Quite the opposite trend is developing now.  Several emerging  artists, the “environmental artists” of the 21^st century put nature in the center–not the artist or the idea.  Nature is the subject and the artist is nature’s follower. The following artists’ creations are about the land and earth; other artists interested in the environment have been more concerned with a world under the sea.
 

William Alburger, Non-traditional Backwards One-Door, 2012, 27″ x. 13.5″ x 5.25 reclaimed Pennsylvania barn wood, specialty glass and fabric

       William Alburger  lives in rural Pennsylvania, where he picks up scraps of wood from fallen trees and mixes them with discarded barn doors.  He is a passionate conservationist with an addiction to collecting what otherwise would be burned, decayed or discarded in landfills. Largely self-taught, Alburger formerly worked as a painting contractor. His art is both pictorial and practical.  Some sculptures almost look like two-dimensional works, while others function as shelves or furniture.  Hidden doors, cubbyholes and cabinets create surprises, making the natural world his starting point for expression.  Intrusions of man-made items are minor. The knots, whirls, colors and textures of wood speak for themselves, revealing rustic beauty.

William Alburger, Synapse, 2013,  65″ x 23″ x 5.25″  rescued spalted poplar and Pennsylvania barn wood

   

Currently the Greater Reston Area Arts Center (GRACE) is hosting a solo exhibition of Alburger’s works.  In Synapse, Alburger cut into the interesting grain and patterns of fallen poplar. He framed top and bottom with old barn wood and reconfigured the form to suggest the space where two forms meet and form connection.  Allburger finds what is already there in nature, but, through presentation, teaches us how to see it in a new way.  Otherwise, we might not notice what nature can evoke and teach us.

Pam Rogers,  Tertiary Education, 2012, handmade soil, mineral and plant pigments, ink, watercolor  and graphite on paper.  Courtesy Greater Reston Area Art Association

       Dedication to the natural world is second nature to Pam Rogers, whose day job is as an illustrator in the Natural History Museum of the Smithsonian Institution.  “I’m inclined to see environment as shaping all of us,” Rogers explains, noting the importance of where we come from, and how our natural surroundings mark our stories and connections.  While drawing natural specimens, she sees as much beauty in decay is as in birth, growth and development.  We’re reminded that everything that comes alive, by nature or made by man, will turn to dust.  Rogers’ drawings combine plants, animals and occasional pieces of hardware.  Some of the pigments spring from nature, the red soil of North Georgia and plant pigments.

      As in Alburger’s Synapse, above, Rogers seeks to form connections between man and the environment. She inserts nails and other links into the drawings from nature for this purpose, as in Stolen Mythology, below. At the moment, Pam Rogers’ art is in the show, {Agri Interior} in the Wyatt Gallery at the Arlington Arts Center. One of her paintings is now in a group exhibition, Strictly Painting, at McLean Project for the Arts.  

Pam Rogers, Stolen Mythology, 2009 mixed media

      Rogers mixes traditional art techniques with abstraction, natural with man-made, sticks and strings, and does both delicate two-dimensional works and vigorous three-dimensional art.   Her sculptures and installations explore some of the same themes.  At the end of last year, she had an exhibition at GRACE called Cairns.  Cairns refer to a Gaelic term to describe a man-made pile of stones that function as markers.  Her work, whether two-dimensional or three-dimensional, is also about the markers signifying the connections in her journey.

         “There are landmarks and guides that permeate my continuing journey and my exploration of the relationship between people, plants and place.  I continually try to weave the strings of agriculture, myth and magic, healing and hurting.”  Several of her paintings have titles referring to myths, including Stolen Mythology, above, and another one called Potomac Myths.  Originally from Colorado, Rogers also lived in Massachusetts and studied in Savannah for her Masters in Fine Art.  It’s not surprising that, in college, she had a double major in Anthropology and Art History.

Henrique Oliveira, Bololô, Wood, hardware, pigment Site-specific installation, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution Photograph by Franko Khoury, National Museum of African Art

         Artists cite the spiritual and mythic connection we have to environment.  As a student, Brazilian artist Henrique Oliveira noted the beauty of wood fences which screened construction sites in São Paolo.  Observing these strips being taken down, he collected them and re-used the weathered, deteriorating sheets of woods for some of his most interesting  sculpture.  Oliveira was asked to do an installation in dialogue with Sandile Zulu for the Museum of African Art in Washington, DC.  His project, Bololô, refers to a Brazilian term for life’s twists and tangles, bololô. The weathered strips can act like strokes of the paint brush, with organic and painterly expression, reaching from ceiling to wall and around a pole but usually not touching the ground.   Oliveira’s installation is a reflection of the difficulty in staying grounded in life, in this tangle of confusion.

Danielle Riede, Tropical Ring, 2012, temporary installation in the Museum of Merida, Mexico photo courtesy of artist

       Environmental concerns played a part in the collaboration of Colombian artist Alberto Baraya and Danielle Riede, at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, shown in 2011. Expedition Bogotá-Indianapolis was “an examination of the aesthetics of place and its plants” in central Indiana.  For two years, the artists collected artificial plants from second-hand stores, yard sales and neighborhoods in around Indianapolis.  Last year Riede did an installation for the City Museum of Merida, Mexico, Tropical Ring.  It’s made of artificial plants garnered from second-hand crafts in from Indiana and Mexico. The plants were cut and reconfigured to evoke the pattern of an ecosystem, indoors.  Currently, the artist is looking for a community partner to participate in Sustainable Growths, an art installation of crafts and other re-used objects destined for abandoned homes in Indianapolis.
      

R L Croft, Sower, 2013, 22 x 14 courtesy artist

        Croft has also said:  “Nothing can be taken for granted. Constant change proves to be the only reliable point of reference. Equilibrium being as fleeting as life itself, one fuses an array of thought fragments retrieved from memories into a drawing of graphite, metal or wood. By doing so, the artist builds a fragile mental world of metaphor that lends meaning to his largely unnoticed visit among the general population.”   Croft did an installation in the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, a drawing in the wild entitled Sower, in homage to Van Gogh   He worked in wattle to make a large drawing that, in a metaphorical, abstracted way, resembles a striding farmer sowing his seed.  The farmer is the winged maple seed and it references Vincent’s wonderful ink line drawings.

        Nature has been the subject of art by definition and a curiosity about the natural world has defined a majority of artists since the Renaissance.  The first wave of Environmental Artists applied their vision to the environment by directly making changes to the environment–permanent (Robert Smithson, James Turrell) or temporary (Christo and Jeanne-Claude)  Turrell ,whose most famous work is the Roden Crator in Arizona, is the subject of a major retrospective now in New York, at the Guggenheim.

Copyright Julie Schauer 2010-2016