|
Brown has been called “one of the great pioneer environmentalists” and one of Marquis Who’s Who "50 Great Americans". Earning his master's degree in agricultural economics from the University of Maryland in 1959, he went on to pioneer the concept of sustainable development. During his distinguished career, he was presented with the 1987 United Nations Environment Prize, the 1989 World Wide Fund for Nature Gold Medal, and the 1994 Blue Planet Prize for his "contributions to solving global environmental problems." The threat climate change poses is existential, and architecture is one of the key drivers—even more so than that stock culprit, the automobile. Buildings consume some 40 percent of the energy in the US annually. Construction and its related trades are responsible for nearly half of the carbon emissions in the U.S. and astonishingly, out of the 20,000 architecture firms in the United States, only some 400 are participating in the AIA’s 2030 Commitment to carbon neutrality by 2030. This exhibit asks, “What are the ways our industry is currently working to combat warming challenges, what building improvements have surfaced that can stall or reverse our environmental predicament, and what role does design and construction play in this new environment with civilization facing issues of a rapidly changing climate?” The “Yeah - What Lester Said” art exhibit will explain environmental dangers and discuss ideas to create productive relationships between local problems, individual and corporate accountability, and the urgent environmental challenges posed by global warming. The show hopes to spur action via data driven art, films, and a sustainable, architecture showcase. Viewers will come away from this exhibition and associated programming with a better understanding of things they can do to enhance the region's ability to respond appropriately to climate change. LESLIE SOBEL My work has long focused on climate and water both at the high latitudes and in watersheds. I use mixed media including photography, painting, printmaking and scientific data to create two and three dimensional work that incorporates the emotion of experiencing a place with scientific understanding of what is happening. I partner with scientists, going into the field with them to understand their data and their relationship to the places they study. In this time of a pandemic I’ve been trying to focus in the studio. I’m full of sorrow for the amount of suffering and the needless losses thanks to profound mismanagement, incompetence and malevolence. It made me think about how we are all in our own little spaces, isolated in parallel. These pieces incorporate multiple data maps of Detroit - finding the linkages between environmental degradation, poverty, COVID-19 infection, urban heat islands and impervious ground. Unsurprisingly it’s all connected. For more information, see Leslie's Statement + Bio and introduction video.
STO LEN My work has long focused on climate and water both at the high latitudes and in watersheds. I use mixed media including photography, painting, printmaking and scientific data to create two and three dimensional work that incorporates the emotion of experiencing a place with scientific understanding of what is happening. I partner with scientists, going into the field with them to understand their data and their relationship to the places they study. In this time of a pandemic I’ve been trying to focus in the studio. I’m full of sorrow for the amount of suffering and the needless losses thanks to profound mismanagement, incompetence and malevolence. It made me think about how we are all in our own little spaces, isolated in parallel. These pieces incorporate multiple data maps of Detroit - finding the linkages between environmental degradation, poverty, COVID-19 infection, urban heat islands and impervious ground. Unsurprisingly it’s all connected. For more information, see Leslie's Statement + Bio and introduction video.
Ash Arder Ash Arder (b. 1988, Flint, Michigan) is a transdisciplinary artist whose research-based approach works to expose, deconstruct or reconfigure physical and conceptual systems - especially those relating to ecology. Arder’s highly flexible practice examines interspecies relations and natural phenomena primarily through historical and popular culture lenses. For more information, see Ash's website. EXPERIMENT STATION AUDIO This piece is part of an ongoing audio-visual body of work that examines the scientific report - a document associated with logic and fact, as a site fraught with emotional, biased observations as well. Desiree Duell Desiree is an interdisciplinary artist, organizer, and activist based in Flint, Michigan. She has collaborated with numerous organizations across the United States including PICO National Network, Flint Public Art Project, and Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development. Her work has been featured in Hyperallergic, Michigan Radio, Detroit Art Review, and Actipedia. She has received generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Aspen Institute, Andy Warhol Foundation, and the Ruth Mott Foundation. She views art as both an inward and outward facing process in her life practice to strengthen and heal disenfranchised communities. Her work manifests as performance, public speaking, community organizing, organizational development, photography, collage, sculpture, and installation. Her public practice focuses on intersectional issues of poverty through collectively dismantling infrastructures of oppression and developing models of liberation at the municipal, organizational, and grassroots level. She researches and collects the residue of poverty, propaganda, consumerism, and environmental injustice in American culture. For more information, see Deiree's website.    
Residue was a series of material experiments with contaminated Flint Water on paper. The paper was submerged for days, and then lightly sanded to lift the pigment from the water. but coloration of the water did not translate a pigment to the paper. These works both fragile and poisonous reveal the insidious violence of whiteness. This became a mediation on material as content to examine the trauma of environmental injustice on the body politic. Brenda Miller Brenda has been studying and working in the fields of art and design for much of her adult life. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Eastern Michigan University in 1987. She has exhibited in Ann Arbor and her collages have served as the covers of the Ann Arbor Observer Magazine dating back to 1997. Brenda has also worked to support parents and families since 1998 in Mott Newborn Intensive Care and the Ronald McDonald House of Ann Arbor. “I’ve been inspired by my years of living in the Rocky Mountains, by time spent in Michigan’s north country, and by the woods surrounding our Ann Arbor home. The natural areas of our state and country have shaped my love of beauty and my interest in creating art… along with developing my deep desire to support protecting our environment. For more information, see Brenda's introduction video.    
Carbon Neutrality employs the scales of justice to visualize the balance between harm with good. Colony Collapse 2 makes use of Detroit street maps to imagine community gardens and vacant lots where bee populations may revive. Poison Fruit utilizes county maps of Michigan and the Great Lakes to illustrate soil destruction. Turtle Island uses maps of Great Lakes areas and newspaper quotes to emphasize the need for water management.
Diane Cheklich Diane is an independent film director and producer from Detroit. Her films have played in festivals around the world, and in 2014 she received a Kresge Artist Fellowship. Cheklich is an environmentalist who is also a board member of Detroit Audubon, and her recent artistic work reflects a concern for protecting the planet. Her two films in the Yeah What Lester Said exhibit use rain as a major theme. Our rain is more intense and violent now, and it is one of the forces of climate change that is wreaking havoc on both human and non-human lives locally and globally. The stories and headlines presented in the work attempt to put a face on what can otherwise be an abstract concept. In general, art has the ability to present information in creative and interesting ways to its audience, and perform a true public service at the same time, especially with issues like climate change. Diane applauds the directors of Lester for moving forward with the show in its low-carbon-footprint online format—the climate crisis is still happening in parallel with the COVID crisis, and we need to address both. For more information, see Diane's website. Humankind has seen disruptive technologies throughout its history. While these have mostly been considered beneficial, we have more recently learned that many of these disruptive technologies like the automobile and fossil-fuel based electricity generation are also major contributors to climate change. DISRUPT/DEFEND is a montage that looks at how those disruptions have brought our planet to the brink. It’s time for new disruptive technologies that can cure our climate and bring humans and planet back in balance. This film is a call to action to rise to that challenge. Most people think climate change doesn’t affect the middle of our country. In Michigan while it’s true that we don’t have climate change-caused hurricanes or wildfires, we still do feel the effects of climate change. Detroit suffers from regular flooding due to intense rains that used to come infrequently but are now common. Extreme heat is also an issue. Climate change in Detroit causes property damage, and creates stress among residents who worry each time rain is forecast. FROM THE BOTTOM UP explores the stories of some of the city’s residents, and the grass roots efforts to implement a climate action plan for Detroit.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
