From Nature to Culture I SVA Chelsea Gallery
From Nature to Culture, installation view, Fine Arts department of the School of Visual Arts at the SVA Chelsea Gallery
From Nature to Culture
curated by George Boorujy
SVA Chelsea Gallery
New york City
Feb 8 - 24, 2024Introduction
The (Climate) Impact of Art was part of the exhibition From Nature to Culture presented by the Fine Arts department of the School of Visual Arts at the SVA Chelsea Gallery. Curating this section of the exhibition offered an excellent opportunity to introduce the principles of Artists Commit to the SVA community and to guide students through the process of creating a Climate Impact Report. In our discussions, we were clear that this is not about shame and guilt, and it is not a virtue competition. It is about accountability and acknowledgement, and gaining insight into one’s own practice. As Jordan Seaberry said upon completion of a CIR: “You manage what you measure.”
When selecting the work for this show, I was not necessarily seeking out students who were investigating issues related to the climate crisis. I was simply looking for the strongest work for the space. It just so happened that many of the students were indeed engaged with environmental themes. From painting to sculpture to performance, and employing an incredibly wide range of materials – clay, steel, aluminum, paint, canvas, and plastic in myriad forms - all of the students participating in creating this CIR are, in their own way, exploring our time, place, and impact on the planet. And there is no better way to hear about their creation of this CIR than in their own words.
The artists included in the exhibition were: Carina De La Luz Vazquez, Yuna Kim, Jiani Li, Anh (Alina) Nguyen, Paola Pomarico, Emma Rice, and Grant Yang.
Methodology: Four Case Studies:
For the purpose of this report, four students participating in the exhibition used their work as a case study for each of these four categories.
Materials: Alina Nguyen
Transportation: Emma Rice
Energy: Grant Yang
waste / Afterlife: Paola pomarico
We live in a universe that doesn’t know about us, Alina Nguyen, 2023
30 x 48 inches, (76 x 123 cm), Oil, gel transfer, and interference pigments
One particular pigment used in this painting, mica, highlighted how complicated something as seemingly simple as paint can be, and how it can intersect with human rights and health.
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One particular pigment used in this painting, mica, highlighted how Mica can be produced naturally or synthetically. It is difficult to know exactly where natural mica (and all pigments) originates. And some mines can be using child labor and have unsafe practices. Synthetic mica created in a lab can sidestep the mining process altogether and could be a wiser choice. Natural mica would be listed as such or as muscovite. Synthetic mica may be listed as any of the following: Fluorphlogopite, Fluorphlogopite (MG3K[ALF2O(SIO3)3]), Synthetic Fluorphilogopite, Synthetic Fluorphlogopite
This brand of paint, Jacquard, uses a combination of natural and synthetic mica.
The materials I used for my painting were all readily available to purchase at the art store Blick. I had bought a pre-stretched canvas and an iridescent mica pigment jar. The oil paint and medium that I used was also bought at Blick. The paint brushes I used were brought to New York from Ho Chi Minh City. For the moon, I printed out the image with a Xerox printer a the SVA Fine Arts building and gel-transferred the print onto the painting.
Other materials that I used to assist my painting process were disposable plastic palettes and blue gaffer tape. I washed my brushes with gamsol and olive soap.
Blick’s Canvas:
Pure cotton duck canvas: Cotton duck is grown and woven in India. Then the canvas is coated with three layers of professional-grade, acid-free gesso.
10 oz pre-primed weight; 15 oz primed weight
Back-stapled or hand-splined
Triple-primed with premium gesso
Kiln-dried, solid wood stretcher bars
Deer Man, Emma Rice, 2023
18x24 inches. Materials: Felt, canvas, rhinestones, vintage German Doll Eye
This piece was transported back and forth from New Jersey on the New Jersey Transit trains which are electric,
New Jersey Transit trains that travel back and forth to NYC must, by law, be electric rather than diesel to reduce emissions in the tunnels.
Additional transportation impact is the emotional damage from getting yelled at by the conductor several times for refusing to use overhead
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This is piece based on several different references in animal anatomy textbooks. This piece is a commentary on the presence of deer in suburbia. They are seen as nuisances and pests and it’s a regular occurance to see the mangled corpse of one at the side of the road.
I think that deer are beautiful and majestic creatures. We as humans have turned their homes into ours despite the fact that they were there first. We plant all kinds of non-native and edible plants in our yards and get mad when these herbivores who have been eating shrubs and groundcovers their whole lives eat our plants.
The piece is made with rhinestones because despite the fact that they’re cheap and inexpensive they still shine and dazzle brilliantly. I wanted this piece to be Kistche and decorative like a cheap chachkies in a suburban home
The eye of the deer stares down at you in judgment, it sees your sins and knows what you as a human have done to it.
Transporting artworks and artists
Art transportation:
Uhaul statement on environmental impact- doesn’t really say much of anything, puts responsibility on the customers of their service to make a difference.
https://www.uhaul.com/Articles/Sustainability/How-U-Can-Make-A-Difference-73/#:~:text=Always%20search%20for%20the%20closest,Haul%20is%20the%20sustainable%20choice.
NYC Government on transportation emissions:“Emissions from transportation, primarily cars, buses, and trucks, contribute a significant amount of pollution to our air on a daily basis. Every year motor vehicles contribute approximately 11% of the local fine particulate matter and 28% of the nitrogen oxide emissions. The City has been actively finding ways to reduce emissions from motor vehicles including passing and enforcing rules to use cleaner fuels across the city and to reduce unnecessary emissions like idling.”
The main pollutants caused by fuel combustion via motor vehicles (Regular or diesel gasoline) in NYC
PM2.5
Fine particulate matter composed of many different pollutants including Elemental Carbon
Nitrogen oxides or NOx
Predominantly NO2
Ozone (O3)
While we need ozone in our atmosphere high above us, it causes harmful smogs at ground level
Amtrak’s statistics on carbon emissions and environmental impact
https://www.amtrak.com/travel-green
“According to the 2021 U.S. Department of Energy Data Book, Amtrak is 46% more energy efficient than traveling by car and 34% more energy efficient than domestic air travel.”
Amtrak’s full official climate report:
Amtrak aims to achieve net zero emissions by 2045
100% carbon free electricity by 2030
NJ Transit offers a draft of a “Sustainability Plan” with basically no statistics
There is no explanation for how these metric tons of CO2e are displaced.
2019 is used as reference because it was the last full year before the pandemic impacted ridership
Other Climate impacts:
materials:
The felt is from Amazon from an East Asian vendor. It was ordered on cyber Monday
The rhinestones are from Michael’s Crafts
Drove my car from home to Wayne New Jersey several times
The eye is antique glass
The canvas is leftover from a previous project
All packaging material was reused to transport the piece home
Energy:
the piece is entirely handsewn
Rhinestones applied by hand with craft glue and gorilla glue
The eye is fixed in place with gorilla glue
Infinity_doesn't_exist, Grant Yang, 2023
84" tall 24" deep 24"wide, Ceramics, steel, and water
“Challenging common perceptions, the interplay of eroded ceramics and metal contrasts the fragility of metal, which erodes faster, with the durability of ceramics lasting for centuries. Water, as a catalyst, symbolizes the passage of time, gradually causing the piece to disintegrate as it flows over, reshaping and revealing the beauty in impermanence”
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For the ceramics in the sculpture I used 40 pounds of clay went through two Cone 6 kiln firings:
Two Cone 06 firings:
69.12 KWh per fire (for an average 12-hour)
69.12 x 12 = 829.44 KWh
829.44 x 2 = 1,658.88 KWhMeasured Electricity Impact from firing: 0.75 tCO2e
Materials Used:
Material: Clay
Quantity/Description: 30-40 pounds of clay by Standard Clay
Source of Purchase: SVA Ceramics shop but supplied by Standard
Transportation/Shipping: Already at the BFA Fine Arts buildingMaterial: Metal
Quantity/Description: Two 4’x4’ 16 gage metal sheets
Source of Purchase: SVA metal shop
Transportation/Shipping: Already at the BFA Fine Arts buildingMaterial: Water pump
Quantity/Description: 4 water pumps but only used 1
Source of Purchase: Amazon shipped it to me
Transportation/Shipping: Carried on foot to BFA Fine Arts Building.Material: silicone
Quantity/Description: Two 10 oz tubes
Source of Purchase: The Compleat Sculptor (Manhattan)
Transportation/Shipping: Carried on foot to BFA Fine Arts Building.
Oil on Polyurethane Foam, Suspended in Bending Stress by Aluminum Framework (Fractured), Paola Pomarico, 2023
90” x 36” x 26”
“My practice investigates industrially manufactured materials, and the environments we build with them. We often consider the built environment to be static and permanent, but in reality, it is impermanent and precarious — flooding, burning, and deteriorating everywhere around us.” Paola Pomarico
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My interest lies in how the materiality of the built environment is capable of aesthetically communicating its fleeting, deteriorative condition. Consider the stresses experienced by the beams and columns supporting the building above you, or the erosion experienced by the pavement beneath your feet. Infrastructure endures so much stress in the performance of its function, yet its effort seems futile if it is inevitably met with decay and collapse. Through its fragile materiality, I see infrastructure pathetically express this stress and futility of its experience.
My aim with this conceptual inquiry is to question notions that the environments we manufacture — by being inanimate and artificial — stand outside the rest of nature. By stating that the built environment is separate or distinct from nature, we also state that as a species we have elevated ourselves into a hierarchical position above the rest of nature. To recognize our shared finitude with what we manufacture, is to recognize a mutuality and connectedness in our fleeting movements. The built environment is no less a part of nature as humanity is itself, revealed by the entropic deterioration of structural form.
— Materials and Processes of the Work
The two works of mine which were installed in this exhibition display the conceptual underpinnings of my practice in various ways. One piece is a polyurethane foam panel, onto which used stencils to print the image of an exploding oil pipeline. An aluminum framework suspends the foam panel off of the wall, held in place under the compressive force of its own bending. Urethane foam is a volatile material, so after a prolonged period in storage, the panel started to deteriorate and lost its flexibility, causing it to fracture in half upon installing it for this show. The work displays failure both in the explosive content of its image, and also through its panel’s own bending stress ultimately being too great for it to withstand.
The other work consists of a screen printing table that I built which I performed with live during the exhibition’s opening. Working together my table and I repetitively printed an image onto a 100’ long spool of woven polyester. By rolling the painting onto another spool on the opposing wall while the paint is still wet, the printed fabric is left to dry into a solidified roll. Similarly, excess paint dries on the surface of the printing screens. The painting produced is lost; the function of the printing screens is lost; the rolled up fabric and printing screens become artifacts of the process of mass production they were a part of. I think the table is quite pathetic in its futile effort to print an image that will inevitably be lost in the process. It's like a purposeless production line.
— Afterlife
Where will these works live after their exhibition? For one of them — the piece on a polyurethane foam panel — its life after exhibition will likely be in storage. Managing space is a complicated matter for students living in small apartments, and due to the size of this work, it will be difficult to allocate room for it. Thankfully, having been raised in the Mid-Hudson Valley, New York state, I am fortunate to be able to store the work in the more accommodating space of my family's home not too far away. However, this place it will rest is still a significant distance from us here in manhattan. Considering that it will need to be transported by car, what will 120 miles of driving back and forth add to the carbon footprint of the work’s existence? A journey like this in a passenger car likely has far less of an impact than other forms of ground shipping; nevertheless, even if this is a small proportion of the work’s total environmental impact, I think it is still worth acknowledging.
The other piece of mine that was included in the exhibition — an aluminum screen printing table — will have a different future. Because the table was constructed out of modular, ready made aluminum extrusion and components, it can easily be disassembled to reuse or repurpose its parts. There are still a number of elements — the printing screens and the painting the table produced for example — that are artifacts of the printing process, and will also have to find place in storage. But for the table itself, its components will be taken apart and be given new life by assembling into something else in the future. In fact, this table was not the first thing these aluminum extrusions were a part of: since early 2023 I have been slowly investing in this modular system of components, which have since served their use in the construction of multiple projects of mine. With working/storage space often being such an issue for us students living in the city, I find it incredibly valuable to continually reuse and repurpose this ever shifting body of components in my practice. It has gone a long way in helping me reduce waste, and tackle the logistical nightmare that is creating large sculptural artwork in manhattan.
The tables below serve to categorize the materials of projects based on whether they will be reclaimed/reused, or designated as artifacts to live a life in storage.
— Conclusion/Takeaway
The most significant insight which I have gained by taking part in this impact report, is thinking about where materials come from, and where they end up going. For instance, when I source materials moving forward, I will likely have a deeper consideration for what I can transport on foot, as opposed to what has to be shipped or transported by car. But tracing where materials are truly coming from is also a complex task. When considering whether it is more ethical to buy a machine screw at a The Home Depot in walking distance vs. having it shipped from McMaster-Carr in New jersey, for example, it would take a monumental effort to calculate the true carbon footprint of each perchance, taking into account international shipping, origins of extraction and manufacture, etc. It seems to me now that the deeper you trance, the more complicated a calculated decision can become.
What seems remarkably productive within the context of my practice is trying to minimize waste as much as possible, especially considering the amount of synthetics such as plastics and foams that I use. Giving these materials a purposeful afterlife where they are reused, repurposed, and reclaimed is something I see a lot of importance in. As I have shown with my use of readymade, modular components such as aluminum extrusions, reusing, repurposing, reshaping and reforming is already a part of the parameters and language of my practice. Participating in this report has only heightened my recognition for how I can explore this further — to facilitate a long lasing, constantly shifting life for the materials and implements I use, beyond the scope of a single work or project.
Curatorial afterthought from George Boorujy
Working on this CIR with these artists was great. First and foremost, they were incredibly engaged and eager to examine their process. Unsurprisingly, this generation is incredibly knowledgeable about the climate crisis and motivated to participate in actions towards positive change.
Because this was a show of student work from the Fine Arts department, the shipping was minimal. All the work was loaded onto a 15’ truck that averaged about 12-15 mpg, and transported a mile to the gallery and back to the Fine Arts building at the end of the exhibition. The packing materials were saved and reused to send all the artwork back. Lighting for the gallery for the duration of the show was estimated at 62.16 kWh with a carbon footprint of 0.03 tCO2e
From what I’ve experienced as an educator, students want to help when it comes to the climate crisis, and talking with them while completing this CIR has inspired me to try to do more within the institution that I am part of. It also highlighted the limitations built into that institution and how changes, even seemingly small ones, are entwined with larger systematic change. Students have led the way and demanded meaningful transformation in schools before, and I hope to continue to work with them in efforts to implement the best environmental practices possible into all aspects of their education.
Credits
This report was prepared by George Boorujy, Alina Nguyen, Emma Rice, Grant Yang, and Paola Pomarico, using a template from Artists Commit. Artists Commit CIR Mentor, Deville Cohen offered guidance and editing support. Thank you SVA Gallery Director, Tyson Skross, and Jason Maccaroni, Operations Manager SVA BFA Fine Arts.
Link to exhibition page: https://sva.edu/events/bfa-fine-arts-spring-2024