Green World

Catalog description

All art production has an environmental impact. To develop sustainable studio practices, artists must familiarize themselves with the consequences of material choices and processes, such as their carbon footprint, supply chain, environmental justice issues, land use, water footprint, toxicity, and end-of-life management. This studio sculpture class is a combination of hands-on experimentation in the classroom and a series of site visits to facilities in the metropolitan area to conduct research and to find inspiration for the development of new artist practices. Workshops in the classroom include experiments with mycelium, bioplastics, vegan adhesives, and nontoxic paints as alternatives to commercially available products. To understand the links between the fast demands of disposable culture and its effect on biodiversity, exhaustion of natural resources, and climate change, we will visit a recycling facility, an oyster reef, and a rooftop farm to learn about environmental projects and initiatives on a city scale. For class projects, students will invest their creativity to do more with less impact by reusing, repurposing, and recycling the city's abundance and waste. These projects will highlight the resourcefulness of artists’ imagination to invent new solutions in the studio and communicate to audiences the urgency of the paradigm shift needed to tackle the challenges of the climate crisis.