Coinciding with Champlain College’s Sustainability Month,  faculty member Rebecca Schwarz gave her  CRE250 Creative Media Portfolio 1 class an assignment titled “Eco Logic art projects”. The following are the artists statements from each of the students.

Growing Metal, by Ross Cagenello
Aiken Courtyard installed in a tree

For this project, I have created a mobile in the shape of an upside-down peace symbol. It is made from sticks and aluminum cans, with wire holding everything together. The centerpiece of my project, the part made from sticks, represents the earth. I fastened a y-shaped branch in the center to look like a tree, which symbolizes life and growth (and also completes the peace symbol). I wrapped pieces I cut from a can of coffee around it, including the pop tab, to take on the roles of moss and leaves, representing an unnatural growth. I also attached a Coke can to its base, as a way of implying that this tree has consumerist roots. In essence, I created this piece as a symbol of the growth of consumerism and its effect on the natural world. It assaults not just the environment, but also our peace of mind.

Bees on Earth, Maggie DeCapua

Bees on Earth is an art-as-activism awareness campaign designed to promote understanding of the current decline in honey bee populations. Through art and marketing materials, this project is intended to 1) establish a brand, 2) engage the community, and 3) inspire action. Current marketing materials for Bees on Earth include hand-drawn stickers with the hashtag #BeesonEarth or clever bee-inspired phrases.

 

 

Emily Kueppers

For this project I took pictures of Michigan and inserted two QR codes. One thatleads to a twitter stream of tweets about the Flint Michigan water crisis, accompanied bythe words “Out of Order.” The other QR code being one that leads to a twitter stream of“First World Problems”, accompanied by the word, “Working.” I want first to show thedifference of attention, that people only focus on themselves instead of helping peoplewith a serious issue, they don’t even have access to clean water and their governmentdoesn’t care enough to do anything about it.

I placed the pictures of Michigan in common spaces and by where you can get water, to further drive the point home that we are so lucky to have all this water, and not have to worry about getting sick or having yellow water. I also hung the signs in ways, that used as little paper as possible, and that made it seem like anyone could have done this project. I gave no credit to myself on any of these signs. I wanted to further drive home the point, that anyone could have done this because this is something we should all care about.

 

Learning to Dance by Jeremy MacKenzie

“Learning to Dance” is a story book-ended by a poem used to characterize the flow and unintended effects of human relationships. The story is about my own life as a young boy as I grew into adult hood, and the influences that shaped my life, character, and decisions. This story addresses sustainability from the perspective of someone who’s life became unsustainable through the pursuit of romantic relationships starting at an age too young to know any better, and it does so by outlining the unintended consequences of those relationships and decisions as they grew and built on one another. The story itself is read to a live audience to capture the humanness of it, and to support the belief that honesty and vulnerability can sometimes bridge the social gap.

 

Eric Naud

My poster is a strong environmental message on consumerism and our disregard for the environment in our hunger for oil. The subject, is laying face down and surrounded by broken chunks of lettuce and has a glass of brownish liquid in one hand. The broken chunks of lettuce surrounding the subject, who is an ambassador of humanity, represents the environment which is destroyed on a regular basis. The brown liquid is none other than oil.

 

Andrew Poirier

My project is an original animation and soundtrack made with a combination of sound clips from YouTube videos and my own original music. The point of the piece is to raise awareness of the bee crisis, using the spread of pesticides as its primary vehicle for drama. A lone bee travels across a honeycomb, only to realize that more and more units are becoming graves, transformed from the insecticides. Audio from multiple videos warn of the importance of bees, as well as what we could lose should they die out.