Introduction

Welcome to Naturaleza, the galleria showcasing mother nature! This galleria strives to show the various artists who utilize the environment in their works of art. The creation of an environmental artwork may be simply to reconnect with nature or encourage others to reconnect with nature, however these pieces are also often used as vessels for informing the public about climate change and other environmental crisis. The following artists have each created art of varying sizes, which seem in many ways dissimilar, however all artists used nature as their muse and therefore ventured into nature for inspiration, whether it be to the desert, mountain, beach, or under the sea. These artists each want their viewers to question their relationship with nature, spend more time in nature, or work to save nature, but all unite under a central idea which is to inspire thoughts about nature.

Artists Showcased:
D.A.ST. Art Team (Danae Stratou, Alexandra Stratou, Stella Konstantinides)
Cornelia Konrads
Tony Plant
Andy Goldsworthy
Jean Paul Ganem
Mark Brest van Kempen
Jason de Caires Taylor
Nils-Udo
Lorenzo M. Duran
Agnes Denes

D.A.ST. Art Team

D.A.ST. Art Team (artist Danae Stratou, industrial designer Alexandra Stratou, and architect Stella Konstantinides)

Desert Breath

98-foot artificial pool of water and 178 spirals of sand mounds and depressions of equal size

An area of one million square feet in Sahara Desert of El Gouna, Egypt

1997

Bio - D.A.ST. Team consists of Danae Stratou, the installation artist, Alexandra Stratou, the industrial designer, and Stella Konstantinidis, the architect. Danae Stratou was born in Athens, Greece, went to school in London, and currently lives and works in Austin, Texas. She is an installation artists who work on large-scale installations both indoors and outdoors. She also utilizes many varying media including nature and digital technologies which focus on the natural world. Finally, she is the co-founder of Vital-Space, which aims to spread public awareness about major issues in the world. Alexandra Stratou was also born in Athens, Greece and is Danae’s sister. She attended school in London and Rhode Island for architecture. Alexandra has a private architectural practice, is a part of the Vital Space team. Stella Konstantinidis and Alexandra Stratou co-founded the architectural practice, ASKarchitects, in 2007 Athens, Greece.

Artist Statement - “The project is rooted in our common desire to work in the desert. In our mind’s eye the desert was a place where one experiences infinity. We were addressing the desert as a state of mind, a landscape of the mind. The point of departure was the conical form, the natural formation of the sand as a material…Located between the sea and a body of mountains at the point where the immensity of the sea meets the immensity of the desert, the work functions on two different levels in terms of viewpoint: from above as a visual image, and from the ground, walking the spiral pathway, a physical experience...Desert Breath still exists becoming through its slow disintegration, an instrument to measure the passage of time.” -D.A.ST. Team

Background - Desert Breath is a very large installation art piece created in the Sahara Desert in Egypt. It was created by a team of artists who worked together to create the idea and then execute the piece. The team was created in 1995 for the project and completed the piece in 1997. Due to the vast size of this piece, a backhoe was used to displace 280,000 square feet of sand from the two types of cones. Desert Breath is viewable by Google Earth although will eventually disappear gradually due to natural erosion. (http://www.danaestratou.com/projects/exterior/desert-breath)

This piece fits into the central theme of this gallery as the team of artists reshaped nature in creating this piece. Further, the team want their viewers to reexamine their connection to nature as they say refer to the “desert as a state of mind”. Finally, the piece slowly changes and disintegrates back into its natural state due to the erosion that takes place.





Link to Google Earth view of Desert Breath

https://www.google.com/maps/@27.37972,33.6318804,614m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

Cornelia Konrads

Cornelia Konrads

Passage

Various sticks, iron frame, steel rope

4.0 x 2.0 x 0.6 m. 

2007

Bio - Cornelia Konrads was born in 1957 in Germany. She has participated in many sculpture and land art projects throughout the world including France, USA, Australia, Italy and South Korea. She focuses on permanent and temporary works for public spaces, sculpture parks and private gardens.

Artist Statement -"I like to challenge what is supposed to be 'reliable' about reality: the laws of gravity, the solidity of walls or the ground under our feet… my installations can be seen as a filmstill, pointing backwards and forwards both temporally and spatially―an interim state, reflecting my idea of transience, passage and transformation." -Cornelia Konrads

Background - Konrads create her works in a way that seem to defy gravity hanging and stacking sticks from materials found near the site. In this piece she used the sticks to create a sort of doorway back into nature. One of the desired effects she creates with this piece is the inevitability that it will return to a natural state.

Konrads’ Passage exemplifies the idea that nature is a naturally beautiful artwork. It also shows how nature is a constantly changing occurrence and that nothing is permanent.

Tony Plant

Tony Plant

Bedruthan Blue

Sand that has been raked

4,501 steps

2012

Bio- Tony Plant is an English born artist who specializes in making temporary interventions and drawings in the landscape. After graduating from the Chelsea Art School, he began to increasingly use social media to spread his artwork. Today he has been featured in many publications and art blogs throughout the world.

Artist statement- "Tony Plant is an artist in a really pure sense of the word, making these things is as natural as breathing, they are the same as the waves or the wind"
Marcel Theroux, The Guardian 2013

Background- “Plant works at low tide, when the sand is wet, which is optimal for raking patterns that will stay put until he is complete with the pattern. Using only a common yard rake, he maps out swirls and curls, in forms that look flawless from elevated vantage points. His footprints are too subtle to be seen from a distance, so the patterns look as if they were mysteriously placed there by some unknown instrument. He then captures the land art installations on film, surrounded by the natural beauty of the land and sea.” (via Inhabitat)

Plant’s sand landscapes really give off the sense of nature’s constantly changing state. Being raked out of sand most do not last very long as the ocean and wind wash away the shapes. The swirling shapes help produce the sense of how mother nature is always in a cycle of change.

Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy

Rowan Leaves & Hole

Rowan leaves laid around a hole

29.9 x 29.3 in Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, 

October 25, 1987

Bio - Andy Goldsworthy is a British born artist who specializes in works in sculpture, photography and environmental pieces in site-specific sculpture and land art situated in natural and urban settings. Many of his works include brightly colored flowers, icicles, leaves, sticks, mud and stone. To attain a more natural approach, Goldsworthy often uses no tools besides his hands and teeth.

Artist Statement- “When I’m working with materials it’s not just the leaf or the stone, it’s the processes that are behind them that are important. That’s what I’m trying to understand, not a single isolated object but nature as a whole.” -Andy Goldsworthy

Background - Rowan Leaves & Hole was created to embody this sense that nature is ever changing. He does this through his seemingly perfect blending of the leaves into the blackness of the hole. The hole being mortality to show that part of nature is death.

Goldsworthy’s work ties perfectly into the theme of the other work in the galleria. His piece resonates the reality that nature is ever changing with death being a natural part of this cycle.

Jean Paul Ganem

Le Jardin des Capteurs

Jean Paul Ganem

Various types of plants planted into patterns

A human waste dumping ground, Montreal, Canada

2000-2002

Bio - Jean Paul Ganem was born in Tunis in 1964. In 1992, he created his first agricultural composition and many have followed after. His art works feature pronounced lines and patterns on the landscape and are best seen from the air.

Artist Statement - "The colourful land markings and motifs overlap, with varying circular dimensions and shapes. 'Le Jardin des Capteurs' introduces the notion that sites for human waste, the detritus of our urban consumer society, can be recycled and beautified as sites, just as the goods and waste that end up there can be." -- John Grande, "Earth Sensitive," 2000.

Background - Ganem created Le Jardin des Capteurs to inspire people that ordinary and ugly sites can be transformed by the use of natural resources. The human waste facility was transformed by Ganem and a massive group of volunteers into a site that was no longer a nasty dump but rather an interest to the public.

Le Jardin des Capteurs adds to the aroma that nature is a beautiful phenomena. His transformation of a seemingly nasty dump into a massive landscape artwork just shows the power of nature’s beauty.

Mark Brest van Kempen

Mark Brest van Kempen

Marsh Zone

A dumpster full of remnants of the Farfield, CA marshes and various designating parking signs

Large size rolling trash dumpster

2000

Bio - Mark Brest van Kempen creates a variety of artworks in landscape using it as the sculptural material. Some of his works include the Free Speech Monument on the UC Berkeley campus and the Land Exchange at the National Academy of Art in China.

Artist Statement - ”This mobile, temporary project makes visible the tension between space for nature versus space for humans. Several parking spaces around the City of Fairfield, which was built on marshland, are reserved for a small patch of marsh that travels around the city in a debris box. Official city signs designate this valuable parking space for Cattails, Tule reeds and other native wetland plants only. The piece is a visual reminder of where Fairfield has been built but also engages people in a dialogue about the value of a native ecosystem in the context of building and running a city.” -Mark Brest van Kempen

Background - Mark Brest van Kempen wanted to show the struggle of humanity and nature through this artwork. He created this storage bin of the marsh as a harsh reminder to the people that the city was once a marsh land and they have in a way thrown it all away. Further, he creates the reserved parking signs to say that this land is the marsh’s land.

Marsh zone fits the theme that nature is always changing, but in this piece it shows the uneven balance between humanity and nature. It is a constant reminder that we are changing our environment and losing the beauty that it once gave off.

Jason de Caires Taylor

Jason de Caires Taylor

Reclamation

pH neutral concrete- grade cement, sand, and micro-silica, corals

Life-size, depth 5m, Punta Nizuc, Mexico

2012

Bio - Born in 1974, Jason de Caires Taylor spent much of his life in Asia and Europe and especially Malaysia where he would snorkel in the coral reefs. In 1998, he graduated from London Institute of Arts with a BA in sculpture. One of his most famous works is the underwater sculpture park in the West Indies.

Artist Statement -“Everything on the planet is constantly evolving and changing. We’re all subject to time. I like the fact that the works are never really finished. I put them in the ocean, which is the beginning of the work, and then the collaboration with nature begins.” -Jason de Caires Taylor (via Green Global Traveler)

Background - Taylor creates these underwater sculptures to show that we can enjoy nature without having to destroy it. With a permit to construct 10,000 sculptures, Taylor has a goal to surpass the famous Terra Cotta army in China. The materials the structures are made to encourage the growth of coral and with that marine life.

Reclamation shows how both art and nature coexist. This artwork encourages marine life. As the marine life grow, nature recreates a whole new depth and features that show nature’s gift of creating beautiful, rich art.

Nils-Udo

Nils-Udo

Clemson Clay Nest

Red dirt, bamboo, pine logs

80 ton installation, Clemson University, South Carolina

2005

Bio - Nils-Udo was born in 1937 in Bavaria. He has been doing environmental art since the 1960s, when he began to move away from the studio and painting. His works are created from materials found on site to respond to the surrounding environment.

Artist statement- “A steep grassy slope leads down to a hollow flanked by trees and located on the edge of a forest. Profound clay soil. The project reacts and works with the natural conditions encountered there. We dug and modeled the hollow for the nest deep into the bright red ground. Afterwards, we built the high nest walls joggling and wedging long pine trunks with one another. We lined the interior of the nest with green bamboo sticks narrowing more and more towards the inside. The nest ground stayed uncovered. Clay as a metaphor for birth and life.” -Nils-Udo

Background - Clemson Clay Nest is a massive 80-ton structure made with the help of many student volunteers from Clemson University. It was created with logs, bamboo and the red clay of the ground. The piece was carefully constructed in a circular form to create the image of being a birds nest. This art piece has since been deconstructed as it was considered a hazard to students at the university.

Nils-Udo’s piece shares many similarities to the pieces of this exhibit. It contains the swirling structure that Goldsworthy produced in his piece, giving the same idea of natures blending tendencies. It also produces the theme that we are all nature’s child as the nest gives birth to it’s offspring.

Lorenzo M. Duran

Lorenzo M. Duran

Arbol

Species: Catalpa Bignonioides

25cm X 20cm

2010

Bio - Lorenzo Duran was born in Spain in 1969. At 36 years old, he discovered his passion for art and nature after becoming unemployed. This unemployment caused a period of self-reflection resulting in his decision to pursue a life of art. He started with paint on a canvas, but drew inspiration from a caterpillar to begin leaf cutting. He developed his own technique and soon began to collect leaves from his house and park and press them and cut with his scalpel to make his artwork.

Artist Statement- “Inspired by a caterpillar I decided to cut plant leaves the same way as other artists do with paper, that idea captivated my whole mind because it looked like a great opportunity to combine two of my true passions: art and nature. Due to the lack of information about the "leaf cutting art" I have developed my own technique, going through a long trial-and-error process until I found a good way of cutting my designs without spoiling the leaf. I use a surgical scalpel to cut the figure, removing the plant tissue until the image, previously drawn on paper and fixed to the leaf, appears. My geometric or figurative designs mostly come from my innate observation of nature and the personal metamorphosis I have gone through in recent years.” -Lorenzo M. Duran

Background - Duran’s Arbol was created from a leaf as a means of showing inner nature’s beauty, hence the tree being cut on the inside of the leaf. It also shows how nature itself spawns more beauty, with the tree giving off the leaves that he cutting in artworks.

Arbol really shows the fragile state nature is in, in our world. The leaf is a such a small and delicate part of nature and Arbol really produces this idea. The delicate nature of the leaf and the complications and ease in which the artist can destroy or damage his piece with just one small misuse of his hand is reminiscent of how easy it is for humans to destroy and damage nature through anthropocene and human misuse.

Agnes Denes

Agnes Denes

Tree Mountain

Planted trees

1.5 X 1.5 miles 11,000 trees in Ylöjärvi, Finland

1992-1996

 

Bio - Agnes Denes is a Hungarian-American conceptual artist who is famous for her international environmental installations. She began painting after studying painting at Columbia University, but soon abandoned painting to explore different mediums.

Artist Statement - “The forest will be kept for the next 400 years, thereby creating the first manmade virgin forest. It will take that long for the environment to re-create itself. The 11,000 people who came to plant the trees received a certificate valid for four centuries that they can leave to their children as custodians of the trees. My forests are mathematical in order to combine the human intellect with the majesty of nature. I restore the land, rejuvenate it, and fill it with wonders of new human understanding.” - Agnes Denes

Background - Tree Mountain was a massive installment that was produced with collaboration of Denes and the Finnish government. The art work was announced at the Earth Summit and will be protected for the next 400 years. It was created as a sort of celebration for the Earth Summit which helped to try and curb climate change.

Tree Mountain exudes the reality of nature’s awe inspiring beauty. This massive installment is a pinnacle for nature’s beauty in it’s form as it basically uses one of nature’s shapes being a mountain and uses the trees recreate the shape of a mountain. In a way it is like natureception, a natural shape formed by nature itself.

Conclusion

Overall, I believe it is a difficult task to create a gallery which properly showcases the exquisite works of environmental artists. First, in general, you cannot just pick a piece which appeals to you visually, but you must pick one which appeals to your purpose in the exhibition. In this particular exhibit, it was difficult to pick the pieces, not only because the environmental works are so beautiful, but because of the varying mediums which they have. This exhibit focuses on environmental works using natural elements, but there are a vast amount of artists with a similar message that use many different mediums to get their message across. A part that was a little easier was deciding that I wanted to show this idea about the connection with nature and urgency to protect it through artworks of greatly differing sizes, from a small leaf to something that can be seen from space. The more difficult part was to find the projects of all different sizes with utilize nature in the art itself. The job of a curator is very difficult, as you cannot simply pick at random which art pieces fit together, but must carefully handpick over long periods of time. However, I think it is a worthy process as you learn so much about the backgrounds and thoughts which posses these artists to create such magnificent works and how different each story is, along with the artwork itself. For one, Duran only discovered his love for art and nature after finding himself unemployed and unsure what the next step in his life was and now he has created his own technique for leaf cutting. Also, Taylor spent many years snorkeling through the coral reefs, became a sculptor and decided to use his talent and love for the amazing life in the coral reefs to try to rebuild them and spread awareness about their destruction. An important message is that there are unlimited inspirations for art and that it can unite you with people around the world from very different cultures and background under one common goal as many artists work together internationally.