The Green Life

A Fresh Look at Water

Though water covers almost three-fourths of the earth's surface, we can only drink one percent of it. "It's just a tiny sliver on this enormous globe that supports us," says Eleanor Sterling, a museum curator who's made such abstract facts vividly concrete with satellite images of water's global distribution, dioramas of ecosystems that depend on it, and a miniature interactive river that demonstrates water's power. The exhibit, Water: H₂O=Life, runs through the end of May at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Happy Park(ing) Day!

It was a good reminder on my hurried way to work: "Breathe." The sign, put up by a downtown yoga studio, hung over a small plot of green space where a car would usually park, part of an international effort to celebrate--and advocate for--public space. In the United States, groups from Portland to Providence, Miami to Missoula, are transforming a corner of their towns for the day. If there's a park(ing) space near you, take a break this afternoon and check it out. If not, watch a video of last year's event and get inspired to create your own temporary park next time around.

Park Parking Only

On September 21, your city may have a little more green space than usual--at least for an hour or two. Sparked by the "art-ivism" of the San Francisco-based group Rebar, people around the world will be turning parking spots into temporary parks to reclaim public space from cars. Here's how to join the fun:

1. Find a vacant parking space and feed the meter.

2. Roll out a tarp and some sod.

3. Add plants, benches, and other amenities.

4. Chat with passersby and tell them about the project.

5. Clean up your site and reuse or recycle all materials.

Illustration by Josef Gast

Greening Man

With 25,000 people camping out in the desert for a week, Burning Man abides by the "leave no trace" principle--efforts organizers are now expanding from the festival's northern Nevada site to the entire planet. For this year's event, tickets are being printed on tree-free paper; the radio station, medical outpost, and other facilities will be run on biodiesel; and a green art theme will see Black Rock Desert decorated with the likes of solar-powered sunflowers and a trash-fueled 80-foot mechanical slug.

Art You Can Eat

At the height of World War II, hundreds of victory gardens were thriving in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Artist Amy Franceschini is rekindling her city's self-sufficient spirit--and getting her work on gallery walls. She's designed and distributed gardening starter kits, which were featured in a recent museum exhibit along with photographs of the plots planted so far and playful, yet functional, sculptures like this bicycle-wheelbarrow hybrid. futurefarmers.com/victorygardens

(Photograph by Amy Franceschini)

Art Crops Up in Kansas

If you like artichokes, figs, honey, almonds--or tequila--you have pollinators to thank for your favorite treats. According to the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC), pollinating animals (mostly insects) "contribute to one out of every three bites we eat" and help 85 percent of wild flowering plants reproduce. Like other wild creatures, pollinators are at risk from habitat destruction and pollution, but bats and bees don't draw the same kind of sympathy as penguins and polar bears.

To help promote the plight of these small, but essential animals, earthworks artist Stan Herd is creating a living installation (shown here in a preliminary sketch) depicting one of the most charismatic pollinators--the butterfly. The 50-foot Southern Dogface butterfly made out of squash, sunflowers, and other crops planted on a Kansas farm is based on one of four pollination-themed stamps being issued by the U.S. Postal Service this Friday. The NAPPC is providing tips for gardeners, cooks, and anyone else who wants to help celebrate and protect pollinating species. Tequila sunrise (tequila [bat] + orange juice [bee] + cherry [bee]), anyone?

A Tip a Day...

...keeps global warming at bay. (And other environmental problems too!)

Want to start living a lower-impact, higher-quality lifestyle? Not sure where to begin? Sign up for our new Green Life newsletter and receive an easy tip every day about a small change that can make a big difference. Simple steps like replacing conventional lightbulbs with more efficient ones, keeping your car tires properly inflated, or adjusting your thermostat a degree or two can save you money, reduce waste, and help save the planet. Don't delay, sign up today!

Global View

Visitors to Chicago's scenic lakefront will have something extra to gaze at this summer. More than 100 environmentally themed globes, designed by artists from around the world, will line the Lake Michigan shoreline through the end of September. In addition to these five-foot-in-diameter "Cool Globes" highlighting environmental issues--from prairie restoration to junk mail to solo commuting--and actions individuals can take against climate change, smaller spheres designed by artists, celebrities, and students are being displayed around the city. Exhibit visitors who pledge to make five changes in their daily lives, such as insulating their water heater, planting a garden, riding a bike more often, or buying renewable energy, will be entered into a raffle for a Toyota Prius. If you've always wanted to own a piece of the planet, the globes will be auctioned off on October 5 to benefit environmental education programs.

Left to right: Prairie Restoration globe by Nina Weiss (#26); Stop Unsolicited Mail globe by Ellen Gradman (#78); and Share a Ride globe by Cheryl Steiger (#35).

Sea of Possibilities

When sculptor David Edgar started playing around with recycled plastic detergent and laundry bottles, their bright colors and curvy shapes reminded him of the tropical fish of his Florida childhood. With the vivid logos of his petroleum-based source material still visible on a spiny fin or oddly expressive face, Edgar's pop-art-influenced forms remind us of how much we casually discard--and what we might be throwing away. plastiquarium.com

(Photograph by David A. Edgar)

Carnival of Creativity

The tech-savvy and the thrifty, the crafty and the curious will descend on the San Mateo Fairgrounds in northern California this weekend for the Maker Faire, an annual event that organizers are calling "Woodstock for inventors and tinkerers."

A spin-off project of Make and Craft magazines, the Maker Faire celebrates DIY (do-it-yourself) spirit, which often involves the ingenious--and environmentally friendly--reuse and reimagining of ordinary materials. Our friends over at ReadyMade will be there, hosting a timed MacGyver challenge competition and showing off some of their latest projects, while the good folks at Swap-O-Rama-Rama will be hosting a refashioned fashion show. All this, and fighting robots too.

On the Bookshelf: Life: A Journey Through Time

When photographer Frans Lanting decided he wanted to do a project on life "from its earliest beginnings to its present diversity," he faced a problem: How do you photograph things and events that existed millions, if not billions, of years ago?

With some imaginative thinking, the patterns radiating out in a cross-section of fossilized wood stood in for the Big Bang. Volcanoes and geysers evoked the Earth's fiery beginnings. Present-day creatures like the frigatebird and the tuatara (a reptile found only in New Zealand) exhibited traits of their ancient relations.

All these images, and many others, found their way into Lanting's latest book, Life: A Journey Through Time. Listening to him describe the evolutionary stages that each photograph represents at a talk last weekend (a chronology well-depicted on his website) left me as enamored of the science behind the images as the artistry in them.

Tooting Our Own Horn

Sierra's January/February 2006 cover story, "Photography of Hope," featuring the black and white imagery of Sebastiao Salgado, won two Maggie awards this weekend--for "Best Black & White or Two-Color Editorial Layout" and "Best Series of Editorial Photographs"--from the Western Publications Association.

Read All About It

A roundup of news worth noting from the past month or so:

ART
* Jo Hanson, the founder of San Francisco's trendsetting "art at the dump" program, passed away.

FASHION
* A tote bag with an environmental message became a fashion must-have.

FOOD AND DRINK
* A group of locavores tried to eat local on a budget.
* Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck announced a new green direction for his restaurants, including serving more organic and local produce, seafood from sustainable fisheries, and more humanely raised meat.
* London eco-eatery the Acorn House was named "Best Newcomer" in the annual Observer Food Monthly Awards.
* British researchers showed that organic food is better for you.
* Organic and natural pet foods got a boost from the big recall of tainted chow.

MEDIA LOUNGE
* Big Picture TV, a free web-based video channel focused on environmental issues, launched with commentary from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Jane Goodall, Eric Schlosser, and Wangari Maathai.

OUTDOORS
* New York City broke ground on a lofty park that will span the High Line, 1.5 miles of abandoned freight-train track on the West Side of Manhattan.

TRANSPORTATION
* A green taxi service--operating only hybrid and alternative-fuel vehicles--started up in San Francisco.

Nature's Bliss

Growing up on a walnut farm gave Jill Bliss a do-it-yourself ethic; living in the city, a renewed appreciation for nature. The Northern California artist combines both influences in her playful, handmade paper and fabric crafts, turning floral sheets into wallets and printing tidepool-inspired notes on recycled paper with vegetable ink. Bliss's intricate designs reflect her belief that there's as much activity in a natural landscape as in an urban one. "It's another type of city in my mind," she says. blissen.com

(Photograph courtesy of Jill Bliss)

On the Bookshelf: Aftermath

The only photographer to gain access to Ground Zero, Joel Meyerowitz spent nine months capturing the monumentality of the wreckage and the tireless efforts of the workers who reverently cleared the site. Hearing him speak at U.C. Berkeley this week added an additional, personal dimension to his richly detailed and dramatically lit photos, 400 of which were recently published in a book, Aftermath.

One image depicts a group of NYPD arson detectives who took Meyerowitz under their wing. All twelve members of the squad, he said, are now sick, just a few of the many victims of the toxic post-9/11 air.

Dam Art

Building the Three Gorges Dam across China's Yangtze River will displace 1.9 million people and destroy habitat for endangered species, consequences painter Liu Xiaodong depicts in monumental canvases recently shown at San Francisco's Asian Art Museum. In Newly Displaced Population (above), a duck twists in midair death throes, children play violently, and prostitutes solicit clients. Behind them, deceptively calm water rises. --Alison Fromme

(Photograph courtesy of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco)

Mobile Parks

Four architecture students from Halifax, Nova Scotia, spent the day yesterday walking around town in a grassy wheel to make a statement about the lack of green space in the city. Their clever approach was reminiscent of a project carried out in Sierra's neck of the woods late last year, when the San Francisco-based art collective Rebar turned a downtown parking space into a temporary park. What do you think about art as activism? Can it make a difference?

(Photograph by Andre Forget)

Down-to-Earth Art

Nature is both inspiration and medium for British artist Richard Long, who creates sculptures out of the raw materials he finds--even the footprints he makes--during long walks all around the world. Gallery pieces like Cornwall Summer Circle (left) bring the outside in to memorialize these journeys. Work from his trek last fall in the Sierra Nevada foothills is on display through April at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Find out more at richardlong.org.

(Photo courtesy of Richard Long)

Branching Out

Hector Dio Mendoza, whose 15-foot Styrofoam tree was featured in the November/December 2005 issue of Sierra, has a new medium for his arboreal art: junk mail.

Raw materials weren't hard to come by: Americans get 42 billion pieces of junk mail a year, the equivalent of 100 million trees. The San Jose-based artist collected 50 pounds of catalogs, credit-card offers, and other unwanted mail to create a 17-foot tree that will tour the San Francisco Bay Area.

Dio Mendoza, who has also sculpted birds, coral reefs, and other natural icons out of the non-biodegradable materials that threaten the environment, calls his work "a commentary on how we live in a consumerist society. If you want to know about a society, you should go visit its city dump."

Find out how to get off marketers' lists at stopjunkmail.org.

Welcome!

"The Green Life" was launched in the November/December 2005 issue of Sierra magazine as a place to showcase trendsetting people, cool products, and empowering ideas. Quickly we saw that there was too much happening, too fast, to limit our coverage to a few bimonthly pages, and thus this blog was born.

When we devoted our January/February 2005 issue to the burgeoning green-lifestyle movement, we saw there was a huge interest in earth-friendly options for living well. What we wear, where we live, how we get around, and how we spend our money affects not only our own quality of life, but the quality of our environment. Fortunately, style and sustainability increasingly go hand in hand, reaffirming our belief that the best things in life truly are green.

What's your favorite green product? What ideas have made your life a little easier and the Earth a little happier? Share your rants, raves, tips, and questions with other readers and us.

--Jennifer Hattam, editor