prefer painting…en plein air as the drama and excitement that occurs all around me is difficult to recreate in a studio environment,” notes McHuron. “When I paint the rapidly changing scenes, I put into each of them the feelings and excitement that I felt while watching the scene unfold. Years of watching, analyzing and learning from nature’s school ground has helped me to understand the interrelations between organic and inorganic entities and how different lighting, seasons and locations affect how they look and react. If I can capture that particular feeling, I know that those viewing my works will come to feel some of the emotions and excitement that motivated my wanting to record this particular fleeting moment.”
Birds of Sage and Scree remains on display through April 18, 2010.  Phone the Museum at 307.733.5771.
Restoring Bison in North America: Past and Present with Keith Aune
Tuesday, March 3
Art After Hours
Presented by the Dragicevich Foundation
7:00PM in the Cook Auditorium
FREE
It was a century ago when William Hornaday, Theodore Roosevelt, and early members of the American Bison Society (1905) established the first bison reserves. These early efforts were primarily directed at the capture and containment of the few remaining bison on fenced preserves to save the species from extinction. Present efforts to conserve the largest land mammal, the American bison, are far reaching and complex.
In 2006 the American Bison Society was re-established with a new mission directed at the ecological restoration of the species. Keith Aune is Senior Conservation Scientist for the North American Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and works on several conservation issues including ecological restoration of the American Bison.
Aune has been involved in wildlife research in Montana and Wyoming for 32 years. He has conducted field or laboratory research on black and grizzly bears, wildlife diseases, wolverine, cougar, and, more recently, bison. Aune is currently based in Bozeman, Montana, and will discuss the history of bison conservation and recent bison restoration efforts by WCS through its American Bison Society Initiative.
Co-sponsored by the Wildlife Conservation Society.
For information regarding this and other NMWA programs, phone 307-733-5771 or log on to www.wildlifeart.org.
You will come away welcoming and celebrating Andy Warhol as something you never imagined you would: a great conservation artist.