Featured Artists

Lisa Reindorf combines knowledge from architecture and environmental science in her artwork. Her paintings examine the environmental impact of climate change on water. In aerial view landscapes, she creates interpretations of coastal areas – in particular rising seas and sinking cities.

There is an inherent conflict between nature and building. Built architectural systems are often intrusive and not in harmony with the environment. Nature responds with floods, storm surges and rising seas. Although this presents a pessimistic commentary on global warming, the artist feels that building more in harmony with natural water systems can ameliorate the deleterious effects on both systems.

As a writer for art publications she comments on art and environmental issues. She is also a visiting artist at universities and frequent lecturer on how artists interpret climate change.

www.lareindorf.com

Painting, using tools of color and composition, can be an aid to societal change. Art accesses another way of knowing, and it takes both rationality and emotional connection to create lasting change.   I have been painting the surface of moving water for years; fascinated by its infinite variety; and its centrality to all of life. Visual art can bypass linear thinking.  Color directly affects the unconscious mind, and our emotions.  Game makers know that images are a form of direct mental targeting.  When the subject is water, that target can be our heart,  our sense of connection, and our intuition.

Our bodies are mostly water, and we are an intimate part of the hydrological cycle.  Think about this when you first awaken – we are all water filters.  We intrinsically know this, and that all life depends on water. Looking at water, or a painting of water, resonates emotionally in our bodies and minds, offering the possibility of thinking as water.

www.frederickafoster.com. @frederickafoster.

what is ecoartspace?

ecoartspace has served as a platform for artists addressing environmental issues since 1999. Patricia Watts and Amy Lipton have curated over 60 art and ecology exhibitions combined, and have organized, as well as participated in, over 100 ecoart programs and events.

Starting 2020, Watts decided to transition to a membership-based organization. Students, artists, advocates, professionals, galleries and institutions are invited to join who are concerned about the natural world. Together, we as a community can both imagine and help make real, a healthy future.

www.ecoartspace.org

We are 60 percent water; Earth’s surface is 71 percent water; while water sustains us, and even IS us, our carelessness can turn it into an agent of our destruction.  Throughout my working life, I’ve done performances, political activities, and skywriting about water and it’s importance our species and to the planet as a whole.  Currently, I’m an image-maker, concerned with rivers as the veins and lifelines of the planet, and seas as the vast, living repositories of time, memory, the detritus of our habitation, as well as an embodiment of existential terror. I’m using iridescent textural materials — beads, tapestry threads, foil refuse — to suggest the physicality and reflective quality of water, beautiful, threatening, and threatened.

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MY COMMITMENT TO WATER:

My practice at the intersection of art, science and the environment targets issues of climate change. Thus, water is integral to this focus.

Throughout the many decades of my career, bodies of water, (primarily observed from above) have fascinated me – from oceans along the coasts of California, Maine, Nova Scotia to Europe and Iceland. Rivers have been another source of inspiration, most particularly in the 1980’s when working on the Waterways of Pennsylvania project. The Bayous of Louisiana, the Everglades of Florida, as well as the Geddes run creek on my Bucks County property have fed my photography and painting practice.

www.dianeburko.com

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Forty years ago, Betsy Damon stepped outside her traditional art training and carved a unique path to work with the environment, communities, science and art. She began looking to her inner consciousness as a source of inspiration which initiated her public engagement, starting with gritty art performances on the New York City streets. She was engaged in the women’s movement of the 1970s, where she founded No Limits for Women Artists, a network to join and support female artists.

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Artist Statement

I collaborate with local communities around the world to focus on important water issues, especially rivers, waterborne diseases, water scarcity, and climate disruption. I work closely with scholars from numerous disciplines building rainwater harvesting systems; connecting communities and fostering dialogue along the entire length of rivers; filming and producing water documentaries; launching hand-carved ice books embedded with seeds into waterways; and creating waterborne disease projects, most recently in Egypt, Ethiopia, India, and Nepal. My working process occurs out in the field along streams and creeks.

www.basiairland.com

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Doug Fogelson studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago. His works are included in notable public and private collections such as The J. Paul Getty Center, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Center for Creative Photography and exhibited with esteemed galleries and museums. He has been recognized by publications including Art News, Photo District News, Art Forum, and AfterImage. Doug Fogelson founded and directed Front Forty Press, an independent publishing imprint, and has taught in the Photography Department of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Doug currently serves as President of the Board for Filter Photo.

www.dougfogelson.com

I am currently working on a long-term research and exhibition project that examines the politics, traditions and practices surrounding water in a variety of global locations. The ambition for the project is to tease out the commonalities, local problems and interlinked futures of the so-called global north and south in the management and consumption of finite water resources.

WATER CONVERSATIONS is the umbrella term for this ongoing series of projects. The projects address issues of water through political, social and cultural lenses and aims to build an alternative global commons map through water. Articulated as a series of actions, small sculptures, posters, drawings, sound works, public interventions and site specific works the project explores the complex interstices between landscape and geopolitics, science and technology, culture and tradition. Read More