in her blog entry last xmas, which is generally hilarious, shannon wrote that "to teach sculpture is to participate in turning valuable materials into waste; sculpture is itself a somewhat environmentally unethical pursuit."
indeed. it is generally unethical to produce non-functional objects from virgin material, especially when it's student work that will likely be discarded or neglected after critique.
but we are not locked in to the cycle of rampant consumption, and as artists (free-thinkers and creatives) we should have the ability, desire, and conscience to adapt ourselves and our ideas to the materials available from salvage and secondhand sources.
thankfully, these wonderful people are here to help us:
http://www.ohmegasalvage.com/Showroom%20Pages/salvage_list.htm
http://www.driftwoodsalvage.com/
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/
http://cache.consumerist.com/assets/resources/2007/06/Freegans%20All%20About.jpg
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/7e/bd/0009bd7e_medium.jpeg&imgrefurl=http://www.ebookee.com/Art-and-Science-of-Dumpster-Diving_190826.html&usg=__gT0xEyxcGXZQRjVH31H4X6YapEM=&h=300&w=229&sz=33&hl=en&start=55&sig2=GZN0KezP_H_LBboGzyDW0g&tbnid=jwoTfjmj4Z9FSM:&tbnh=116&tbnw=89&ei=H1saStDAKpu8swOq2NTaCA&prev=/images%3Fq%3Ddumpster%2Bscuba%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den%26sa%3DN%26start%3D40%26um%3D1&um=1
merry gleaning!
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2 comments:
Ha. One of the Industrial Design professors, Tomasz Migurski, said something the other day that I thought worth writing down, so I did. He said, "I find it so peculiar, all these artists worrying about how they use toxic materials and so forth. They seem to be missing the point. If the art is GOOD, it detains a certain amount of material from the waste flow. Now, if the art is bad, that's a different story."
This quote will make it into my own blog, soon, once I can have a life again.
Shannon:
That is an excellent point- much as the ancient Chinese melted down their weapons in peace times to create the auspicious bronzes-their highly coveted artistic ceremonial vessels. The strategy was two fold- one, get the material out of the waste flow and two, get the weapons out of the war flow-good ideas. Squerl
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