the Painting Activist

36″ x 60″ oil on canvas, SOLD.
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For 114 years, the Wildlife Conversation Society has endeavored to preserve wildlife and wildlife habitats around the world through science, wildlife park management, environmental conservation and education.

Their earliest accomplishment was helping the American bison population recoup in the Western Plains.  Today, they manage about 500 conservation projects in over 60 countries and more than 200 million acres of protected lands around the world, employing more than 200 scientists.  WCS also manages the world’s largest system of urban wildlife parks, which includes five New York City “living institutions.” These parks reach 4 million visitors each year and assist in educating millions of schoolchildren in science and conservation issues.

Here’s a comical video example of what park visitors would find at one of the New York City zoos.

The WCS website is equipped with templates for wildlife supporters to use in writing their congressman/woman about conservation issues.  You can also donate online to support their “commitment to protect 25 percent of the world’s biodiversity.”  That’s no small undertaking, for which I’m certain your contribution is greatly appreciated.

Ps- Take a look at another animal welfare group, Paw-Talk, that graciously republished this post.  Thanks for helping to spread the word.

2′ x 4′ oil on canvas
SOLD
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By guest writer, Mark Appleberry, of Sustain (a business dedicated to providing the resources necessary for families and individuals to live more sustainably).

“Green living can mean so many different things. It can start with buying the first re-usable shopping bag, switching to toxic free cleaning, buying from local farmers, or even giving second life to an object instead of buying new.  It starts with small decisions that can have significant impacts on the future.  Everyone we meet that is making steps towards sustainability is an inspiration.  We would like to acknowledge a few our friends, right here in Louisville, who are making great strides forward and inspiring hope along the way.

Ben and Julie Evans – The aspiring filmmaking team, along with another friend, Mark Dixon, are the creative genius behind “Your Environmental Road Trip [YERT],” www.yert.com.  These three took a year to visit all 50 states, putting themselves through extreme eco-challenges, interviewing over 800 environmental leaders, experts, and regular citizens from all walks of life, and documenting sustainability across America – as they like to say, “the good, the bad…and the weird.”  The documentary is pregnant with hope, laughter, and over 500 hours of “green” footage.  It is slated for release in full at the end of this year.  For now, satiate your curiosity with over 50 short fun films on their webpage.  For anyone interested in helping with the feature film, contact Ben at ben@yert.com.

Paul Schellenberger – An 18 year veteran of vermicomposting (worm farming), Paul is a passionate environmentalist excited about educating people about worm farming and composting in general.  Paul consulted from the outset with Breaking New Grounds, a local Louisville vermiculture operation.  You can find BNG’s compost at local Heine Brother’s Coffee shops.

John W. Moody – John is enabling sustainable living by connecting people with local farmers.  His involvement with the Whole Life Co-op., as well as his educational seminars, convey the message of “simple living”.  John regularly speaks on composting and encouraging people to think before carelessly buying, consuming, and discarding.  He and his wife also speak to young parents about raising happy, healthy children.  You can learn more about what John is doing by exploring www.wholelifeco-op.com

Green Convene – The Green Convene is non-partisan coalition to promote sustainable policies in local government.  Led by an informal steering committee of local volunteers, the Green Convene is working to coordinate and bring together the many local Louisville movements addressing a variety of sustainability issues in the Louisville Metro area.  They are always in the market for volunteers and participants and you can join here.

These are just a few of the great people and organizations in and around Louisville dedicated to helping Louisville become a greener, environmentally friendly community and we’re proud of their efforts!”

Thank you Mark!  I’ll add to that list the Green Building, Ohio Valley Creative Energy, and BrightSide (supported in part by Gallopalooza), all of which are highly worthy of your clicks.

5″ x 5″ watercolor in a 12″ x 12″ frame
Click here to see picture of the framed painting.
SOLD
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If I had done any shopping for Christmas whatsoever,  I would have bought several of these eco-friendly planners from Olive Barn.  When the month passes, bury the page in your yard and wait for the wildflower illustrated on the page to manifest in real life.  Wow, what can’t be green(er) these days?  It’s great to see everything from construction companies to restaurants going green.  If I were in college right now, I would be excited about increasing job prospects in environmentally focused industries.  Speaking of which, I’ll be profiling some new green trends and businesses in Louisville very soon.

Ps-I suppose it’s not too late to gift these calendars to friends and family.  Act surprised my peeps!

As excited as I was to be a part of the Oxfam “Climate Change on Canvas” project, I was disappointed to hear outcomes from UN the conference left something to be desired.  Theo Ratcliff of Oxfam International reported, “The conference in Poznan was meant to be a key milestone between the start of negotiations in Bali last year and their conclusion at Copenhagen next year. But it has exposed a shameful lack of progress. By now, developed nations were meant to have outlined their plans for emissions reductions, finance and technology; they have failed to do so.”

I heard a similar report on NPR, which described failure between wealthy and developing countries to agree on collaborative efforts to fund and otherwise positively affect climate change (such as the Adaption Fund).  A reporter for the San Fransisco Chronicle summed up the conference with, “…they came, they talked and they departed. And that’s about it.”

For a glimpse of the conference in review on a lighter note, check out pictures of the “Climate Change on Canvas Project on the Oxfam flickr page.  I was truly impressed with the Oxfam initiative to engage artists, students and community groups in this public awareness campaign.  They get a spot in my top 5 nonprofit groups.

48″ x 72″ oil on canvas
SOLD
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I am so incredibly honored to publish this post. This enormous painting was commissioned by my favorite kind of client, a nonprofit organization. I was selected by Oxfam America to create an image that represents the connection between climate change and poverty. The work will also represent Oxfam America’s Climate Change on Canvas project at the next United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Poznan, Poland in December, 2008.

Oxfam America is an international relief and development organization that creates lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and social injustice. The goal of the Climate Change on Canvas project is to use artwork and visual imagery to challenge the UN delegates to recognize the effects of climate change on the world’s poorest communities. Lacking sufficient resources, poor communities are least prepared to adapt to the most severe impacts of climate change. To learn more about Oxfam’s climate change campaign, visit www.oxfamamerica.org/climate

Oxfam America is just one of many Oxfam International affiliates who will be creating canvases for this project. Similar works of art will travel from all over the world—created by professional artists, unknown artists and members of developing communities—to be exhibited at the UN conference, representing a unified global movement around climate change and poverty. This piece will go to Poland and come back to the US where Oxfam plans to use art as a mobilization tool around climate change in 2009.

You should know that Oxfam is also looking for similar works from art students from around the country. If you are interested in learning more about this component of the project, email Oxfam’s Lead Student Organizer, Gabriel Barreras, at gbarreras[at]oxfamamerica[dot]org.

Thanks to Oxfam staff for contributing content for this post.

9″ x 12″ watercolor, SOLD.
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This Saturday, March 22nd, is World Water Day. The UN initiated international day of awareness has sparked activities around the globe such as “World Water Walks,” art competitions, and documentary film viewings. The latter is happening in Louisville this weekend at Baxter Avenue Theater. ‘FLOW (For Love of Water),’ co-produced by phenomenal local arts rock star, Gill Holland (of Gallery NuLu and sonaBLAST! Records), will be shown for a week at the theater beginning tomorrow.

Snag tickets early for Friday’s showing to make sure don’t miss the opportunity to meet the film’s director, Irena Salina, who was apparently tear-gassed in addition to receiving a death threat while making the film. I just bought my tickets online for the 7:30 showing on Friday. See you there?

2.5″ x 10″ mixed media painting
SOLD
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While watching one of the episodes recently, I was reminded that there is a tremendous amount of daily activity on our planet that we benefit greatly from, don’t contribute to, and get for absolutely free. We’re all painfully aware of the cost of using natural resources such as oil and natural gas, but did you ever think of the free services we receive, such as pollination for example? Probably not since the connection between the existence of much of the vegetation around us and the bees who carry and deliver pollen, like free mini UPS workers, is not obvious (again, maybe because it’s not affecting our wallets).

Well, you may have thought about if you’ve seen the ‘Bee Movie.’ The importance of pollination was highlighted in the animated film when the bees practiced nonviolent resistance by halting their pollination until the humans agreed to stop commercially producing honey by means of forceful bee slave labor. The boycott resulted in a domino effect of dry lifeless landscapes, and ecological and economic sickness of immense proportions (covers quite spectrum of issues, huh? environmentalism, labor laws/human rights, social community organizing).

If you care to engage in two starkly different cinematic approaches to gaining an appreciation and understanding of our environment and the role we play, pop some popcorn, get cozy and make a movie night of it. Hmmm, good idea Ashley!

18″ x 24″ oil on canvas, SOLD.
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Are you happy? Would you say you’re a happier person than a citizen of a neighboring country? How do you measure happiness?

A 2006 study calculating happiness by nation has added a new unit of measurement to the typical equation of income and access to quality health care and education. Inserting the new variable seems to be based on the theory of “what goes around, comes around.” The Happy Planet Index reminds us that we live in the environment we help create by naming ecological sustainability as one of its 3 primary indicators. No one wants to call smog-filled community without clean water home. The study “shows the relative efficiency with which nations convert the planet’s natural resources into long and happy lives for their citizens.”

A more traditional study would likely name a Scandinavian country such as Denmark the world leader of pleasure and contentment. The Happy Planet Index bestows the title to the unlikely candidate of Vanuatu, a small freckling of islands in the South Pacific that only gained its dependence from Britain and France in the 1970’s.

Analyzing life satisfaction, life expectancy, and ecological footprint yields some very surprising results. Mexico and Columbia are 2 of very few countries on the index’s world map positively denoted in green. Give their survey a spin for yourself to gain a better understanding of information collected for the study. Hopefully you are happy and/because you’re ecological footprint is petite.

Two 4″ x 6″ watercolors
Click here to see picture of framed paintings.
SOLD
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Who would have thought exercising mischievous behavior over Christmas would have resulted in the opportunity to hear a a personal testimony of the impact of global warming?

I spent Christmas an hour north of Manhattan in a house that sits on the 50 wooded acres painted above. My boyfriend and I set out in snow gear to explore the property which entailed crossing a creek to leave the manicured yard. Rising temperatures had flooded our bridge with melting snow and ice. My boyfriend was ready to call it quits and head back inside to play Guitar Hero since our only alternative was to use the neighbor’s bridge to cut across. He changed his mind after a few minutes of taunting and peer pressure.

Of course, I had to eat my words. No sooner had we crossed the bridge than the neighbor came storming out of his house yelling “Hey! HEY! What do you think you’re doing?!” I thought his thunderous voice might shake icicles loose from the trees to strike us down.

With our tails between our legs we walked toward the white-haired gentleman to explain our (my) weak reasoning. He quickly changed his demeanor and politely explained his boisterous reaction was due to the vandals who been on his property a few weeks prior. We made peace and transitioned into a 20 minute chat about his 3 decades spent on the property. “When I first moved here, there were several days every year when the temperature would be 20 below. It would be in the negative teens for a couple of weeks. Now here it is Christmas and it’s 40.” A comment about global warming skeptics was followed by an eye roll.

Take-a-ways from my soupy-snow Christmas adventure:

1. Observant baby-boomers who stay in one place for an extended amount of time make excellent citizen climatologists
2. Only coax an unwilling cohort into trespassing with you if you’re certain you’re not going to get caught

24″ x 66″ oil on canvas, SOLD
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New York City, flexing its strength by size and density, often boasts status of “first,” “best,” and “biggest” in an expansive list of areas. Most of our financial investments oscillate on charts on Wall Street, and many items in our closets mimic fashions first seen on New York runways. Much of our American culture, history, politics and economy are tied to beginnings and development in the Big Apple.

A downside for New York, also owning the title of second most densely populated American city, is the lack of physical space for innovation that requires expansive room. Case in point, we’re not going to find wind farms in Manhattan. But ah! there is a place in the city where no New Yorker will set foot. This quiet, empty space is vast and available. No investment bankers will ever have an office here, nor will any gallery, penthouse, or corner shop reside. Buildings, walkways, and taxis push to the very edge of this space, yet not encroaching, like fighting siblings in the backside of the car not to cross the seam of the seat onto the other’s side. This space is the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Below the surface of the East River is a “tidal energy farm” that uses Verdant Power’s underwater turbines to harvest free power from the river’s current, alleviating some pressure on New York’s unsustainable annual $13 billion energy bill.

No one can complain about zoning restrictions or a visual blight. The greatest concern these turbines pose is for the well-being of the river’s primary residents: fish (for which several million dollars is being spent on fish monitoring). The seemingly benign machinery will be connected to the city’s energy grid to provide an equally benign form of power.

Mountaintop removal coal mining move over!

5″ x 5″ drawing in a 10″ x 10″ frame (click here to see painting framed)
NFS
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My senior year of college an attention-grabbing piece of installation art was exhibited in the university’s library. The artist had collected all of the wasted paper from the library (discarded copies, the unwanted last pages of print outs, etc) for what I’m vaguely remembering to be one month. From the artist’s harvest, he/she was able to literally create a towering white paper mountain utilizing the library’s open atrium.

Upon entering the front doors, guilt immediately made itself at home on my shoulder since I knew that somewhere in that bleached tree cemetery were my piles of reject copies from a recent typography class project. I thought twice, as I’m sure many other students did, before clicking “print” that day.

The exhibit resurfaced in my memory for the first time earlier this year when I read a short snippet in ODE magazine about a small company that takes paper recycling to a new level. Instead of the usual process of washing, pulping, bleaching and so on, gathered items such as outdated maps and calendars are used to make super hip stationary.

The man behind the idea tells an amusing story of actualization of his entrepreneurial potential while in the midst of what many would call a career slump:

“Olaf Hagedorn…came up with the idea when he was unemployed and found himself staring at piles of handwritten job-application letters containing small mistakes. Considering a way to refuse the paper, he folded it into envelopes. He then expanded this simple idea into a large-scale operation, using higher quality second hand paper: outdated maps, calendars and printed matter with a few flaws.”

You can shop online for these paper products here. This is one of several suggestions I will be making between now and Christmas for socially and environmentally thoughtful gift ideas.

Also worth mentioning: what I assume is simply the American vendor of this stationary primarily focuses on producing claymation films that “motivate people to protect and preserve natural habitats for all future generations’ health and enjoyment.” Go figure. Here’s one for your viewing pleasure…

4″ x 6″ watercolor
NFS
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Those beautiful and vibrantly painted trees setting the scene for your Thanksgiving are doing far more than visually entertaining you during the drive to grandma’s house. They’re also enormous vacuums sucking up gaseous pollutants spilling out of your tailpipe. In technical terms, they are performing “terrestrial carbon sequestration.” This is,

“the process through which carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere is absorbed by trees, plants and crops through photosynthesis, and stored as carbon in biomass (tree trunks, branches, foliage and roots) and soils. The term ’sinks’ is also used to refer to forests, croplands, and grazing lands, and their ability to sequester carbon…A carbon sink occurs when carbon sequestration is greater than carbon releases over some time period.” - US EPA

What is most alarming is the disparity between the rise of total CO2 emissions and diminishing landscapes left intact to absorb it.

Yes, I am thankful for the many wonderful people in my life such as my grandfather who still calls me “Ashley Kay” (even though my middle name is Michelle), my dad who has lovingly referred to me as “moose” ever since my height became awkwardly obvious as a kid, and my mom who tells me my driving makes her nauseous and will forever try to get me to wear pink. It’s incredibly easy to take for granted (and abuse) the many sources of our happiness. Sometimes we forget to thank a friend or family member, but few of us have ever felt appreciation for the hard working array of plants that forgive and balance our toxic output.

Times are a changin’. Many of us are beginning to acknowledge the life-supporting functions of nature, which soon may not be around to continue on going unnoticed and unappreciated. Here is a short list of ways for you to express your gratitude for your planet:

• Shop for innovative gifts at The CarbonNeutral Company
• Plant a tree and watch it grow in Niger to fight desertification
• Calculate and offset your own level of carbon emissions

Add a few more check boxes to this year’s to-be-thankful-for list and have a happy Turkey Day!
Click here for a direct link to watch this painting being painted.

24″ x 24″ oil on canvas, $900
SOLD
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While I could hardly imagine a cooler job, there is a downside to being in the know of the world of good deeds. The quintessential angel on my shoulder embodying my conscience is one obese loud mouth. The implications of most of my actions and decisions are dissected and scrutinized meticulously. Beware friends and family; I nag my boyfriend about putting a single zucchini in a plastic bag in the produce section and make my friends go out of their way to meet me at a fair trade coffee shop. Being so vigilant can be a pain in the rear.

The perfect example is the guilt associated with my newly rekindled love for sushi. All the book and articles I’ve read have elbowed “ignorant bliss” out of the dinner equation. I pond whether the bite of toro roll I’m struggling not to drop with chopsticks before I get it to my mouth is made with over-fished tuna caught in the wild. And if not, is the farm-raised tuna feed a synthetic and unnatural corn-based diet in an overcrowded industrial fishbowl? Am I eating the McDonald’s of sushi or the last tuna of its kind to ever swim the great ocean blue? Ok, so I still eat it, but I feel justified by offsetting any harm done by other proactive measures (such as blogging about it).

Environmental awareness and activism are worming their way into our daily lives. And it’s not just for those on the fringes of the far left (there’s Honda Insight often parked outside of my apartment boasting a Bush bumper sticker). “Going green” is a profitable business strategy and consumers are quickly buying in. Restaurants , like British sushi chain Moshi Moshi, are seasonly reconfiguring their menus to excluded the endangered fish species. Check out their “Clear Conscience Sushi Set.” Call me a bleeding heart, but that’s what I want see more of in grocery stores and restaurant menus.

5″ x 5″ watercolor in a 12″ x 12″ frame.
Click here to see picture of painting framed.
NFS
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Last night I drove deep into rural southern Indiana to celebrate the holiday weekend with friends who recently bought a home with more than enough land to accommodate for a vegetable garden, chickens and goats. Our dinner spread was largely comprised of ingredients fresh from their yard. As anyone who has ever tried to eat locally and seasonally, my friends found themselves with a large over-abundance of a few vegetables, so much so that all guests were given parting gifts of tomatoes.

Eating local produce is an excellent way to support local farmers, revisit the notion that food comes from the ground (not a box), cut down on carbon emissions from carting produce from thousands of miles away, and feed your stomach something it will actually like and use. But committing to such a diet does require some culinary creativity. I love tomatoes, but what am I going to do with 6 of them in one week? Solution: here’s a very simple recipe for 10 Tomato Pasta from the kitchen of Nora Pouillon, owner of Restaurant Nora and Asia Nora in Washington DC (the first certified organic restaurant in the US). So go ahead and buy more tomatoes and pass on the can of SpaghettiO’s.

For those Louisville residents interested in the topic of land development, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (a statewide advocacy group) will be showing a screening of the documentary The Unforeseen at the Kentucky Center for the Arts tomorrow, Aug. 24.

The film is an fair and unbiased look at both sides of the story of transformation in the landscape of Austin, Texas as big plans were set in motion in the 1970’s and 80’s to develop a residential neighborhood. As I would imagine is always the case with land development, there was a polarization of opinions and beliefs that threw politics and law in to the messy mix. Click here to watch a preview of the film from a PBS interview with the director.

A private reception with the director, Laura Dunn, will begin at 6:00 at Bomhard Theater (tickets for the reception are $100). The screening will begin at 7:30, followed by a panel discussion with the filmmaker as well as local authorities on land use policy, economic development, and environmental impact. General admission tickets are $15. Click here for more details.

The film title was inspired by a poem from Kentucky writer and environmental activist, Wendell Berry, who wrote,

“I walked the deserted prospect of the modern mind. Where nothing lived or happened that had not be foreseen. What had been foreseen was the coming of the stranger with money. All that had been before had been destroyed. A new earth had appeared in place of the old made entirely according to plan.”