Three different perspectives

As I was out and about the city recently, I saw three works that addressed the environment from very different perspectives, but all three really touched me.

The responsibility of art in public spaces

A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle got me thinking about art in public spaces. The article was about the design collective Rebar, and their now-annual event Park(ing) Day, which this year happens on September 19.  Readers of my earlier post about the event will recall that it essentially takes over parking spaces with artful micro-parks. One of Rebar’s members, John Bela, was quoted as saying: “It’s not just about parks, it’s about rethinking streets and how we use urban lands—a much broader idea….”

In popular usage the word environment has come to connote the natural world.  But if we take the broader view, the environment includes everything around us; etymologically  the word in fact derives from “round about.”  In an urban setting that includes a lot of non-natural things. When it exists in a public space, art automatically becomes part of the environment.  What is the effect of that, both on the environment and on the people who live in it?  How should we use our urban lands?

Some persistent questions about art and action

While I was on vacation over the last couple of weeks, I had time to think over some of the questions that came up in my last few posts and the comments they elicited–what is environmental art, how do art and the environment influence each other, should art inspire environmental action. Whether or not art should inspire action, I would like to think that it can and will, that it is one force that can help bring about some change. Which led me to the question of how that kind of inspiration occurs.