The Sustainability Series: Creating Visual Language for Sustainability Through Ecological Art

Abstract

The Sustainability Series: Creating Visual Language for Sustainability Though Ecological Art is an interdisciplinary calling to define sustainability through visual culture. The artist, informed by environmentalism, asks the following questions: What is sustainability? What does it look like? Why is it so important? How can it be experienced? With contemporary sculpture at the forefront, three tiers of creative work are presented that provide visual, tactile, and edible experiences. Each tier leads into the other as a series of sculptural installations and events: an ongoing aquatic ecosystem in the artist’s studio that produces edibles, and in turn is harvested in ‘An Eco‐Art Harvest Event: A Simple Salad Social’; a functional ecologically designed hydroponic garden on the wall of a restaurant that the artist teaches the owner how to sustain; and a gallery exhibition of sculptural works in dialogue that question what it is to sustain a mood, a feeling, a living organism, and the notion of self in the urban environment. The series of works provoke ideas about the intersection of art, ecology, eco‐psychology and urban agriculture while encouraging the viewer to make the connection between personal and ecological health.