As many of you know I am a favored target for the climate denier community, and sometimes their jabs and death threats do bother me. But most of the time I just feel sorry for them. After all they are singing their own swan song – all of ours actually. The more we delay on real energy regulation and the more the climate conspiracy community perpetuates the obfuscation of scientific......read more
'Senbazaru' is a particularly Japanese concept. It roughly translates as “intention†but it refers more specifically to the act of installing intention through the physical act of folding paper and stringing a row of origami creations together to make a chain of prayers. The art of origami – little known fact – has spiritual origins. It was (and still is) a......read more
In his series Until the Kingdom Comes, New York-based artist Simen Johan creates dramatic tableaux of wildlife with weird and unnatural twists. In the large-scale color photos and taxidermy-based sculptures, nothing is quite as it seems. A pair of white owls sit perched on a picnic table in the fog; a pair of foxes huddle together in the snow, crying; two moose battle in a rugged landscape, with......read more
Berlin-based artist Ralf Schmerberg has built an igloo made of 322 old fridges in a public square in Hamburg, Germany. The 11-meter wide sculpture includes a massive electricity meter that shows the crazy amount of energy the fridges are using. The piece, called "Wastefulness Is the Biggest Source of Energy," also contains a plaque listing all the materials used that went into the......read more
At a quick glance, Carl Warner's photos look like romantic landscape paintings, complete with wild seas, moody skies and rolling hills. Look a little closer, and you discover that the pictoral elements are actually pieces of produce from Warner's local market. The leafy trees? Heads of broccoli. Those seaside stones? Potatoes. “I tend to draw a very conventional landscape as I......read more
Freewheelers is a series of video portraits of tricked-out bikes and the people who ride them – from self-build fixies and coveted vintage steeds to bikes as art or manifestations of style. Two bipartisan senators have proposed a sensible idea that most people are going to hate. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio) wrote to President Obama’s National Commission on......read more
James Bowthorpe is bad ass. Last year, in a bid to raise awareness for Parkinson's, he rode his bike around the world in 174 days, setting a new world record. Earlier this fall, he built a boat from construction waste and rowed it down the Thames. Now he's doing the same thing on the Hudson River. Feel lazy now? Same. Read an interview with the man at Nowness. Everyone is going off......read more
A recent recipient of a BFA in Sculpture from Brigham Young University, Levi Jackson heads outdoors to build installations in natural settings, which he photographs then dismantles. An eco-conscious thread runs through his work. "ReIntroduction," a Jackson piece from earlier this year, offers a powerful comment on a failed oil well in the Utah countryside. The well, which was abandoned......read more
Angus Hutcheson's exquisite Chrysalis Sky floor lamp is as elegant as sustainable design gets. Conceived as a surreal glowing orb for the living room, the lamp's diffuser is made from randomly configured silk cocoons, each attached to a hand-soldered wire matrix. Produced by Hutcheson's lighting Argo brand, the lamp continues with the brand's design narrative of fusing nature......read more
Gordon Matta-Clark was an eco-art O.G.. In the 70s, Matta-Clark's conceptual projects included recycling glass bottles, digging out a basement to create a “guerrilla†garden, and turning a dumpster into an open house. An exhibition centered on Matta-Clark's time at 112 Greene Street, one of the first artist-run venues in New York, opens this weekend at David Zwirner in NYC. ......read more