Eco-Art: Strategy for a planet with special needs

As parents of a child with special needs, we at the Co2-Art team have become involved in a non-profit organization seeking to enhance the services for children and adults with special needs in our particular community.

At the present time, our special needs community is developing its organizational strategy. Interestingly, we have found great conceptual parallels between this work and the eco-art movement.

The overt commonalities would be things like projects that would be shared by both endeavors, such as creating mosaics with discarded ceramics.

Other interesting angles include the long-term economic benefit to society of investing in either of these fields. More on this later.

CBC's One Million Acts of Green hits 827,000

As of just a few minutes ago, the CBC's innovative One Million Acts of Green was at 827,000, representing a reduction of 46,253,512 kg in the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere.

On the CBC's site, anyone who would like to participate can just specify which "act of green" they would like to do - and the site calculates their greehouse gas reduction right away.

Glacier Gone - Eco art for our times

Tatiana Iliina has the 18th Glacier Gone painting available for purchase.




The Glacier Gone series is one of Tatiana's most successful series of eco art. This is a large canvas, 30x36 inches, done with a painting knife.

Hard to believe that glaciers are melting and disappearing at an alarming rate, with the -26 January morning we've got going on out there today!

Ontario in the fast lane on the way to a "better place"?

Huge announcement on the electric vehicle front today for Ontario.

Better Place, a U.S. based venture company, has entered into an agreement with the Ontario government and Canadian green electricity producer, Bullfrog Power, with the objective of fast-tracking the introduction and adoption of electric vehicles on Ontario roads and highways.

Better Place, whose backers include Montreal's Stephen Bronfman already has projects in the works in Israel, Denmark, Hawaii and Australia.

The essentials of the agreement include substantial commitments on the part of the government to come up with a plan for:

* giving incentives for purchasing electric vehicles (evs)
* providing preferred access to roads for ev users
* enabling accelerated government fleet conversion to evs
* providing public education on the topic

Better Place meanwhile, will also work on the fast tracking plan, establish their head office for Canada in Ontario and set up a public education and demonstration center.

Bullfrog has wind turbines in operation in Ontario and will provide 100% emission-free power for the project.

The actual business model for the program is the disturbing part. What they are proposing is to go with the cell phone model, forcing people to "subscribe" to their service, rather than just simply buy power as they need it.

IMO no other mainstream business, with the possible exception of the equally slimy cable TV providers, has been shadier or less trustworthy than the cell phone industry. I can just imagine the monthly bill for the Better Place... a whole page of "creative" line items... "network charges", "roaming charges", surcharges for this and that, maybe a built in CAA type of thing where you pay for service insurance, rental charges for equipment and so forth. Whatever they come up with, I'm sure it will be extensive, expensive and very profitable for the investors.

Now, let's just make sure that:

1. It is not the only choice available
2. That it is possible to control your expenses according to your driving habits and preferences

Ontario produces more vehicles than any other jurisdiction in North America, refines more oil than any province in Canada, contains 1/3 of Canada's population and is not blessed with abundant clean electrical resources. So this agreement is something of a juggarnaut.

Gonna be fun to watch. The fast-tracking report is coming out in May...

THE ARTIST: an individual who is actively seeking solutions to improve our world

I think Alan Sonfist really hits the nail on the head in this interview by John Grande which appeared in the RSA Arts & Ecology Magazine. The role of the artist in society is evolving. Society needs artists more than ever before and I guess it would help if artists knew what they are doing!

JG:
So you would recommend as a strategy for young land and earth artists involved in the public sphere, to try venues outside the art world, natural history museums, botanical gardens and so on and so forth?

AS:
All my art involves a clear understanding of environmental issues and their unique relationship with the local community. Within the 21st century we have to redefine the role of the artist as an individual who is actively seeking solutions to improve our world.

The unceremonious demise of the screen door!

Here's one that comes under the category of "the more we improve things - the worse they get".

Several years ago, houses and homes in North America commonly came with a high-tech apparatus that allowed your home to conserve its heat (or coolness) even when the door was OPEN!

This clever innovation was called a "screen door".

These doors used to fit on the most exterior side of an ordinary door frame. The screen door was usually fitted with sliding glass or plexiglas windows and screens, so that you could adjust them according to the weather. In summer you could leave your big old door open and let cool or fresh air come in through the screen. In colder weather, you could bring in your groceries without losing all the warm air out of your house. That's because the screen door was fitted with an ingenious "spring" system that enabled the door to close by itself even if your hands were full!

These amazing devices did not require any power supply at all, they came in a full range of colours. There were absolutely no discharges of any type into the atmosphere, except when you would get a severe windstorm that could, in rare situations, send the entire door flying down the street.

The advantages of these marvels were almost endless. Believe it or not, many screen doors could be opened and closed by regular domestic animals, without any specialized training.

Screen doors would have been exceptionally useful in these days of heightened environmental awareness, global warming, etc.

Unfortunately, the worst possible thing has happened to screen doors: they have become unfashionable and many well-informed experts actually believe they are ugly. No self-respecting modern home owner can bear the humiliation of having something ugly and unfashionable hanging right on their front entry, so, we as a society are learning to live without screen doors.

In case you have not ever seen a screen door, I have managed to discover a rare photograph of one and have included it here.

Albeit, the one pictured above is an "art" screen door (not intended for actual use on a house). It was created by Vancouver artist Rodney Graham (and subsequently purchased by the Musee d'art Contemporain in Montreal for $300,000). This is a solid sterling silver replica of a screen door that Elvis had at Graceland.

Give prizes and recognition for the worst packaging

With all the buzz about sustainable lifestyles and green living in the last few years, there have been a few packaging trends out there that are so blatantly wasteful it is a disgrace.

1. The practice of packaging all variety of different items in shiny, molded, clear plastic, one use only containers. This is so terrible. I don't know for sure why the manufacturers are going to this type of packaging. One would assume that sales are increased because the products are readily visible in a display, instead of inside a box. It seems that there may be one or more rather sinister reasons also. Number one among these, if there is no box, the item or parts of it might be easier to lose, so that customers would have to buy a replacement. The item is also more difficult to store when not in use, so often people have to go out and buy a special box for the item.

2. The practice of packaging say 12 cookies in 6 separately packaged two-packs within one box of cookies. This is just fricking unbelievable!

There should be booby prizes and plenty of recognition for the worst packaging offenders.