Linda Weintraub Speaks @ Goucher

Chair of the art dept, Allyn Massey and speaker Linda Weintraub

Linda Wientraub, author of Art on the Edge and Over, and other publishing endeavors, spoke to a full audience at Goucher College's Kelly Lecture Hall on art and "egocentrism," an appropriate topic for Earth Day.
Weintraub broke the lecture down into a seemingly irrelevant set of artists, Andy Goldsworthy (and how could she not mention him?), Damien Hirst, Wim Delvoye and Claude Monet.

A packed Kelly Lecture Hall

To open, she posed the quetion of our individual impact on our environment as stationary members of the audience, asking us to then consider our impacts in other life activities. She showed slides highlighting important works from the artists she selected, but neglected to comment on their "carbon footprints" as artists. She instead asked us to consider what their art made us think about...Goldsworthy, she argued, lulled us into a false contentment, Hirst showed us truths we would conventionally shy away from, etc.

This sort of breakdown seemed inappropriate and disappointing to those who had taken the time to dig around on her website. Personally, I had hoped to hear more on contemporary eco-artists, people conscious of their movement and decisive about the ecological importance of their creative message...but I suppose, when speaking to a mixed audience, one tends to boil an issue down to the basics.
I know she knows what is up, and this talk merely an introduction into the vastness of this subject, but I wish she had addressed artists who were more current and direct in their messages. Seeing 10 pieces I had seen before added nothing to my understanding of the work, or my perceptions of each artist.
Weintraub could easily have spoken for an additional hour, at which point she probably would have scratched the surface of the current eco-art movement, and only begun to satisfy my curiosity, I mean it was Earth Day, I wanted to hear about fungus!

But, please do visit her site, there is much to be learned, and many artists balancing a sense of humor with a sense of environmental responsibility...which produces some amazing artwork.

Dance mixxx for the edge of the apocalypse

Here is Beck's video for his new song "Timebomb":

Sounds pretty good; got a B52's, Talking Heads/"Love for Sale" kinda groove. Wouldn't hurt if he sounded as animated as his "Mellowgold" days though...
Anyway, the photos are from artist Chris Jordan, a photographer documenting the "Intolerable Beauty" of our "slow-motion apocalypse in progress" (see his "Portraits of American Mass Consumption" here).


Chris Jordan getting the Colbert Bump
Personally, I think the photo-mosaics are a little kitschy, but I suppose sometimes it takes a gimmick to get mass attention.
However, his Katrina series has some absolutely beautiful images...

"Photos on a refrigerator New Orleans East" an image from Jordan's book "In Katrina's Wake: Portraits of Loss From an Unnatural Disaster"

Eco-Art Lecture @ Goucher College

"Found! Jewelry" Tim Gaudreau

From Goucher.edu:

Linda Weintraub, a contemporary art educator, will give a talk titled "Eco-Art and Artist: Are Microbes and Fungi Beautiful?" on Tuesday, April 22, at 7 p.m. in Goucher College's Kelley Lecture Hall.

The event is free and open to the public.

Weintraub is a writer, curator, educator, and artist. She is writing Avant-Guardians: Textlets in Art and Ecology, a series of mini-textbooks that are designed to demonstrate art's connection to the planet's wellbeing. Though thematically different, each book focuses on contemporary artists who are using ecology in their choices of theme, practice, medium, and display.

Weintraub was the director of the Edith C. Blum Art Institute at Bard College for 10 years and the Henry R. Luce Professor of Emerging Arts in Oberlin College from 2000 to 2003. She taught eco-art at Oberlin and has lectured at many colleges and universities, including New York University and the University of California, Los Angeles. Weintraub has also curated 55 art exhibitions, many of which have toured nationally and internationally.

Her belief in the importance of connecting to and understand ecosystems has influenced her lifestyle. Weitraub lives in an energy-efficient home made out of recycled cars on 11 acres in Rhinebeck, NY. She spends her time farming, gardening, and tending to her animals, which she says allows her to connect with the growth patterns and life cycles of her environment.

Weintraub's Goucher appearance is the 2008 Irwin C. Schroedl Jr. Lecture in the Decorative Arts and Material Culture. Former Goucher registrar and alumna Evelyn Schroedl established this lecture series in 1997 to honor the memory of her husband and bring prominent art personalities to the college's campus.

For more information on her projects, visit http://www.avant-guardians.com/index.html
and her blog