For we are fallen like the trees, our peace
\nBroken, and so we must
\nLove where we cannot trust…
\n– Wendell Berry<\/p>\n
The assignment: Man’s fingerprint on nature.\u00c2\u00a0 An ecological\/environmental theme.<\/p>\n
The concept: The distancing of humanity from nature and the elimination of the sabbath – our absence from the natural world, created by a man-made buffer of distractions and our lack of restfulness\u00c2\u00a0 leads to nature’s destruction.<\/p>\n
The media: Mixed media collage and drywall on wooden panel.<\/p>\n
The challenge: Intellectual trying to present a concept like this visually.\u00c2\u00a0 Past attempts have left me fearful at best – Fear of the beastly obvious, for example, a magazine collage of road signs reading “pollution” “oil spills” “toxins”. Fear of reincarnating a couple skeletons from my past – specifically:<\/p>\n
1. An intricate collage that depicted the road to hell with glaring detail;
\n2. My doorstop-of-a-novel, which was a culmination of my life experiences to that point.<\/p>\n
The process: I tried to counter any potential “eco-art” disasters by choosing a subtle and personal theme.\u00c2\u00a0 I also researched eco-artists and found many examples that weren’t ghastly (for example, those linked to greenmuseum.org<\/a>).<\/p>\n I was off to a good start – had some enviable good mark-making going on in the drywall, had some beautiful vacant fields.\u00c2\u00a0 My big plan was to collage paper-doll like cutouts of outfits\u00c2\u00a0 from a fashion magazine on my scene (the outfits where no one is wearing them but they’re laid out from earrings to shoes).\u00c2\u00a0 But this was too obvious still.\u00c2\u00a0 So I was instructed to keep going with my obliteration of nature.<\/p>\n After smearing down leaves off of the street, dribbling paint over my forest scene, and harshly scratching at the drywall to give the sense of destruction, I wonder if this is the direction I wanted to take things.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m lamenting the fact that we’re losing touch with nature – indirectly we’re losing nature, allowing it to be destroyed.\u00c2\u00a0 Without noticing.<\/p>\n And the loss of the sabbath, for me, the unnatural cycle of the 24-7 society means neglecting stewardship, losing rest that was given to us as a gift.<\/p>\n It is the destruction of the world For we are fallen like the trees, our peace Broken, and so we must Love where we cannot trust… – Wendell Berry The assignment: Man’s fingerprint on nature.\u00c2\u00a0 An ecological\/environmental theme. The concept: The distancing of humanity from nature and … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"kt_blocks_editor_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27,31],"tags":[99,374,413,669,840,995],"class_list":["post-3291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-2","category-faith-2","tag-art","tag-ecology","tag-faith","tag-nature","tag-sabbath","tag-wendell-berry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nin our own lives that drives us
\nhalf insane, and more than half.
\nTo destroy that which we were given
\nin trust: how will we bear it?
\nIt is our own bodies that we give
\nto be broken, our bodies
\nexisting before and after us
\nin clod and cloud, worm and tree,
\nthat we, driving or driven, despite
\nin our greed to live, our haste
\nto die.\u00c2\u00a0 To have lost, wantonly,
\nthe ancient forests, the vast grasslands
\nin our madness, the presence
\nin our very bodies of our grief.
\n– Wendell Berry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"