More and more, opportunistic marketers colonize “being green”, leaving us with products and policies that are anything but green, making it exceedingly difficult to demand truly sustainable practices. Some recent examples include: a) offering cash for not-so-old clunkers (doesn’t longevity trump mileage?), b) the notion of sustainable building practices (what could be more un-environmental than constructing new buildings?), c) categorizing Patrick Blanc’s leafy walls that require water and nutrients as “green architecture,” d) praising as “green” buildings built on footprints larger than 55m2, or e) extolling the virtues of edible front yards that require routine watering and pesticides, when weedy lawns and shade trees prove wildlife-friendliest. Cash for clunkers is a fine reward for people mindful enough to have owned their car for over 15 years. Only those who can afford to purchase a new car truly qualify for this reward. To everyone’s relief, people purchased cars from companies that have always provided quality cars rather than those that advertised like crazy to get people to perceive them as environmentally friendly. LEED® Certification should award points for sustainable foundations, rather than allow Platinum designated buildings to have foundations, whose dug hole contributes mightily to soil erosion, which causes routine flooding and eventually combined-sewer overflow. Today’s “green” movement is indeed paradoxical. “Greening Up!” requires vigilance.
It is no less paradoxical to be a “green” artist. West Coast conceptualist Douglas Huebler once remarked, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” Re-using materials is perhaps one step closer to “sustainable living,” however art, sold and unsold alike, requires owners to purchase: storage space, packing materials (wood, cardboard, plastic or bubble wrap), fuel for shipping, not to mention building supplies for walls that exhibitors routinely tear down and re-build. Unconsumed by such real-life issues, art schools teach students to make art using unused items (casting or building sculptures, painting, printing, drawing, etc.), not recycled stuff. After all, Surrealists and assemblage artists recycled ages ago!
To follow are short descriptions of today’s visually interesting and mindful repurposing strategies.

Clever Cast Offs

In 1991, Los Angeles artist Lynn Aldrich requested art world gals to mail her an old bra. From the hundreds of bras dealers, curators and artists provided, she fastened both a massive puffy quilt and a hanging underwire breast plate! The British artist Mark Hosking reconfigures everyday refuse to make what appear to be totally functional sculptures. To this end, he lined an umbrella with reflective material to create a solarized corn cooker, transformed a car’s airbag into a potted plant, rewove a chair seat with active telephone wire and created two vertical storage units, one using string bikinis and the other dress shirts and ties. Such elements can be easily disassembled and then worn or used as originally intended, awaiting their next exhibition. New York artist Jonathan Horowitz’s fleeting 9/11 memorial Two-Sided Monument doubles as a recycling site, whose sagging stacks dissipate under the weight of mounting newspapers. Everything in “Free Store,” his 2009 exhibition at Sadie Coles Gallery was recycled including Apocalypto Now a video comprising found footage and a bin where visitors were invited to leave stuff they don’t use and to take what they need. Since 1999, Korean-born New York artist Jean Shin has displayed accumulated remanants and scrap materials, united by thoughtful titles. To this end, she has presented shortened-pant tubes like an Eva Hess floor piece, transformed sports trophies into awards for everyday workers, built walls of bottles, created waves of 45’ records, transformed plastic prescription bottles into chandeliers, turned umbrella fabric into a colorful banner and stacked industrial sinks to create a bubbling fountain.Since 1998, Berkeley artist Susan Leibovitz Steinman has collaborated on and off with Caltrans (the state agency responsible for rail and road transportation), whose Oakland savage yard she considers a candy store! Working with volunteer gardeners, she has constructed raised bed planters using salvaged antique windows, old doors and wooden shutters and transformed cast iron bathtubs into raised-bed vegetable gardens. For nearly two decades, Upstate New York artist Steven Siegel has built massive public sculptures using pre-consumer waste such as tons of left over newspaper runs and post-consumer-waste such as shredded tires. After a time, his stately monum...(extract)

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