The Green Life

Green Music Week: Musicians

Whether you're grooving at an outdoor concert or listening to tunes on your iPod, our tips this week will help you express your environmentalism through music.

Tip #1: Support Green Musicians

Singer-songwriter Jack Johnson is known for his efforts to reduce the environmental impact of his tours by traveling in biofuel buses, purchasing carbon offsets, selling ecofriendly merchandise, and using his celebrity status to promote green causes. Johnson isn't the only musician looking out for the earth: Check out Sierra magazine to find a list of new musicians with eco-cred. Visit Climate Crossroads to get free downloads from Missy Higgins, The Giving Tree Band, and Minus Ted.

Share your tips: What songs are in your ecoTunes playlist?

The (Recycled) Art of War

Artist Lin Evola-Smidt, best known for her 13-foot sculpture Renaissance Peace Angel (pictured) at Ground Zero, lost her husband to suicide after his health failed because, she speculates, of exposure to organic poisons from the World Trade Center attack.

Evola-Smidt now devotes her work to world peace. Her projects involve melting down weapons and recycling their metals into public art. Her next work, the New York Peace Angel monument, will stand 30 feet tall and debut in 2012. Other cities with a history of strife, including Jerusalem and Sarajevo, are lining up for similar pieces. Her organization is called the Art of Peace Charitable Trust. 

--Avital Binshtock

Floating Art and the Environment

Recently, we've covered a variety of ways in which artists are engaging with the green movement. Earlier this week, we wrote about a contest that encourages artists to raise climate-change awareness through their work. Then there was the guerilla gardener whose planting projects are a form of activism. In the last issue of Sierra, we told you about two men who floated a raft of salvaged plastic from California to Hawaii to highlight our excessive plastic waste. 

At first, the Swimming Cities of Serenissima seems like a pretty similar project: the artist, Swoon, and more than 30 collaborators hand-crafted three seaworthy vessels from recycled materials and sailed them from Slovenia to Venice, Italy this May. But this extravagant construction project-expedition is more about an artistic aesthetic than outright activism, its creators say.

Climate Change for Artists

Even with the new administration on board with the realities of climate change, a large portion of the population still has a hard time grasping the causes and consequences of our changing environment. New York Times science writer Andrew Revkin has long lamented the dense and inaccessible way the scientific community presents information to the general public.

Inspired by Revkin's frustration, the Artist as Citizen program is sponsoring a design contest to create captivating, accurate, and effective ways to depict climate trends. The competition is open to undergraduates and grad students majoring in art, design, film, photography, or new media and dangles a $2,000 prize. The challenge is to redesign the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's ineffectual burning embers graphic (which shows the rising risk of increasing temperatures) using anything from illustrations to Youtube videos. The deadline is July 31.

--Jordana Fyne

World Environment Day: Watch a Movie, Save the Earth?

Normally, for an event like World Environment Day, we'd advise actually heading into the environment over staring at a screen. But photographer and activist Yann Arthus-Bertrand's documentary Home debuts  today. Created with the goal of inspiring action, it makes for a good starting point. Catch it at 9 p.m. tonight on the National Geographic Channel.

Arthus-Bertrand, famous for his aerial-photograph book, Earth From Above, uses aerial video to tell the story of our planet from its birth to present day. To illustrate the force of mankind's impact, imgages of sprawling urban housing, massive parking lots, and farmers spraying crops juxtapose with hypnotic images of the earth's ancient, natural processes. The concepts are not new -- but the change of perspective is striking, and perhaps enough to enhance understanding and appreciation of our current situation.

How to Be a Guerilla Gardener

It's difficult enough weaving through the sidewalk line-up of undesired fliers people are handing out on the street -- who really thinks pedestrians will stop and take them on their own accord from the flier boxes that pockmark city corners? Most often, these boxes end up empty and abandoned with no greater occupation than a bin for garbage or post for graffiti and stickers.

Street artist Posterchild had a different view: He saw these empty boxes as a great platform for a public installation and guerrilla-gardened his way through the streets of Toronto, leaving a trail of flowers and inspiration in his wake. 

Book Roundup Wednesday: Books on Bikes

Every Wednesday, we review a selection of new and upcoming books addressing a specific aspect of environmentalism. Today we're recommending books about pedal power.

Bicycle Diaries (by David Byrne, $26, Viking, Sept. 2009): David Byrne is a man of many interests. Famous for his role in the band Talking Heads, he's also worked in a variety of other art mediums, including a recent foray into bike rack art. In Bicycle Diaries, Byrne describes cities such as London, Buenos Aires, Manila, and Sydney from a bike-level view. Readers can expect to experience a unique image of the world as seen through the eyes of an avid cyclist and accomplished artist.

Cruisers (by Jonny Fuego and Michael Ames, $22, Gibbs Smith, 2009): This visually charged ode to bike culture is filled with delicious eye candy for cruiser devotees. The book follows the cruiser movement from its historical roots to the work of the modern masters. The bicycle craftsmanship displayed in Cruisers is impressive, and while the book's tips for customizing your own ride may not turn you into a bike expert overnight, you'll enjoy the attempt.

Plastic Bottle Installation Turns Waste Into Art

Watershed Assembly at MSLK 5/24/09 from MSLK on Vimeo.

Need a striking visual to remind you to get off the bottle? The graphic designers at MSLK collected 1,500 water bottles for a new installation called "Watershed" that will be displayed at the Figment Art Festival in New York City from June 12-14. According to the artists, 1,500 is the number of water bottles consumed in the United States every second.

This isn't the first time MSLK has made a visual statement about plastic. The group tackled plastic bag pollution with "2663 Urban Tumbleweeds," an installation that was exhibited at the Burning Man festival in 2008. The 2663 bags collected represented one second of waste.

The installations created by MSLK have a sort of astonishing beauty, but considering that in the minute or so it took you to read about these projects, 90,000 plastic bottles and nearly 160,000 plastic bags have entered the waste stream, the reality they represent isn't so pretty.

--Della Watson

When Recycling Trucks Become Art

Philadelphia's colorful recycling trucks don't blend in, and that's exactly the point. The eye-catching designs attract attention, which the trucks' creators hope will translate into support for recycling. The designs featured on the vehicles also represent creative reuse: The Design Center at Philadelphia University dusted off their historic textile collection and worked with the Mural Arts Program and the Streets Department Recycling Office to create fabric-inspired vinyl wraps for the trucks. Grown-ups weren't the only ones getting a kick out of recycling. Children in the Mural Arts' Big Picture after-school program learned about the historic textiles, created drawings, and met representatives from the city's recycling plant. 

--Della Watson

Images: Steve Weinik

Daily Roundup: May 15, 2009

LOL Green: The Daily Show proved that environmental issues and humor do mix when EPA administrator Lisa Jackson chatted with funnyman Jon Stewart. Grist

Building Better: Public schools could receive a revamp if a green construction bill gets approval from the Senate. The House of Representatives passed the $6.4 billion initiative on Thursday. Associated Press

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do: A treaty to make ship recycling safer was signed by 66 nations, but environmental activists criticized the agreement for failing to ban shipbreaking on beaches. AFP

Rumble in the Jungle: Protesters in Peru blocked roads and waterways in an effort to stop oil and natural gas projects in the Amazon. Reuters

Greenwalling: Hungarian artist Edina Tokodi uses moss to make eco-graffiti in New York City. Wend

--Della Watson