Environmental Art

By Olga Mercedes Bautista

For the past ten years, Olga Mercedes Bautista has been experimenting with a new approach to environmental art. She creates sculptures that use all natural materials collected after the intense devastation of Hurricane Sandy. Bautista’s Re-constructing Sandy series emphasizes the power of nature and its destructive force by attempting to create a rhythmic sequence of vo- luminous form.

She believes that an object taken out of the natural environment in which it was born can adapt. It can expand to become a force within its surroundings by appropriating a new identity while maintaining its own individuality. Its original plasticity will become a new artistic expression.

Studies of Environmental Art addresses the daily stress of individuals when facing a global crisis that is affecting us all. Through her sculptures, she wants to contribute to a greater climate change awareness stressing the need to change our ways in the near future before we reach a point of no return.

Bautista will investigate how her work connects with that of other artists and how the artistic community is responding to environmental concerns. She will compare and contrast how artists from modern to contemporary history have been addressing environmental issues, such as climate change and sustainability.

Important Environmental Threads

Global climate change, population growth, the spread of toxic and hazardous chemicals, loss of biological diversity, air and water pollution, are the few environmental problems affecting humans and our planet balanced. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “climate is changing at a faster rateduring modern times due to rising temperatures because of shifting of weather patterns ”( U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2014) causing heavy rainfall in intensity and frequency, storms, blizzards, forest fires, and droughts. At the same time, rising flooding from coastal storms like hurricanes may increase the release of toxic chemicals in flooding areas.

The New Jersey Utilities Association reported in 2015 more than “113,000 trees were damaged or destroyed in the state of New Jersey” six years ago due to severe winds and waves from Hurricane Sandy. Small branches, roots, and leaves among other debris were found scat- tered around throughout the coastal area.Once the storm strong winds dissipated, organic materi- als could be found all around. They were laying on the beach and after all the devastation.

Plastics never biodegrades and have outgrown most man-made materials. There are tons of plastic on the surface of oceans and trillions of pieces of plastic debris in the ocean. The industry is creating disposable products such as plastic bags, bottles, soda cans and tons of millions of plastic waste. It all ends up in the ocean affecting whales, sharks, coral reefs, other wildlife and us humans. Plastic products are dangerous for the animals that accidentally ingest them or become tangled with them.

Ocean trash is the largest dumpster used in a large proportion. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Solid Waste in the United States landfill disposal still remains the widely used waste management method. Although New Jersey is still suffering from an inadequate garbage management system after the landfill closures in the Hackensack Meadowlands and the construction of the Essex County incinerator in Newark. These cases demonstrate an exreme preoccupation with environmental problems.

The growing amount of garbage produced daily for each habitat created environmental problems. Shipping garbage to landfills out of state and incineration will continue to have a neg- ative impact on the New Jersey landscape. Eileen McGurty reports that nurturing an economy predicted by continuing abundance and the production of waste was unable to solve the production of waste because that economic problem system was the very source of the problem, to be- gin with”

Artistic Approaches to Ecological Changes

The artistic community is looking for different ways to face the crisis of the environment and in search of ecological and social innovations. The art of the future has to be related to the future of humanity and the planet. We must constantly search for an integral aesthetic that in- cludes art in our lives. Environmental art needs to be a collaboration between social movements, scientists, governmental and the community.

From the beginning of civilization until the development of the indigenous communities, human beings have coexisted with their natural environment. Their perception of life has rotated around human condition. Art was used to culturally communicate shared human condition perceptions, the natural world, and the cosmos. Through out the eighteen century the world saw the development of economic and social changes, that originated mayor economic, technological and industrial transformations. Starting in the mid-nineteenth and twentieth centuries steps have been taken to a rural economy based on agricultural production and trade to an industrialized and mechanized urban economy. These changes have caused the production of products for comfort and the desire to control natural products have caused irreparable environmental crises.

50 years ago scientists have identified the dangers that cause industrial development and climatic effects to the balance of the planet and the consequences on human life. A vanguard of artists, architects, and urban planners took these changes seriously. The search for the meaning of ecology has been the effort of change in social, cultural, economic, political and environmental values. The ideas of sustainable, locally made creative economies were introduced into American culture.

Art is the universal answer in the search beyond comfort and investment vehicle, beyond entertainment and decoration. The use of art and digital media can improve a greater understanding of time and space in the context of the environment. In addition artists, galleries and museums are seeing as an opportunity to unite interests around the environment.

The most outstanding movements that have welcomed the ecological change have been Land art, Arte Povera, Zero, performance art, social sculpture, British Land Art, Eco / Environ- mental Art.

Land art is known as Earth art and Earthworks and has received influences from concep- tual art and minimalist art. Most artists have been Americans (Stiles Kristine and Selz Peter, 2012). Land art is a movement that was born in 1960 and 1970 and is associated with Great Britain and the United States.This movement was characterized by the use of materials associat- ed with the earth such as rocks, earth, vegetables, and water. The location was inaccessible and distant from populated areas and the only form of the documentary was through the use of photographs. This movement is characterized by the opposition of art as a product of commer- cialization, of the urban way of life and the enthusiasm for living in rural areas.

The rural areas would allow the spiritual encounter with nature and the planet. This movement evokes the spirituality of archaeological sites such as the Native American mounds, the Nazca Lines in Peru, and Native American burial grounds.

One of the renowned artists of the land art movement is Robert Smithson as he was one of the first artists to relate art to the environment and to distinguish between the original location of the artwork called “site” and the “non-site” for express the new space or space of the gallery that the work would be moved. The most outstanding work is Spiral Jetty, created in 1970 in Great Salt Lake, Utah. The Spiral Jetty is a stone path made of stones and earth and is a metaphor for time and the theories of the irreversibility of the loss of energy. It is located in an area aban- doned by the oil-drilling operation. This work demonstrates Smithson’s interest in rehabilitating the environment that was damaged by the industry.

Another artist associated with the land art movement includes Carl Andre with his work Log Piece, created in 1968. It is an elongated sculpture that is alienated throughout the earth. Between 1972 and 1973 Richard Sierra built the work Spin Out, for Robert Smithson that was installed in the Kroller-Muller Museum in the Netherlands. It consists of three plates of steel inserted halfway into the middle of a Kröller-Müller Museum valley.

Another outstanding artist of this era is Michael Heizer with the creation of the work Double Negative between 1969 and 1970 in Nevada. Heizer cut two trenches of 240,000 tons of rock. Double Negative is one of the first work that the earth uses as a canvas. A material that distinguishes sculpture (“art”) with objects such as rocks (“non-art”). Inviting the observer to relate the earth to art.

Other prominent artists in this field including, Alice Aycock, Walter De Maria, Hans Haacke, Nancy Holt, Dennis Oppenheim, Andrew Rogers, Charles Ross, Alan Sonfist, and James Turrell

Body art or performance art that was born in 1960 represents the expression of an artist through the manipulation of her human body. Ana Mendieta moved to open fields as landscapes to make artistic interpretations that connected her with her ancestral past and present. Mendieta documented these actions through video and photography.

Artists such as Alan Sonfish, Helen and Newton Harrison, Mel Chin, Michelle Oka Don- er, and Jody Pinto used art as a means for environmental recovery and land reclamation. The joint work with scientists, architects, environmental activists, public officials and community ac- tivists to initiate changes that benefit the environment and return the damage caused by human beings to nature. Mel Chin is experimenting with projects that clean industrial pollution from affected areas by removing metals and trapping toxins from the earth. His outgoing project Revival Field, which began in 1990 and continues today with the realization of projects that look like sculptures. Chin considers that his projects express ideas of change in three categories that are the nature, the human mind and an art that encourages reform through culture. Converting many forms of passive behavior into responsible actions.

One of the recognized figures of the movement Land Art is Alan Sonfist, who is the pre- cursor of the project llamado Time Landscape of New York in 1977 was installed in the corner of the Guard and Houston Streets and modeled after a forest colonial and contains indigenous plants that could have originated in the place in the 15th century. Their efforts continue in projects that invite new interpretations of the environment and remove art at the institutional level and that belong to a natural world.

Some artists have continued to maintain a balance of nature and culture through the real- ization of facilities using materials and objects that have acquired history over time. The artist Ibrahim Mahama uses textiles such as jute sacks used to transport cocoa and installs them in large-scale. They are transforming spaces such as supermarkets, schools, and public buildings. Muhammad experiments documenting forms that accumulate time, history, form and space to create new forms that analyze the policies of form and materiality.

Finally is important to express the need to start a dialogue about how we build nature in-stead of how nature builds us. Which is considered a nature in contemporary times of genetic alteration, waste management, and desertification. It is necessary to increase a sincere connection between the processes of nature and human life, culture, urbanization, and industrialization. It is also necessary to promote projects that link culture and the environment. Projects that have to go hand in hand with the designation of commercial incentives, public information on the content of the products, public education that includes educational institutions, a collaboration of decisions that are made and finally the implementation of sustainability projects.

The presentation of art with installations have changed traditional methods of presentation in galleries and museums. Likewise, government institutions, and art organizations have opened up to present less conventional projects of presentation and classification strategies. Artists are looking for new methods of creativity and presentation process through residences, contact with governmental and non-governmental organizations, environmental activists and re- gional and local organizations. The autonomy of the power of art has been broken to benefit the environment and the human being, as well as our planet.

Bautista’s artistic practice and relationship to her materials.

More than 113,000 trees were damaged or destroyed in the state of New Jersey six years ago due to severe winds and waves from Hurricane Sandy. Small branches, roots, and leaves among other debris were found scattered around throughout the coastal area.Once the storm strong winds dissipated, organic materials could be found all around. They were laying on the beach and after all the devastation.

Plastics have outgrown most man-made materials. There are 269,000 tons of plastic on the surface of oceans and about 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris in the ocean. The industry is creating disposable products such as plastic bags, bottles, soda cans and tons of millions of plas- tic waste. It all ends up in the ocean affecting whales, sharks, coral reefs, other wildlife and us humans. Plastic products are dangerous for the animals that accidentally ingest them or become tangled with them.Landfill disposal still appears to be the most popular method of waste management contributing to continual threats to the natural environment and humans.

Bautista collected both the natural and artificial materials from the coastal shore area af- ter Super Storm Sandy. The action of collecting bark trees and plastic is important to her work. Among those materials, she gathered plastic bags which merchants use daily to package the products they sell at stores like Walmart, ShopRite or Dollar stores to name just a few. Bautista’s interest in re-appropriating nature consists in creating new forms by blending organic debris with plastic. A blending process is obtained by appropriating layers from bark trees and by introduc- ing leaves with plastic debris to mold a new plastic bark tree. She wanted to show how the plas- tic which is used to make bags for carrying objects reveals consumerism and materialism to rep- resent society’s way of living. Installing those plastic materials in a new space can transform the space. Artificial barks become consumer products.

Bautista is interested in the use of natural elements or materials and objects that have ac- quired history over time and re-contextualizing them into new forms. Her creation of installa- tions will give birth to a new visual perception reclaiming those materials into new forms. Bautista uses materials such as jute fiber rope and raffia often used in horticulture and fruticul- ture or in the production of crafts. Natural materials such as raffia and jute are loaded with historical and modern-day narratives and are manufactured by peasants and indigenous people that rely on this products to produce functional objects, similar to plastic production.

Bautista god inspired to make good use of those organic materials which although de- tached from their roots by mother nature were still blending in their new environment. She would assure us that those organic materials continued their own transformational process long after. Apparently this theory might lead an essay by Raphael Rubinstein in his Art of America maga- zine that Modernism is full of strategies of refusal acts of negation. In her own sculptures she tried to bring about an acute sensibility to the nature of the materials with which she worked.

Bautista wanted to show each minimal detail as if viewed under a microscope. Respect- ing their natural forms as she blended them together to combine raw materials of a variety of sources. The viewer may recognize patterns and compositional elements in a new familiar form. Her sculptures intent to generate an an appreciation and respect for a natural balance of nature.

Her experience with the Wonder Women 11: Eye of the Storm group ended with the cre- ation of Bonding with Plastic work. She created a new hybrid tree bark by bonding layers of the tree bark, leaves, and plastic debris. This piece was created during seven weeks of this year of analysis and discussion with nine artists about the creation of this piece and by exploring climate change and environmental issues. The Wonder Women was created by Doris Cacoilo eleven years ago to connect female group of artists. Emphasis of process mak- ing instead of only final products were primordial during this residence and well as exploring
the science, story, and future of environmental policy and life on the planet. The result was a fi- nal exhibition at Harold B Lemmerman Gallery at New Jersey City University from March 26 to May 11, 2018.

References

U.S Environmental Protection Agency by the United States Climate Change Adaptation Plan, Washington D,C: EPA, 2014. Print.

The New Jersey Utilities Association, The New Jersey Utilities
Association Testifies at BPU Energy Master Plan Hearing. Atlantic City. 2015

The Environmental Protection Agency Municipal Solid Waste in the United States: 1999 Facts and Figures

McGurty Eileen. Solid Waste Management in “The Garbage State” New Jersey’s Transformation from Landfilling to Incineration. 44.

Maher Neil M. New Jersey’s Environments, Past, Present, and Future.Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick: 2006. Print.

Chin Mel. WEbsite: http://melchin.org/oeuvre/artist-writing-revival-field
Chastener Jeffrey and Walls Brian: Land and Environmental Art. Phaeton Press, London. 1998 Viso Olga M. Ana Mendieta, Earth Body. Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian

Institution. Hatje Cantz Publishers. 1985 Raphael Rubinstein in his Art of America

Bibliography
Nancy J.Myers and Carolyn Raffensperger. Precautionary Tools for Reshaping Environmental

Policy. Cambridge: the MIT Press, 2006.
Norman J. Vog and Michael E. Kraft, Environmental Policy. California, SAGE Publications, Inc.

2016
Neil M. Maher. New Jersey’s Environments, Past, Present, and Future. Piscataway, Rutgers

University Press, 2006
Wallace Kaufman. No Turning Back dismantling the fantasies of Environmental Thinking. Lin

coln, NE. ToExcel Press, 2000
Stiles Kristine and Selz Peter. Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art.Berkeley and Los

Angeles: University of California Press, 2012.

Digital Archives

Smithson Robert. Spiral Jetty. James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai. April 1.2018

2.Carl Andre Log Piece


Semifinished Log of 100 feet long 1968

17. Kröller-Müller Museum. Michael Heizer


Doble Negative Mormon Mesa, northwest of Overton, Nevada
1969-1970 http://doublenegative.tarasen.net/double-negative/

Ibrahim Mahama, Civil Aviation, Airport. Accra, Ghana, 2014. Courtesy of the artist Ibrahim Mahama interviewed by Aicha Diallo. Paperz Newspaper. 2012

website: https://paperzz.com/doc/2577861/daily-newspaper—gulf-times

Mel Chin. Revival Filed .1991-ongoing porject in conjunction with Dr. Rules. USDA Chin Mel. Art 21. Preview from Season 1 of “Art in the Twnty-Frst Century” 2001

Olga Mercedes Bautista. Re-constructing Sandy series. 2014-2018

Olga Mercedes Bautista Bonding with Plastic

Harold B Lemmerman Gallery at New Jersey City University


Artist Statement

Plastic has outgrown most after man-made materials, causing many threats to the planet. They endanger whales, sharks, coral reefs, and other wildlife which accidentally ingest them or become entangles by them. More than 113,000 trees were damaged or de- stroyed in the state of New Jersey by Hurricane Sandy six years ago. Severe winds and towering waves caused unbelievable devastation.

Olga Bautista’s work has been informed by both the catastrophic experience of Hurricane Sandy and humanity’s complicated relationship to plastic.
She began to collect fallen tree barks and a variety of plastic bags used by mer- chants.Using these materials she created new forms by bonding layers of the tree bark, leaves, and plastic debris to mold a new hybrid tree bark.

Her work demonstrate how the plastic which is used by merchants to package their products they sell represent consumerism and materialism in today’s society. Her artificial barks become both consumer products and polluted agents.