News: Shows, Courses, Publications etc.

[Caffyn Kelley]

A place to post timely news to share with this social network.

[Caffyn Kelley]

From Jan Jordaan, South Africa

Art for Humanity newsletter May 2008

In this issue AFH features art from Zimbabwe and Tibet from the UDHR - International Print Portfolio. We also formally introduce our new initiative of taking art and poetry to schools in the form of banners that feature art and poetry from the 'Women for Children' portfolio and more.


This issue:
Editorial
General News
Dialogue among Civilisations
AFH Gala Dinner to Celebrate Art, Creativity and Freedom
AFH Artists on Tibet and Zimbabwe
Women for Children
AfH takes Art and Poetry to Schools
'Women for Children' Print Portfolio exhibited in Bloemfontein
DAG Exhibits 'Women for Children'
Women for Children exhibited at UJ
UDHR IPP
DAG exhibits 'UDHR - IPP'
'UDHR-IPP' Catalogue in Translation
www.afh.org.za AfH displaying art from conflict regions on the home page including the artist's statements. The art is selected from the UDHR - International Print Portfolio published by AfH 1999. Presently on the home page view Berry Bickle's "Summary of Events" based on the diary of a torture victim.
Click here to download the http://www.afh.org.za/images/stories/news/May08.pdf
May 2008 Newsletter

[Caffyn Kelley]

Conducting Mobility, an online exhibition at greenmuseum.org

Ryan Griffis and Claude Willey collide with a carload of cultural projects focusing on the problems of mobility and energy.

Works by: Brian Collier, Free Soil, Amy Balkin/Kim Stringfellow/Tim
Halbur/Greenaction/Pond, kanarinka, Michael Mandiberg, Laurie Palmer,
Platform, Josephine Starrs/Leon Cmielewski

Our world is continually shaped and reshaped by patterns of mobility.
In the United States, motorization and single-use zoning are the
principal components of a system that depends upon long distance
travel and cheap energy. In the developing world, the wasteful
patterns of the West are being repeated in places like China and
India where increased automobile and fuel use are quickly becoming
the norm. In all parts of the world, city governments struggle to
keep pace with the energy and mobility needs of their expanding
populations. Tourism, migration, military conflict, and environmental
disasters all keep human beings on the move. Many choose their
destinations, while others are forced towards them. Our 21st century
world may ride the precarious line between the temporary and the
permanent, and the ecosystems plundered by our unquenchable energy
needs might have the final word. Art, and other forms of cultural
reflection, can help to make accessible the structures and systems
that propel us. It falls to all of us as global citizens to redirect
our governing institutions and cultural perceptions – or we may find
ourselves facing the end of the road.

http://greenmuseum.org/exhibitions_index.php

[Caffyn Kelley]

THE HUMAN ARGUMENT: The Writings of AGNES DENES

www.springpublications.com


Spring Publications is pleased to announce the immediate availability of the first complete publication of the writings of the American environmental artist AGNES DENES:



Edited and with an introduction by KLAUS OTTMANN

Paperback original, $25 USD
320 pages, ills., first edition
ISBN-10: 0-88214-569-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-88214-569-3


The first complete collection of the writings of the American artist Agnes Denes. A pioneer of the environmental art movement and an artist of enormous vision, Denes investigates the physical and social sciences, philosophy, mathematics, linguistics, psychology, art history, poetry, and music. Her art involves ecological, cultural, and social issues and is often monumental in scale.

"Agnes Denes is widely recognized as an artist who is able to transform her brilliant original ideas and concepts into innovative visual images and integral texts on an enormously wide range of topics and disciplines. By applying her visual philosophy to analytical writings, she has enriched our insights into problems of human and global survival."
– Peter Selz

"Agnes Denes seems to straddle science and art in a way reminiscent of Leonardo."
– Donald Kuspit

"In the history of art there gave been few artist’s artists – individuals who have emphasized in their work the raising of provocative questions and who have also tested the limits of art by taking it into new, unforeseen areas. Agnes Denes is one of these special artists."
– Robert Hobbs

"Agnes Denes more or less invented ecological art and remains a leading practitioner of the genre. It's fortunate that her theoretical writings on art, nature, and history are being published at a time when the whole world knows we need ecological reverence and care."
– Thomas McEvilley

For online show of Agnes Deenes' work see http://www.islandsinstitute.com/gallery/eARTh/Denes/index.html

[Caffyn Kelley]

Eco-Art Courses

From Beth Carruthers: Summer 2008

I want to get word out about two courses I developed a couple of yeas ago that are now being offered throughVancouver's Emily Carr Institute for Art and Design (ECIAD) for the summer.


The first is specific to urban ecology in the context of our relationships with urban forests - in this case, Vancouver's 1000 acre Stanley Park ecosystem. This seminar/practicum is also an opportunity to collaborate with the science-based Stanley Park Ecology Society. The dates are June 3rd - 24th . See:http://www.eciad.ca/studies/courses/CESE/170/section/SU01

[Caffyn Kelley]

Kagan-order-form.pdfPUBLICATION on arts, cultures and sustainability:

Announcing the book "Sustainability: a new frontier for the arts and cultures", edited by Sacha Kagan and Volker Kirchberg. With 21 authors, most of whom are active in the new "Cultura21" international network (www.cultura21.net), this book gives a wide overview of the field of inquiry and action we're engaged in! And with its 570(!) pages, it provides an impressive first international publication of its kind in this field!
But I let you see by yourself:
Please see the attached documents:
one includes the Table of contents, preface, introduction and the list of authors of the book, the other is an order form.
(From Sacha Kagan)

[Caffyn Kelley]

An Experiment with Creative Fundraising

Rhian Walker writes, "As we prepared for our Social Change Institute (www.hollyhockleadership.org) which brings together 100 environmental and social change leaders from Canada and the US, our friend Vanessa Richards sent us a track she had written and recorded called "Occupying Army." Sung from the perspective of earth speaking to us at the pivot time of crisis, she calls to us to "treat me like you love me, you are of me, you're not an occupying army you are of me."

Listening to her powerful words and soulful voice, my nerves and neurons stood on end. You only need to look as far back as the civil rights movement to see how the power of music and of the artist can transform us.

This proposal is about supporting Vanessa and her artistic colleagues in recording both the track and a video of this song to be used as a tool for social change. It is also about recognizing artists for their time and efforts by raising money to let them take this project to its fullest conclusion. You can support this project by making a financial contribution OR by providing one of the services listed in the project budget."


Check it out at
http://www.givemeaning.com/proposal/occupyingarmy/member/25245

Let's make this happen!

[Caffyn Kelley]

Lulu Presents

The Elements: A Festival of Nature in Performance
August 20th-23rd


at various venues and outdoor locations around Gabriola Island, BC, Canada


Join us for four days of audio art, media installations, soundwalks, panel discussions,
workshops, and performances that celebrate our shared environment,
and explore how the human and the natural world interact.
All are welcome!


Passes are on sale at Artworks and the Village Liquor Store:
$50 Family/Group (up to 2 adults, 3 children); $30 Adult; $10 Youth (18 and under)


Passes allow admission to all festival workshops and events and include discounts
at four of Gabriola's fine restaurants!


For more information, please visit www.elementsfestival.ca.

[Phyllis Reeve]

EARTH ART EXHIBIT: Subtle Sustainability.
Royal Botanical Gardens, Burlington ON
http://www.canadianart.ca/online/see-it/2008/08/21/earth-art-exhibit/

[Phyllis Reeve]

http://apache.ocad.ca/events_calendar/eventdetail.php?id=805

Design for the Other 90%

[Caffyn Kelley]

5-day retreat focusing on Active Ecology and the Arts: Ontario, Canada

A 5-day retreat focusing on Active Ecology and the Arts will take place Oct 19-24, 2008. This certificate will provide you with specialized training in delivering workshops specific to the environment that incorporates the arts.

The retreat is being led by Dr. Rena Upitis (teacher, musician, artist & researcher), and a team of excellent facilitators. She has built the Wintergreen Studios in Southeastern Ontario near Kingston completely off grid! This retreat centre embedded in the heart of nature will offer us invaluable
knowledge about living ecologically sound and will also give us a wealth of ideas, content and factual data to take back into our communities. Each session will infuse different art forms.

Please call for more information (416-408-2824 x469). Also, here is a link to the
> Wintergreen website so that you get more of an idea of the location
> and what it has to offer. www.wintergreenstudios.com

[Phyllis Reeve]

Marianne Nicolson
The House of the Ghosts
October 4, 2008 to January 11, 2009

Marianne Nicolson
drawing, 2008

Marianne Nicolson, a member of the Dzawada’enuxw Tribe of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation, first came to prominence in 1998 when she scaled a vertical rock face in Kingcome Inlet to paint a 28 x 38-foot pictograph—the first in the inlet for over sixty years—to mark the continued vitality of her ancestral village of Gwa’yi. In a similarly monumental gesture, Nicolson’s site-specific project The House of the Ghosts imaginatively transforms the Georgia Street façade of the Vancouver Art Gallery into a Northwest Coast ceremonial house. Using high-powered lighting, Nicolson will project the vision of a house front and totem poles onto the Gallery façade from dusk to dawn every night. By altering the Gallery in this way, the building itself becomes a site of cultural exchange, emphasizing its importance as a transformative space while wryly commenting on its historic role as a courthouse and jail where, decades ago, First Nations peoples were punished for defying the government’s Potlach ban. Nicolson sees this work as a positive and symbolic reassertion of a culture in a place where it was once forbidden, in a gesture that speaks to the vibrancy of Kwakwaka’wakw culture and the need to sustain it.

The House of the Ghosts is a site-specific artwork illuminating the Georgia Street facade of the Vancouver Art Gallery from dusk to dawn every night.

This site-specific project is organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery and curated by Daina Augaitis, chief curator/associate director. It is generously supported by the Audain Foundation

[D.]

Professional Development at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, NY

An Evening for Educators, Nov. 20, 2008

http://www.cmog.org/dynamic.aspx?id=266