to be a good citizen and a good artist: questions and explorations of ecologically restorative work

Meghan Moe BeitiksArt and BiotechnologyFinal Paper

To be a good citizen and a good artist:Questions and explorations of ecologically restorative work.

“Art without ethics is Bad Art”– Theaster Gates, “red, black and GREEN: a blues,” MCA Chicago, 2012

I could sing a thousand beautiful songs of the

irresponsible, rebellious artist. I could quote

Jack Keroauc's "On the Road," I could talk about

James Dean, who lost his virginity to a hooker, or

Anais Nin, who literally wrote the book on personal

scandal.

I could talk of a million romantic, dirty,

oblivious versions of the artist. The artist as the

untethered soul, the free spirit, the guy who, like

the screen version of Basquiat, destroys your

favorite cocktail dress in the name of Art. It's

the fear of this artist and the volatile ideas they

TO BE A GOOD CITIZEN AND A GOOD ARTIST 1

address that arguably lost the "NEA Four" -- Karen

Finley, Tim Miller, John Fleck, and Holly Hughes—

their National Endowment for the Arts Funding.

In his discussion of the NEA in his book

Visionaries and Outcasts, Michael Brenson declares, “Any

fellowship program that respects artists will not

set out like missionaries to train them to be good

citizens, which will do as much to reinforce the

popular assumption that artists are irresponsible

children as supporting facile aesthetic

tantrums . . . The visual arts field should be seen

as en ecosystem in which many different kinds of

art must be able to flourish.” 1 It's arguably in

the freedom that an artist has to play outside the

lines—behaving, creating and performing in ways

that normal society regards as weird,

1 Brenson, p. 154

inappropriate, or wrong, that their inherent

societal value lies.

In recent years, many artists have used this

license for boundary-pushing to create works of

environmental—even ecologically restorative—works

of art. Artworks that seek very deliberately to be

stewards of responsible action and good

citizenship. And while the question "What is Art?"

is an eternal one, ecologically restorative works

seem to ride a very definitive line between "art"

and "other." After all, without the cultural frame

or label, very often the works we are discussing

are, well, gardens. They are scientific research

projects. They are efforts at soil engineering and

wetland restoration made in collaboration with

scientists. Which brings up the question of method.

The question of cultural context. The question of


identity. For in some cases, the artist themselves

are wholly unconcerned with the categorization of

their work as art, or even themselves as artists.

This represents a departure from even the

radical changes to art-making proposed by Allan

Kaprow back in the 1960s. “Young artists of today

need no longer say, ‘I am a painter’ or ‘a poet’ or

‘a dancer.’ They are simply ‘artists,’ All of life

will be open to them," he writes in The Legacy of

Jackson Pollock. "They will discover out of ordinary

things the meaning of ordinariness. They will not

try to make them extraordinary but will only state

their real meaning, but out of nothing they will

devise the extraordinary and then maybe nothingness

as well.”2 The tools, the landscapes, available to

the artist as medium were suddenly much wider, but

2 Kaprow p. 9

still the artist is firmly grounded in a tradition

of art, of self-identifying as an artist.

One woman that struck out into this

'nothingness' in the 1970s was Mierle Laderman

Ukeles, defining herself as an artist but widening

her own definition of 'art.' After struggling to

balance life as a working artist and a mother,

Ukeles declared her maternal acts of maintenance to

be works of art. “Everything I say is Art is Art.

Everything I do is Art is Art," she writes in her

Maintenance Art Manifesto (1969). "The exhibition of

Maintenance Art, 'CARE,' would zero in on pure

maintenance, exhibit it as contemporary art, and

yield, by utter opposition, clarity of issues.” 3

In her work, Ukeles scrubbed museum steps,

cleaned display cases, and went on to become the

3 Ukeles, "Maintenance Art Manifesto," p.1TO BE A GOOD CITIZEN AND A GOOD ARTIST 5

unpaid Artist-In-Residence of the New York

Department of Sanitation, where her work sought

mostly to bring public attention to the labor of

the city's sanitation workers. She choreographed

dances for dump trucks and backhoes.4 While there

were many artists redefining the field in her day,

Ukeles' emphasis on cleaning up: after the art

world, after New York City, after oblivious

citizens unappreciative of the work being done for

them, makes her an important predecessor to

ecologically restorative art.

“The artists who are thoughtfully engaged with

art and culture really can be nettlesome," writes

Brenson in Visionaries and Outcasts. "They think for

themselves and are therefore difficult to

manipulate. They are uncomfortable with 4 Ronald Feldman Gallery, (Represents Ukeles) http://www.feldmangallery.com/pages/home_frame.html

http://www.feldmangallery.com/pages/home_frame.html

fundamentalisms of any kind and likely to question

everything, including the art of the past,

institutional power, corporate culture, and

themselves. They are well-read and articulate, and

guided not by institutional rules but by what

artist Newton Harrison refers to as an internal

critic.” 5

It's fitting that Brenson references Harrison

here, since Newton and his wife Helen are best

known for proposing projects for habitat

restoration that ignore political boundaries,

international law, and cultural difference in the

name of preventing global ecological catastrophe.

One of their most recent works, Sierra Nevada: An

Adaptation (2011), created in collaboration with the

Nevada Museum of Art's Center for Art and the

5 Brenson p.141TO BE A GOOD CITIZEN AND A GOOD ARTIST 7

Environment, proposes a grand ecosystem management

plan for the forests and watersheds of the Sierra

Nevada given the oncoming issue of climate change.

While their work is largely an exercise in thinking

for a sustainable future, they are excellent

examples of artists using their creative freedom to

create works of responsible global citizenship.

“When art and design split, art got, shall we

say, 'meaningfulness,' the symbolic, and design got

'utility', application. Separating 'meaning' from

'purpose' is untenable . . . A lot of designers are

interested in engaging things that look like art

strategies and many artists are interested in

application and purpose," says Frances Whitehead,

who has been "quite content to be very near the

fuzzy edge of cultural production where something

might start to look like it wasn’t art anymore." 6

Her current project, Slow Clean-Up, is an ongoing

effort to phytoremediate the toxic soil on sites of

former service stations. Whitehead prefers to refer

to herself, not as an artist, but as a "design-

ist."

It's impossible to discuss ecologically

restorative work without citing Mel Chin 's Revival

Field (1990-93), generally regarded as the grandfather

of such eco-art. In this work, Chin collaborated

with Dr. Rufus Chaney, senior research scientist at

the United States Department of Agriculture, to

plant a target-shaped garden in Pig's Eye landfill

in St. Paul, Minnesota. "Chaney and Chin used a

special group of plants to extract heavy metals

from the landfill's soil through the plants'

6 Whitehead, interview, Make Art with Purpose, http://www.makeartwithpurpose.net/projects.php?id=15&tp=2


biomass. They selected six kinds of plants known as

hyperaccumulators. Sweet corn (Zea mays) and bladder

campion (Silene cucabalis) were two varieties planted

with the help of five assistants," writes Don Krug

in an article for greenmuseum.org.7 The

hyperaccumulators absorbed heavy metals like zinc

and cadmium through their roots and stored the

elements in their vascular tissue. 8 The project,

supported by the Walker Art Center, was basically

an eco-artists' conceptual wet dream: a

scientist/artist collaboration that resulted in a

work that seemed viable both as an artwork and a

contribution to scientific research. And it cleaned

up toxic waste, to boot! However, years later, Chin

7 Krug, Don. http://greenmuseum.org/c/aen/Issues/chin.php8 Krug, Don. http://greenmuseum.org/c/aen/Issues/chin.php

http://greenmuseum.org/c/aen/Issues/chin.php


set out to defend the research behind the project

in a re-planting in Germany.

“Concerned that environmental factions such as

the Green Party in Germany had begun to doubt the

validity of the science due to the confidential

(private industry and government) research

initiatives in the U.S. that limited information,

Chin Returned in 2001 to initiate the tenth

anniversary planting of Revival Field," writes Sue

Spaid in Ecovention, an overview of ecologically

restorative works. "Chin successfully negotiated a

transfer of new varieties of “super” accumulating

plants to another collaborator, Dr. Volker Romheld.

Chin and Romheld projected long term tests to

further the science in Germany and to work on

public lands, as well as in the Hohenheim

University plots. With the first year’s progressive


tests over in 2001, the field will be replanted in

2002." 9 There is no immediate evidence on the

internet of this replanting, although there is a

website devoted to a greenhouse of Chin's

hyperaccumulators. 10 Further research is required.

Sue Spaid's book Ecovention, primarily a catalog

of an exhibition of the same name in Cincinnati,

Ohio, in 2002, is a useful reference source.

Focused exclusively on works that "intend to

restore ecologies," the books is an excellent

overview of such works and the philosophies that

led to them, including the work of Robert Smithson,

of Spiral Jetty fame. Author Sue Spaid very directly

addresses the blurring of disciplines—this blending

of art and life—in the book's introduction: “There

9 Spaid, p. 710 Haussite, http://www.haussite.net/set.php?page=http://www.haussite.net/haus.0/PROGRAM/INFO_2000/MelChin/chin_E.html

is the pesky question of why an ecovention is art

and not just some aesthetically pleasing

reclamation project. Co-curator Amy Lipton and I

spent a lot of time discussing the ‘artfulness’ of

each project presented here. Before deciding

whether to include a project in the book, we

applied the same standards that we would use to

judge the success of an ordinary work of art." She

does not explain what these general standards might

have been, but clarifies one used specifically for

the exhibition: "the standard of inventiveness

matters . . . In this book and exhibition, the

standard of inventiveness isn’t only applied in

relationship to art history, but in terms of

ecological practices in the public sphere. In the

case of ecovention, artists employ or invent novel

techniques that have yet to be tested in such


instances. This requires them to convince

communities and specialists to support their local

experiments.” 11

One artist featured in Ecovention, Aviva

Rahmani, is well acquainted with the task of

working with a community. In her work Ghost Nets (1991-

2000), she purchased a town dump in Vinalhaven,

Maine, where she had been living for only a year,

and proceeded to restore it to a natural wetland.

"She cultivated relationships with her neighbors by

going out on fishing boats, conducting extensive

interviews, and singing with the local church

choir, despite her Jewish faith," writes Spaid. 12

The resulting artworks include Lines of Demarcation

(1998/2008)13 —a series of photos in which the

landscape is divided by artificial lines, which 11 Spaid p. 312 Spaid p. 11513 http://www.avivarahmani.com/creative-work-samples/3

illustrate the growth/ecological change that has

occurred over time. Rahmani also incorporated daily

walks and performances into her interaction with

the site, and included that ritual as part of her

restoration and observation efforts. 14

This performative element is what ties her back

to Kaprow's connection between life and art—life as

a medium. Indeed, in developing this work, Rahmani

has developed a conceptual methodology for artists

seeking to do ecologically restorative, site-based

works that puts a ritualistic framework on

ecological observation. She's outlined that

methodology in a self-published pamphlet – What the

World Needs Now is a Good Housekeeper. Here are those

14 From a 2012 interview: "In addition to the actual planting and bioengineering, Ghost Nets was designed as a series of time-based daily and weekly rituals of activity and observation, which included walking the site, sound and various forms of ritualized documentation."


guidelines in their entirety, with quotes from the

text for context:

• conceive the site ("sites were chosen for their potential ecological impact beyond the actual restoration.")

• choose the site ("the goal is always to find point of overlap between restored and conserved space to re-establish wildlife corridors and water protection.")

• clean the site ("removing garbage and other barriers to natural water flow.")

• watch the site ("to see how plant colonies and wildlife establish themselves.")

• apply lessons from the site ("each site is an opportunity to learn more about ecological systems and test which theoretical andpractical approaches work best.")

• connect sites ("the goal of restoring sites, to connect naturalresources, has its greatest implications for water.")

• propose a site ("proposing a new site is a challenge.")• compare sites ("many sites have geomorphic elements in

common, as the Gulf of Mexico and Bangladesh.")• contemplate sites ("contemplating the control site for the Ghost

Nests project is an on-going aspect of monitoring the restoration work.")

• network sites ("broadly conceiving the definition of a site invites us to consider how the idea of a site can be re-defined.")

The idea of connecting sites is important to

Rahmani's work. She is currently pursuing her PhD

and a thesis entitled "Trigger Point Theory as

Aesthetic Activism," which explores the idea that

certain restored landscapes or watersheds can act

as "trigger points" for greater ecological impact.15

In contrast, Helena Puche, an Entomologist and

Ecologist from the University of Chicago, Illinois,

suggests that connecting sites lies outside a

scientist's purview. "In general, scientists leave

this part to the ecosystem management," she said in

an interview. 16 "Our role is to investigate the

causes and effects, and suggest solutions.

Therefore, we do not connect sites." 17

Rahmani did collaborate with a scientist for

her work on Ghost Nets. “In 2000 and 2001, it [Ghost

Nets] was monitored by Dr. Michele Dionne, Director

of Research of the Wells National Estuarine

Research Reserve for 19 indicator species," she

reported in an interview.18 "There are images from

15 Rahmani, interview, 2012. 16 Puche, interview, 2012.17 Puche, interview, 2012.18 Rahmani, interview, 2012.


that monitoring, which led to a critical part of my

recent work, tracking what kinds of salt marsh

configuration support fin fish survival under the

pressure of invasive (Carcinus maenus) species.” 19

In regards to scientist-artist collaborations,

Rahmani reports, “What interests me is the think

tank process of finding new kinds of models, as a

mental sculpture, which emerges from a

collaborative investigation.” 20

The issue of artist/scientist collaborations is

a complex one. Frances Whitehead lists

collaboration as a key to success for artists

working with brownfields, in her open source

document New Landscape Paradigms for Post Carbon Cities: Tips

for Success with Brownfields, from Make Art With Purpose:

"Consider the merits of intellectual exchange and

19 Rahmani, interview, 2012. 20 Rahmani, interview, 2012.

civic engagement as a form of “value”. Give some

thought to what you can offer them; ask what they

can offer the project." 21 Such collaborations

require a certain demonstration of good citizenship

on the part of the artist, and a certain measure of

faith on the part of the collaborator.

One attempt to evaluate the efficacy of such

collaborations was made by a UK-based organization

called Comedia, enlisted by PROJECT: engaging artists in

the built environment. While not focused exclusively on

ecological collaborations, the information gleaned

from the surveys filled out by participants is

useful and relevant nonetheless. "The research

focused on the extent to which the mindset and

working practice of those involved in each project:

architects, planners, developers, urban designers, 21 Whitehead, Frances, "Tips for Success with Brownfields," Make Art With Purpose http://www.makeartwithpurpose.net/projects.php?id=15&tp=1


engineers and artists changed as a consequence of

the experience. Data was gathered on a 'before and

after' basis from 36 participants in 12 projects. "

22

From the report:

Under what conditions does artist input have a positive effect andwhen does it not? To achieve a good experience and a successful outcome, some conditions have to be met.Clarity – it works best when the artist and the other professionals involved areclear about what the artist’s role is and what they are expected to do.Timely appointment – if the artist is to contribute effectively to planning anddeveloping a project, they have to be in place early.Management – capacity has to be made available in a project to ensure thatthe artist’s involvement is managed and supported.Remuneration – if artists are expected to contribute in like manner to otherprofessionals they should be accordingly properly paid.Support – a facilitated peer group network of artists working in suchsituations would be beneficial to the success of projects. Organisationsreceiving the input of artists also need support, particularly when this isbreaking new ground.

22 PROJECT Evaluation Report, 2006.

One ecological artist, Brandon Ballengee,

sought deliberately to work within scientific

guidelines in his artistic work, and so obtained

the necessary credentials—a PhD. “I am currently a

visiting scientist in Montreal, Quebec, but I’m

also a full-time professional artist," he said in

an interview. "I wanted to actually participate in

the scientific community and in field of research,

so that was one of my goals, I wanted to actually

sculpt science as well as trying to sculpt society

and make them more interested, so I wanted to

participate as an equal in this community." 23

His artistic practice focuses on deformed

amphibians—the collection and documentation of

specimens, the education of the public on causes of

deformities—and is very much fed by his scientific

23 Balengee, interview, 2012. TO BE A GOOD CITIZEN AND A GOOD ARTIST 2

1

research. And vice versa: "I have these loose ideas

and these questions that through scientific means I

try to explore, which then inspires work, and then

the work comes from that whole experience, which

then inspires more science. So it’s really kind of

a cycle." 24 His scientific work has actively

contributed to the discovery of a dragonfly nymphs

as a contributing culprit in amphibian deformity. 25

The lines between art and science continue to blur.

In contrast, Whitehead, while not exclusively

self-defining as an artist, very clearly defines

her work in terms of culture. “The Slow Cleanup

Project is not ecological restoration, per se. That

implies a static idealized state, which is

unachievable on these sites. We are doing

remediation . . . we are focused on bringing these

24 Balengee, interview, 2012. 25 Walker, Matt, "Legless frog mystery solved," BBC, 2009

gas stations back to some degree of usefulness

which includes understanding them as green

infrastructure in an urban setting . . . Many

'ecological restorationists' are not interested in

'highly disturbed' sites which are beyond

'restoration' in the immediate future, as they are

so degraded. I am very interested in improving

these degraded sites which I think of as a kind of

'cultural heritage'– literally that which we

inherit from the culture of the automobile." 26

Ultimately, whether the artist defines

themselves as such, or their work as art, a kind of

'reality' in the art world does dictate the

parameters of how a work is experienced, through

gallery exhibitions, public presentations, and

documentation at the very least. Several of the

26 Whitehead, interview, 2012. TO BE A GOOD CITIZEN AND A GOOD ARTIST 2

3

artists mentioned here are on the teaching staff

and faculty of art departments at universities and

institutes, making at least some part of their

living by associating their work with art. And

ultimately, it may be the community of

professionals that support endeavors so extreme as

to be barely considerable as art that may be the

work's greatest support.

Even Mierle Ukeles writes, "I cherish the art

world. The whole art world. It can be cruel, cold,

indifferent; but it is also a world that you can

shape. That's where there are people who can listen

to you at the deepest level, more than anyone.

People who can come across you -- even people that

you may never meet -- and who will make it possible

for you to keep believing in your own struggle,

even if you become desperate . . . It is the art

world that has kept art going from eons ago,

responsible to art as if it were one's own child.”27

Bresnson asks some questions of grantmakers

funding citizen/artists: "How is it possible to

respect artists both as particular kinds of

thinkers and makers and as social beings who are

always, at every moment, embedded in society, even

in the logic and languages with which they obsess

and risk and receive and organize

information? . . . Is it possible to develop a

language that recognizes and appreciates the

specialness of their imaginations and utterances

without romanticizing them?"28 Many of these

artists receive funding from sources outside the

art world—city municipalities, scientific research

grants. In this context, the unbound citizen/artist

27 Ukeles, "Letter to a Young Artist," p. 75-7828 Brenson, p. 134


is not just negotiating the granting politics,

ethical boundaries, community and culture of the

National Endowment for the Arts, but of the

Environmental Protection Agency.

Still, if the ultimate goal is to serve the

greater good-- given the cultural tools at one's

disposal-- one cannot be content with funding

approval. Says Frances Whitehead: "A lot of what

goes on in art is the performing of 'known

knowledge' about what art is, as opposed to the

making of new art, which never looks like art when

it is first made because it is transgressive. It

challenges the status quo. Otherwise it is not new.

It has to break or subvert some dimension of the

convention or nothing changes." 29

29 Whitehead, Frances, interview, "Make Art with Purpose."

REFERENCES1. Michael Brenson, “Visionaries and Outcasts: The NEA,

Congress, and the place of Visual Arts in America ,”New Press, 2001, p.154

2. Allan Kaprow, The Legacy of Jackson Pollock (1958), "Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life," University of California Press, 1993, p.7-9

3. Mierle Laderman Ukeles, “Maintenance Art Manifesto,”1969

4. Sue Spaid, “Ecovention: current art to restore ecologies,” the contemporary arts center, Cincinnati, OH, 2002

5. Haussite, http://www.haussite.net/haus.0/gh/rfs.html6. Krug, Don, "Ecological Restoration,"

greenmuseum.org, http://greenmuseum.org/c/aen/Issues/chin.php

7. Rahmani, Aviva, interview (email), 20128. Whitehead, Frances, interview (email), 20129. Balengee, Brandon, interview (phone), 201210. Whitehead, Frances, interview, "Make Art with

Purpose," http://www.makeartwithpurpose.net/projects.php?id=15&tp=2

11. Whitehead, Frances, Tips for Success with Brownfields, "Make Art With Purpose," http://www.makeartwithpurpose.net/projects.php?id=15&tp=1

12. PROJECT Evaluation report, 2006, http://www.publicartonline.org.uk/pasw/project/evaluation/reports.php

13. Mierle Laderman Ukeles, “Letter to a Young Artist”An Art on Paper Book, 2006 p.75-78

14. Rahmani, Aviva, "What the World Needs Now is a Good Housekeeper," self-published pamphlet.

15. Walker, Matt, "Legless Frogs Mystery Solved," BBC Earth News, June 25, 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8116000/8116692.stm


http://www.makeartwithpurpose.net/projects.php?id=15&tp=2

http://www.makeartwithpurpose.net/projects.php?id=15&tp=2


http://www.haussite.net/haus.0/gh/rfs.html

to be a good citizen and a good artist: questions and explorations of ecologically restorative work

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