Introduction to This Issue

This issue of Talking Leaves, like our spring "Education for an Ecological Society" issue, has been a pleasure to put together. As new publishers, we're discovering that a community or network coalesces around each new issue--made up not only of those who contribute their writing, artwork, and ideas, but also of those whose enthusiasm and support make this magazine possible. Our thanks both to long-time Talking Leaves readers and to those of you who are picking up this journal for the first time. We hope you will never be disappointed in what you find in these pages. We invite your participation in creating upcoming issues (see next page), and will be happy if this one, on "Art and Ecology," seems even half as full to you as it does to us (who have been immersed in it for a number of weeks). An overview:

In our first article section, The Art of Connection, we hear about personal experiences of the confluence of art and ecology. In the opening piece, Kiko Denzer simply and poetically addresses many of the themes you'll find explored throughout this issue, reminding us that "Earth--saturated by rain, warmed by sun, inspired by wind--is the source of beauty." Nancy Roth shows that music, dance and the visual arts can help children and adults alike find their place in the "circle of creation," giving us the tools of listening, observing, seeing, and moving, and inspiring us to communicate and deepen our relationship with the earth. In a wide-ranging narrative/reflection which starts with Amtrak and ends with Zucchini, Chris Roth discovers that, in art and in life, everything is connected (apparently unwilling to take his mother's word for it, he had to experience it for himself). Jules Bubacz joins Joanne Rand and Angie Curtes in the wilderness to find connection with nature and with one another through art and song, "our intuitive voice." Kestrel Gates travels further, to a different culture, to discover new perspectives on creativity and community and to get an opportunity, through art, "to let go of the self-centered nature" that separates us from one another and the world. And Hannah Fox describes movement, theatre, and all forms of art as tools for transformation and growth, sharing her work with the Young Women's Ritual Theatre and her own cross-cultural perspectives.

In our second section, Art as Environmental Statement, we explore how the arts can stimulate environmental awareness and social/political change. Katherine Kormendi provides a broad overview of the Ecological Art movement, detailing some of the most exciting work being done in this growing field (including reclamations, reawakenings, recyclings, dramatizations, and rituals/performances). Andrew Rodman issues a call for the creation of activist art, proposing that "Good art celebrates diversity and original thought... often turns our attention to the culprits of environmental and social ills," and makes us think and act. Thomas Webb of Orlo and the Guerilla Girls offer concrete examples of exactly the kind of art that Rodman is writing about: art which combines honesty, humor, and a willingness to be "out there" in challenging the status quo. And Rhonda Zwillinger describes her work using art to promote awareness of a specific, often-ignored, but widespread environmental problem, which has transformed both her art and her life: Multiple Chemical Sensitivities.

In our final article section, The Nature of Art, our authors delve deeper into the questions: what is art? where does it come from? how can it bring us into ecological harmony? David Rothenberg asks whether nature-based art can be "more than propaganda," and suggests that the best art "doesn't take away from the exact ambiguity that nature is best at, but reveals it to us," citing Japanese gardens and the song of the shakuhachi flute as examples of "art that works like nature works." Bernie Krause traces human music back to the music of the wilds, finding "biophonies" in nature that dwarf the efforts of even the best sonic artists in Western culture, and are rivaled only, in his experience, by the music of peoples who dwell within natural aural environments. Jesse Wolf Hardin ties all these threads together again, reminding us that art is sacred ritual, a way of living, born of the earth, and connecting us with earth--ultimately leading us, as participants, to beauty, gratitude, grace, and hope.

The extensive book and music review section further addresses many of the themes that run throughout our articles, specifically: the centrality of music in our experience (see "Book/Music Packages," "Books About Music," and "Music" reviews), the role of various other art forms in expressing and affirming ecological relationships (see "Books About Art," which run the gamut from painting to gardening, writing to blacksmithing), and (only slightly tangential to our main subject) what other animals might say about all this ("Books About Animals").

Thankfully, the poems and artwork in this issue speak for themselves. We appreciate the many submissions of poetry, artwork, and articles from readers--please keep them coming!

 

 

©1998 Talking Leaves
Summer/Fall 1998
Volume 8, Number 2
Art and Ecology

A Long Night's Journey Into Day: Or What Do Mt. Shasta, Music, Art, Ecology, and the Beatles Have to Do with One Another?

It had been a long night on the Amtrak train bringing me back home to Oregon. After three weeks camping out in Baja, California, I was having a hard time adjusting to being shut up inside a train car for a full day and night. I was aware of the incessant rumble of the wheels on the tracks, the strange temperature- controlled atmosphere, the comfortable but by no means sleep-inducing seat, and the culture shock of being among US citizens again--some of them with cellular phones. Though the daytime scenery was beautiful, the monotony of my sensory environment (after the refreshing lack of monotony of those three weeks) made it very challenging to get to sleep. I attempted to coax myself to sleep with a sandwich, then with some gorp, then with some other food I had packed (though I'd already had dinner). No luck. Within a few sleepless hours, I had surrendered to the idea that I would only feel better again physically, my body back in balance with itself and with the earth, once I had gotten off that train. Instead of distracting myself with more food, I distracted myself with other thoughts.

I'd been an organic gardening instructor for several years. Other staff at the educational center I worked at had been encouraging me to write a book about gardening, and this had become one of my wintertime goals--but I couldn't help but be bored and vaguely uncomfortable with the idea. What could I write that hadn't already been written elsewhere? For someone in his mid-thirties with barely over a decade of gardening and farming experience to pretend to be more expert than the thousands of lifetime gardeners who have never written books seemed presumptuous at best. Short articles and newsletter contributions were more up my alley, not a book.

 

Over the years, especially since entering high school, I'd become very serious. I grew up in a musical, artistic household, but, surrounded by creativity, I'd become first an academic and then an overserious ecologist. Beginning in high school, I'd started to question and then rebel against our "civilization," including its conceptions of art. As I became aware of the environmental impacts of our way of life, as well as the social injustices that accompanied it, I came to see "art" as something artificial, distracting and separating us from what nature truly is, taking time away from the serious business of saving the world, offering the leisure class and the overprivileged an escape through which to avoid facing the dire circumstances in which most of the natural and human world now live.

Most art, as I saw it, was not only nature-divorced and socially irresponsible but also an actual agent of oppression. It was a status symbol of the wealthy, propaganda for a human-centered, socially stratified, often elitist worldview--and a perfect example of the "out of sight, out of mind" mentality that makes one oblivious to the true effects of one's actions. From toxic art materials, to energy-guzzling art museums (and the toxic chemicals used to maintain the western sense of landscape aesthetics around them), to classical music stations sponsored by huge corporations, to popular music hijacked by those same corporations--all of it now dependent on environmentally-destructive high technology--art seemed to be the enemy of ecology.

Popular music in particular raised my hackles. An unfortunate run-in with too many decibels at a rock concert during high school had left me with temporarily impaired hearing in one ear, and I found I had to stop listening to recorded and amplified music entirely, for a number of years, in order for my hearing to recover. As a child and young teenager I had loved some popular music (much more than classical, which often seemed stuffy), but my descent into overseriousness, my ear injury, and my desire to tune in to the natural world and tune out western civilization converged to make me reject my music-loving past. I did embrace certain unamplified, indigenous music, but from my simplified ecologist's perspective, which viewed the world as a set of dichotomies, all other music was a waste of my time--either the self-indulgence of the wealthy or a consumer commodity and propaganda for mass culture. Once I left the Native American reservation I lived on immediately after college, the only music that I found acceptable was certain acoustic, homemade folk music, the music of the birds, the trees, and the rest of the natural world, and the music of my mind.

As I committed my life to gardening, ecological living, and teaching others, the only "art" that merited my time and energy became creative patterning of garden vegetables (even flowers seemed for a long time to be irresponsible frivolity). The only "dance" I engaged in took place in the aisles of the garden. "Drama" came periodically in staff meetings, where a whole bunch of people in various stages of the sickness of taking ourselves and our unholistic views of ecology too seriously battled against our reflections in one another. I lived as close to a "pure" ecological life as I could design, according to my dichotomous worldview.

Was I happy? No. I was (from one perspective) a discontented, obsessive, ecological fanatic whose main connection to reality was through growing and eating organic food, whose only idea of fun consisted of creating sheet-mulched potato beds or collecting slugs into buckets and dumping them into the creek. Work took precedence over play, "ecology" over art, duty over desire, self-denial over self-gratification. It wasn't sustainable, but it was pure. (I oversimplify a bit, but you get the idea.)

 

After about a decade of shutting out most of what we generally consider to be the world of music, I couldn't hold out any longer. I started to listen to some ecologically-oriented folk singers, and also to tapes of classical music (which I finally started to be able to appreciate) sent to me by the performers (my family, half a continent away). My ears had recovered physically from the rock concert trauma, but my psychological and emotional recovery had taken much longer.

As I let music into my life again, I noticed its incredible healing properties. In a music-deprived world, I'd grown accustomed to living with a certain level of constant anxiety. As I gradually allowed music back into my life--and allowed myself to consider the possibility that constant anxiety is not a normal, desirable frame of mind for someone attempting to live an ecological life--I also started to hack away at my other dualistic attitudes. From a hypercritical standpoint, everything--including the sheet-mulched potatoes--is unacceptable. But, I'd discovered, that is no way to live. Through a series of real-life, assumption-challenging experiences, and a series of inner realizations, I started to understand the healing power of acceptance. And once one accepts something, it is only one further step to actually embrace it. In the embrace comes wholeness.

 

The book was on my mind. I didn't want to write a typical gardening book. I wanted it to be different. I wanted to break the mold--not only for gardening books, but for myself. Despite the inroads provided by accepting certain kinds of music again, my personal world still did not have as much music, humor, or creative expression in it as I actually needed. (In fact, I had been very prone to infatuation with musicians in recent years--as readers of Talking Leaves music reviews may have surmised. Only in retrospect do I recognize that part of my infatuation occurred because these musicians were expressing parts of myself that I'd been suppressing.)

Dawn shed its first light on the landscape outside the train. Against a gradually brightening, red early-morning sky, Mt. Shasta rose to our east. I looked out the window at this majestic mountain.

After my long, sleep-deprived, physically-uncomfortable night, full of too much food and not enough inspiration, the mountain's presence and beauty were stunning. If I could live in the reality of Mt. Shasta, it seemed, I would never again experience anything other than awe, wonder, and gratitude for being alive on this beautiful planet.

As I watched the mountain, my mind returned to the subject of my earlier musings: my organic gardening book-to-be. Then strange phrases and fragments started entering my mind. "Salt and Pepper's Only for When Vegetables Are Bland" ... "Do You Want to Know the Seed Depth?" ... "I Want to Dig by Hand" ... "Here Come the Slugs" ... "All Your Seeds Are Love." (Any resemblance between these titles and "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," "Do You Want to Know a Secret?," "I Want to Hold Your Hand," "Here Comes the Sun," and "All You Need Is Love" is, as you'll learn, purely coincidental.)

I was aware of a certain timelessness as my mind drifted back and forth over the Beatles repertoire I had listened to over and over, so thoroughly, twenty to thirty years before (and almost never since my mid-teens). I remembered being five years old, spinning around and around as I climbed up onto the coffee table in my parents' living room as we listened to the climax of the just-released Sgt. Pepper album, jumping off and landing on the final piano chord of "A Day in the Life." I remembered the happy times of my life, when the world seemed like home, when I wasn't ruled by a black-and-white hypercriticality, when I was secretly or not-so-secretly in love with someone special or with the world-at-large, and when the Beatles knew about it and sang about it from my record player.

Every Beatles title I thought of, in my sleep-deprived semi-delirium, could be twisted in some way to be about an aspect of organic gardening or farming, and every gardening topic I wanted to cover in my book could somehow be fit into the altered lyrics of a Beatles song. With Mt. Shasta, gardening, and the Beatles simultaneously in my consciousness, the crescendo of titles and phrases came to me nonstop for nearly two hours, at the end of which I had written down the notes that I would flesh out over the following two winters into a full-length book of 57 gardening-related songs (poems, for copyright reasons--to be read to the background of your Beatles albums), 43 lost songs/poems (of which only titles and snippets of information remain), commentary, quizzes, resource lists, etc. The Beetless were born in the shadow of Mt. Shasta, and the rest, as they say, is history.

I published The Beetless' Gardening Book: An Organic Gardening Songbook/Guidebook a little over a year after this encounter. Propelled by this admittedly off-the-wall literary project, I had started a cover band, The Organic VegeBeatles, to perform the Beetless' gardening songs (until a conversation with Sony, the Beatles' music copyright holders, put a damper on further performances, and the songs became poems). But in those halcyon days, since our group had no bass player, I bought and learned the rudiments of playing the bass guitar. All of a sudden I had an obsession other than raising and eating organic vegetables. My life was expanding beyond its formerly narrow bounds.

I started to have fun outside the garden as well as in it. I got up in front of audiences and engaged in witty banter, overcoming my lifelong stage fright. Through this project I rediscovered music--the magic of creating it, not just listening to it. In a fit of overenthusiasm, I even joined the musicians' union. My sense of humor, admittedly often subtle (such as making you read this entire article just so that I can promote my book), was given more chance to emerge. I started to like more and more kinds of music--kinds of music I'd sneered at before. In fact, I started to like more and more kinds of everything, all expressions of peoples' and the universe's immense creativity, as I gave my own self more permission to be creative and expressive. Many of my sacred cow dichotomies crumbled. I bought a piano. I stumbled through Mozart sonatas, listened to tapes of the Beatles, Bach, Buffy St. Marie, and BaBenzŽlŽ Pygmies, and quietly cheered the Beetless as they charmed and weaseled their way into gardener's beds on both sides of the Atlantic.

 

Last summer, reading Carol Buchanan's Brother Crow, Sister Corn: Traditional American Indian Gardening, I discovered that, despite the spontaneous, unpremeditated way in which my book was born, it is actually heir to a long tradition. As part of Native American community life (doubtless this applies to indigenous people everywhere), all gardening peoples had gardening songs through which they prayed, recounted the myths, legends, and stories of how they and the creatures around them came to be, told of their intentions and challenges in gardening, and even courted one another in the garden. And many of these songs persist today, in peoples with intact gardening traditions. Children of the Sixties, molded by the change and cultural confusion of our times, and only now finding their way back to the soil, the Beetless nevertheless remember what too many gardeners (including me) have often forgotten: that gardening is a whole experience, worth singing about, and that plants, like people, appreciate good music, kind words, witty repartee, celebration, and love. The Beetless can't live in a world where work squelches play, where "ecology" makes no room for "art," where music is considered just a commodity or a symbol, where poetry isn't important, where people themselves aren't seen as wondrous expressions of nature, where laughter is frowned upon. After too much time spent under the influence of the Blue Meanies (see Yellow Submarine if you've forgotten who they are), I am glad to be back where ecology and art can't be separated, because they're everything.

 

Chris Roth is managing editor of Talking Leaves. The Beetless' website is at http://members.aol.com/growseed

Art as Ritual: The Deep Ecology of Relationship

"Culture comes up out of the earth, vibrating through the body, as each individual affirms life and expresses her or his unique creativity. It is kept alive by consciously honoring the sacredness of the four Great Mysteries: food, sex, birth, and death. The ceremonial arts are channels for people to express their relationship with these primal mysteries." - Sedonia Cahill

While we may hesitate to call it worship, it is more than adoration that fosters the heights of our art. It is an acknowledging and glorifying of the inner essence of the subject, the numinous essence that our creations can, at best, only allude to. It is the connection of Vision to the visible, Spirit to the physical, fostered by our own loving hands, the mixing on the palette of pain and joy, struggle and hope.

There's an honesty to real art that makes it more than decoration, that raises it to the level of ritual. One celebrates not only the lines and color of a particular landscape, but the character that breeds and defines its landed features, the spirits of place honored in deft strokes by one who loves the land in the hush of compost and gray of winter as much as the brilliant warmth of Spring greens. And it is just as true for our poetry, correspondence and diary entries, for craft and song and dance dedicated to the illumination of the lasting inner power, the energetic fibers that connect us to the All. Dances to the hunted animals, chants to the rain gods, magical paintings on mats of bark and myths told and retold over the proverbial tribal fire--all are stories, and it is story that binds us to our beliefs, to our world, to the past and the future. They are the threads that weave us back into our contact and our place, that portion of the crucial lessons handed down through the inheritance of crafts rather than genes. Since the very beginnings of what it means to be "human" we have venerated and exalted the gods, the land, and our true loves--and it is in this place of art and ritual where we know these things as one.

We may not immediately think of art when we think of the covenants of lifestyle. But it is precisely the lack of art in the substance and administration of our lives that reduces them to anything less. What is missing is not only more artistic form in life, but the art of life: the art of conscious, responsive, celebratory relationship. The assignment is not only to make the relationship work, but to make it beautiful as well. Not only meeting the needs of the other, but delighting them with our means for doing so. In our relationship to the land, the care we gift it includes our attentiveness, love, protection, and artful celebration of shared being. In our ecstatic coming together there is the opportunity for a further dissolving of boundaries. Boundaries between us and the land. Between the creator and the created, the artist and the art.

It's far too easy to relegate art to those visible forms seeming to exist beyond ourselves, to finished and salable products rather than recognizing it as an ongoing process in which we play an essential role. Say the word "art" and many will conjure images of mummified paintings hung in sterile museums, the tastier graphics adorning the expressway billboards or the better of the year's dramatic films. For some, art is whatever catches and pleases the eye so long as it was informed by the human hand, while for others it can only be found in the few of those creations that manage to stand out from the rest, enlisting, stirring and releasing our reservoirs of pent-up emotion. Still others find in the creations of Nature or God, in the luster of the sunset and the grace of beating wings an artistic perfection one can barely approximate on paper or in clay.

What we nearly all forget is the degree to which we can and should be participants in the artistry we're immersed in. While we may consider ourselves "spectators" we inevitably contribute awareness, experience and emotion to what is principally an exchange. Exchanges with someone's painting, with the architecture that surrounds us or the heavy-breathing clouds above our heads. We are said to be the only species capable of creating art, and yet we may also be the only lifeform ever to exist outside the state-of-art.

But it was not always so. Not for the pale villagers of ancient Europe who left us the sculpted body of the archetypal Earth Mother, the bearer of all of life. And not for the first hominid inhabitants of this watershed either. The Sweet Medicine People left behind shards of painted pottery that evoke the Great Mystery, fired clay fragments of a life of honoring, picture-puzzle pieces still vibrating with the energy of years of reverent touch. They spoke their fealty for the land in rock art carved out of their collective and individual souls, lightning bolts and the seed-carrier Kokopelli painted on the sides of the caves. Here too are the forms of the artists' fingers and palms--their signatures, the marks of their selves, in graphic hands reaching out to their descendants across the chasm of time. They left enduring images of their priorities and loves, deities and dreams. They left their holiest expressions of wonder and communion, the evidence of a marriage with place consecrated in timeless art.

The lover in us is a child that likes to draw, handle a sharp pencil, splash water colors or inhale the aroma of the turpentine and linseed oil that thins and binds the pigments to canvas. Vision can be as immediate as touch, direct and with no need of explanation. Like altar boys we ready the vacant sheets of tree-flesh, release our lifeforce in a fountain of red paints, freed of all preconceptions about design as meaning proceeds to take over. One never really manufactures either adventure or art. We are confronted by it, consumed by it... and remade within it. It always has a purpose, one beyond the range of the artist's intentions, and it is willingly given away. Here today and gone tomorrow, like those golden cottonwood leaves. Like those Tibetan sand paintings intricately crafted in this ever-shifting medium, definitive colors sure to blow across one another, mixing and blending until fully melded into, fully indifferentiable from the landscape from which they came. But then it's not in the completion of some project that we become fulfilled. Rather, it is in the making of our art, in the living of our lives that we're made whole.

"The purpose of Art is not to represent the outward appearance of things, but their inner significance," Aristotle proclaimed. This is true for those aesthetic forms evolved independent of human influence as much as for our "own" creations, for rivers and twisted cedar limbs as well as the sculpture forming beneath the attentive motion of our tools. Each glinting rock, each flex of river muscle an inspiration to the heart, and food for soul. Art was, is, what comes of the relationship between self and other, when allowed to express itself. It is a complex and evolving structure for relating that we exist and act within. With or without the artist's brush we reach out to make our mark, from the center of our experience of art, of life, of our mated land.

In the artist's vernacular our attention to form is called "style." Once we've made art into a way of being, an activity, a verb, we see the ways in which it corresponds to the word "grace"--which can mean a "seemingly effortless beauty or charm of movement," "an excellence bestowed by God" and "a prayer of thanksgiving." It is in this sense of motive beauty, beneficence and gratitude that we impart grace to our acts, and are in turn graced by the inspirited world we act upon and within.

Repetitive chores turn into art whenever they're executed with style, then become ritual concurrent with our conscious acknowledgment of their meaning and importance. The same acts completed without our mindful attention and conscious intent are simply habits. We don't need to take time away from living to engage in ritual, so much as we need to ritualize our daily existence. Sitting up in bed each morning to face the first sun becomes a ritual, as soon as we're conscious of it as an act of interpenetration and show of gratitude. The sharing of food moves from a quick refueling to a slow and artful unfolding, and then into ritual as each serving is consecrated, every bite undertaken as communion. Communion with the lifeforms that feed us, with the sun and rain and soil that made the salad possible, with the spiritual/evolutionary power moving through both consumer and consumed.

The result is reconnection, as our art and practice weaves us back into the material of our experience. Together with the ritual efforts of others, we co-create the living fabric of culture, jointly paint on that fabric the story of our struggles, our miracles...our beautiful, beautiful hope.

 

Jesse Wolf Hardin (a.k.a. Lone Wolf Circles) has been a contributor to Talking Leaves for over a decade, helping to inspire our deep ecological focus. Wolf is the author of the book Full Circle (Llewellyn Pub.'91) and the upcoming Kindred Spirits: Animal Teachers & The Will of the Earth. Questers and apprentices are accepted on a limited basis, at his wilderness retreat. All queries should be sent care of this journal.

 

 

©1998 Talking Leaves
Summer/Fall 1998
Volume 8, Number 2
Art and Ecology

Art in Bali: Creativity and Community

Additional photographs by Che Jo Last winter I spent three months in Bali, a small island in Indonesia. My original intention in going to Bali was to study dance and other art forms. Quickly, I realized that taking art classes was teaching me much more than art. As I experienced cultural differences, I began to get a glimpse at the relationship between myself, the creative process and the community around me. These perceptions and understandings are ever evolving. By writing them I don't intend to idealize Balinese culture or portray the end-all truth, but to inspire the contemplation of the relationship between creativity and community.

Right away, people took me in and I was amazed by their generosity and openness, and the ways in which they live together. I lived with a family of eight, spanning four generations, which is common. The people I knew live in an intricate social structure which insures that everyone has an important role in their family compound, their extended family, and the banjar (a religious neighborhood organization). This sense of community is also experienced on a personal level. People of the same gender are constantly holding hands or have their arms around each other--I even saw two policemen casually hugging in the street. This ease in relating and expressing affection is extended to visitors as well. I found that after a short introduction the people I met would invite me to their homes, help me get places, and even insist on buying me meals. In this way they absorb visitors into their communities. "Whose tourist is that?" is a common Balinese question, expressing the sense of ownership they have of tourists. I had many experiences reaffirming that this ownership reaches beyond economic need and comes from an honest desire to feel connected. As a young woman, I attracted a lot of parental attention, especially from my teachers.

This is the context in which I was learning new skills in dance, pottery, batik, basket making, and wood carving, as well as learning to speak Indonesian. What struck me most in the beginning was the profound simplicity in their use of repetition as a teaching method. In my two hour long dance class, Gusti Ayu, my teacher, would do the same ten minute dance the entire session, rarely slowing it down or explaining the movements. This is very different from dance classes in the US, where we are taught to understand the choreography in our minds. Gusti Ayu was not teaching my mind to tell my body how to move, she simply taught my body. I learned to love the process of copying her movements until I was able to rely on my body to follow the music.

The use of repetition helped convey knowledge and skills, as well as connecting me to the generations of Balinese who assisted in the evolution of a particular dance, design, or motif. In my study of basket making I learned not only the technique, but a specific design, which I would repeat until I had mastered it. As a beginner it was my role to simply learn what others had already created. I was being taught to join them in their creation, not begin my own process. In this way, I was pushed to let go of creativity as a mode of self-expression and embrace it as a means of being part of community and feeling connected to other people.

I studied pottery with two traditional potters who work with small, hand-spun wheels and use clay dug from their yard. Their daughters and granddaughters bring the unglazed ware to the market in baskets they carry on their heads. Learning with them was a magical experience and very insightful. When I first began, my teacher would throw the pot and place her hand on mine, training my hand to move like hers. As I was able, she allowed me to try it on my own. In this way we made many lanterns, bowls, dishes, and vases together. It was in this process that I discovered the moment of having what felt to me like "my" creation become "our" creation. This was a very frustrating moment: I had begun a pot on my own, and as I lost control her hand suddenly joined mine in order to save the pot. Not only was she assuring that a usable pot was made, she was showing me the correct technique. I became frustrated many times before I realized that unconsciously my motive was not to make a pot or even to learn how to make one, but to have made something by myself. I wanted a sense of ownership and accomplishment that I could achieve only by being solely responsible for the creation.

Through discussions with my western friends, who had all had similar frustrations, I realized that we had an assumed separateness which the Balinese didn't have. They seemed to have included us in their creative process. I remember one evening in a basket making session: while my American friend left for a moment, a neighbor wandered by and complemented her basket and then began working on it. The ease with which they share in creativity acknowledges that creation is the focus, not who the creator is. I remember when one of my friends had started a batik and then became sick, Nyoman, our teacher, completed it for her. He explained that he really wanted her to have something to bring home. I had a similar experience with a woodcarving that the grandfather in my family compound was helping me with. When I was a few days away from my departure Ba'pak finished the carving, refining and sanding it.

When I showed my parents and friends what I had made in Bali they were impressed and it was refreshing for me to feel so unattached. I was able to really understand that it was the relationships I had with the people that is important, and this trivialized any sense of achievement or failure I might otherwise have felt.

Another aspect of living with the Balinese that had a big impression on me was that religion is interconnected to all parts of life. Much of the beauty the Balinese create is an offering to the Gods; whether it is the ornate leaf and flower petal offerings left in auspicious places throughout the compound or a temple dance, lasting through the night. In this way, artistic creation is linked to the spiritual security and evolution of the community, acknowledging the spiritual interdependence.

Witnessing the use of creation as an affirmation of the interconnectedness of people was inspiring for me. I saw in myself and others the ability to let go of the self-centered nature that we allow to separate us from each other, God, and the Earth.

Kestrel Gates is a dancer, gardener, graduate of the 1997 Lost Valley Deep Agroecology Program, and assistant in Lost Valley's 1998 Summer Apprenticeship Program.

 

©1998 Talking Leaves
Summer/Fall 1998
Volume 8, Number 2
Art and Ecology

Dance, Theatre, Community, Life: The Young Women's Ritual Theatre

I am a dance and theatre artist using personal story as my foundation. It occurs to me that I don't do my work just for entertainment and aesthetic value, but for something much deeper. I do it for personal growth and transformation. I practice my art with seriousness and with a sense of the great healing that we humans on this planet must commit to in order to survive.

I believe in movement and theatre, and in all forms of art, as important medicine at this time, for all of us to participate in, not just the trained and talented. In a world currently so ridden with confusion and pain, art provides an outlet of expression, a place to be creative and feel powerful as creators, a place to share our intimate selves and play together as the children do.

The Young Women's Ritual Theatre
For the last two years, I have been working intensively with a bunch of teenage girls (13-19), who write and perform theatre about their lives. We call ourselves the Young Women's Ritual Theatre. The word "ritual" in our name refers to this made space of creativity and exploration as being a rite of passage that each girl moves through as she grows into an adult. It is her feelings, questions, and visions on this journey that make up our script.

We use stream-of-consciousness journaling to first help identify which issue is pressing on us the most. After we've uncovered something, whether it's about moving out of our home away from our family for the first time, or about the pressures of school, about friendship, or about the latest clear-cut in a nearby forest, we then go after it, teasing out the excess until we have a finished written piece of prose or a poem.

Next, we decide how this piece of writing could be brought to life and expressed on the stage. Is it a monologue with just me up there? Do I want other actors with me for context and background? Which costumes and props will help embody the symbols and emotions of the text? Each girl creates her own "piece" (and some in tandem with others), in her own language and rhyme, and then we weave the pieces together into a tapestry of their collective experience.

The mission of the YWRT is three-fold: to create a rite of passage for young people in this society; to offer an artistic forum for the community to hear their voice and wisdom; and to confront our society's taboos and question what is "normal." Through this work together I have watched these young people gain a tremendous sense of themselves and give ample support to each other. I teach them as they teach me. They teach me how to be strong inside myself, how to be honest and direct with my words, how to show vulnerability, and how to collaborate. These young women are passionate and articulate as they share their personal truths. They offer us hope, and courage to do the same.

Collaboration and Community
In a world run on the fuel of competition, an aspect to the YWRT process that feels especially precious to me is the work it takes to merge our visions into a common one. We each come into rehearsals every week with our own style and opinion of how things should go, each of us holding a vision slightly different from the rest but equally valid. How can I, as the director, offer my suggestions and years of experience and, at the same time, give them plenty of room to share their own ideas and begin to practice their own leadership skills? How can the girls listen and add to the ideas of another in the circle instead of dismissing them as stupid and replacing them with their own?

These are delicate balances to find when one lives in community. But somehow in the YWRT we do it! We manage to combine our varying perspectives so that the sum is cohesive yet diverse, like a picnic feast. It has taken a lot of sweat and tears and many meetings to find this rhythm together. Our commitment to one another and to honest communication has been our fuel.

Art as Life
My definition of what art is has been changing. I don't view "art" or "artist" anymore as something specialized or only out on the fringe. My definition has become much broader. Art is a sunflower, a droplet of water balanced on the end of a leaf, an improvised song sung by a child on a walk with his grandma...art is a little yellow bird balancing on a black telephone wire, a quiet moment of understanding shared with a stranger, a red painted toe-nail.

I think of Siddha Pokhari, a tiny village tucked up into the foothills of the Himalayas, where I lived for seven months. There "art" is not defined, just lived. There is no electricity or machinery, no police force or shopping malls, no theatres or galleries...just a handful of extended families surviving together and living their lives simply. As I would sit for hours watching them plant and harvest, carry water, sew, weave, cook, build, paint bright colors onto the mud walls, joke and laugh with one another all day long I would be amazed at how beautiful they and their crafts were. Without even trying or putting labels on it, art was everywhere. I saw this native life as a peaceful and contented one, not only for the humans but also for the earth and animals around them.

The art of being present; the art of feeling content and in control of one's life; the art of loving ourselves and one another. This I feel is what my dance and drama work is about...stomping around in the mud puddles and letting ourselves be.

Hannah Fox teaches and performs dance and theatre throughout the world. She specializes in PLAYBACK THEATRE, a form of improvisational theatre based around personal stories spontaneously told by the audience. Hannah is the co-director of Eugene Playback Theatre and director of the Young Women's Ritual Theatre Co. Please contact her with comments and questions or if interested in classes and workshops. 1555 Jefferson St. (rear), Eugene, OR 97402, (541) 345-5152, or email: [email protected].

 

©1998 Talking Leaves
Summer/Fall 1998
Volume 8, Number 2
Art and Ecology

Earth, Ovens, Art

A couple of years ago I spoke to a college professor about continuing my art education. He liked my stone carving, but hesitated about the sculpted earthen ovens I'd been doing in building workshops and elementary school environmental programs. He was too polite to ask, "what's it got to do with art? And why ovens?" But he did say his wife would love to have one in their new outdoor kitchen/barbecue area.

His unconsidered response answered his own well-considered question, yet the question rang in my ears. What, as a sculptor, did I have to show for myself? ...workshop projects, no money (but plenty of beans and potatoes from my garden), no carving (but a cob studio-in-progress), and various frustrations and anxieties. As always, however, friends reminded me that faith is the way, and that questions are answers:

Where does beauty come from, if not nature? Who can be an artist without knowing nature? What is knowledge except an understanding, a feel for life, gathered as experience, and expressed, directly or abstractly, sometimes in two dimensions, sometimes in three? Indeed, what is art without earth?

Earth--saturated by rain, warmed by sun, inspired by wind--is the source of beauty. And what is bread, if not the earth we eat? The seed in the soil, brought to life by rain and sun and wind, and transformed again by water, yeast, the baker's hand, and fire. What is communion, but knowledge of God's body, and the blessing of fellowship? Beauty begins by feeding the body whose forms I seek with a chisel in stone, or a pencil on paper. Indeed, what is art without bread? So as I work towards sculpture, I also build earthen ovens, grow a garden, teach, and when people ask, I call myself a sculptor.

"But your stone carving is better," suggests my professor friend, kindly. But what is the measure of art unless it speaks to people, and they respond? An earthen oven is both practical and beautiful, and costs little or nothing. And bread you can eat; art you can't.

Ovens may be unsophisticated and simple, but I agree with Brancusi that "sculpture must be lovely to touch, friendly to live with, not only well-made." Sculpture should be an invitation -- to sit, to rest, to talk; to cook, to make feasts and festivals.

Making an earthen oven is such an invitation, and its full, round form is indeed, "lovely to touch, friendly to live with." But somehow, an oven is not sculpture, despite the fact that it is mass, space, volume, form, beauty. A person who might never consider creating "art" will jump at an opportunity to build an oven. What's the difference? You could say that building an oven is craft not art, but it seems to me that separating art from craft elevates money and status over life and beauty.

Life asks us to participate--not just to watch, not just to learn, but to create; to be whole and wholly involved, rather than apart and alone. You don't have to call yourself an "artist" to engage hands, head, and heart in the genesis of new form and relationship...or to celebrate and renew your self and the world...or even just to make a mud oven so you can bake your own bread.

Readers are encouraged to contact Kiko Denzer about creating ovens, sculpture, or teaching (oven-and-other-building workshops). His book, Build Your Own Earth Oven, costs $11 (includes cost of mailing within the US); price is $6 each for orders of 10 or more. The latest edition is newly revised and enlarged as of January '98: 8-1/2 x 7 inches, 43 pages, with photos, drawings, diagrams, and a new section on how to make traditional sourdough breads. Contact him at P.O. Box 576, Blodgett, OR 97326-0576 or via email at [email protected].

 

©1998 Talking Leaves
Summer/Fall 1998
Volume 8, Number 2
Art and Ecology

Ecological Art

One of the most interesting developments on the international art scene today is the growth of so-called Ecological Art--art created in direct response to the environmental crisis. Everywhere, artists are voicing their concern, creating works to dramatize this concern, and working directly on the earth itself--sculpting it, transmuting it-- to repair the damage done.

Ecological art springs from a long tradition--one that, in the United States at least, dates back to the 19th century. Landscape painters from the Hudson River School were among the first to warn of the danger of "the wilderness passing away and the necessity of saving and perpetuating its features," as Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School expressed it. Their panoramic vistas romantically documented the wilderness they sought to preserve and occasionally contained foreboding images of industrial encroachment as well. In Andrew Melrose's "Westward the Star of the Empire Takes its Way," the blinding glare of a train's searchlight shines out against the darkening evening sky with prophetic implications. However obscured by the self-referential painterly traditions which culminated in Abstract Expressionism and Post Expressionism, both impulses of the Hudson River School--the celebration of nature and the depiction of technology's encroachment--have lived on through Ryder, Homer, and Hopper, to name just a few, well into our times.

In the late '60s, just as environmentalism was taking shape as a mass movement, a group of minimalist sculptors again turned to nature--this time as both inspiration and medium. Two leading lights, Robert Smithson of "Spiral Jetty" fame and Michael Heizer, whose "Double Negative" consisted of twin trenches cut into a high-desert mesa, built massive earthworks out of soil and stone, and "environmental art" was born. This early land art, however, was constructed with little regard for environmental consequence. Smithson and Heizer bulldozed and scarred the earth's surface, damaging the "wilderness" they so ambiguously elegize. Today's ecological artists, in contrast, pursue gentler, more collaborative strategies.

Because ecological art takes different forms and continues to evolve, it's difficult to categorize. For convenience's sake we will talk about Reclamations, Reawakenings, Recyclings, Dramatizations, and Rituals/Performances. Bear in mind, however, that these categories overlap, and many artists shift across modalities.

 

RECLAMATIONS

Reclamation art seeks to repair damaged nature in ways that are somehow beautiful and meaningful. One of the most interesting reclamation projects now underway is the Nine Mile Run project out of Carnegie Mellon featuring artists Bob Bingham, Tim Collins and Reiko Goto. The 230 acre Nine Mile Run site in Pittsburgh is a "brownfield," a dumping ground for slag from surrounding steel mills. A river runs through it, choked with pollution from municipal waste. Working with an interdisciplinary team, Bingham, Collins, and Goto see in Nine Mile Run an opportunity for studying nature's resilience.

Their project--still in its beginning stages--treats the site not as a brownfield, but as a complex ecosystem with enormous potential for renewal. They ask: What plants exist there now? Over 144 species! How are these related to other living things? Which plants attract butterflies, for instance? How can the soil be reclaimed? The watershed made pure?

Goto collects samples of the site's vegetation and plants these in carefully calibrated mixtures of soil and slag. In an installation called " Equation," ((gallery-art) + greenhouse = reclamation) spectators are drawn to the site by the promise of "art." Containers of slag line the walls of a near-empty gallery. Look carefully and you see moss is beginning to grow. From the gallery, one proceeds to a greenhouse and garden teeming with new life: sunflowers, lilacs and black-eyed susans, sparrows and mourning doves, crickets and caterpillars; then on out to Nine Mile Run which, in the context of this "narrative" journey, can be experienced in new ways; as exciting, as possible. In the act of reclamation, explain Goto and Collins, lies the creation of aesthetic experience.

In Mel Chin's "Revival Fields," which use living organisms to "cure" polluted sites, human participation seems eerily absent. Located at Pig's Eye Landfill, St. Paul, Chin's first "Revival Field" was planted with hyperaccumulator plants capable of absorbing heavy metal toxins from tainted soil. The field was laid out with formal exactitude--a cross inside a circle inside a square. Chain link fencing outlined the circle and square. The inner green circle--the locus for "revival"--contrasted starkly with the rubble between circle and square which was been left unplanted as a control site. The cross was formed by intersecting paths which traversed the field. Spectators were "fenced out," as though from a site where warnings were posted. From overhead, the field appears as though through the crosshairs of a gun aimed at a dangerous presence on the ground.

Like Michelangelo, who chipped away at blocks of marble to free the forms imprisoned within, Chin is a sculptor--or so he explains--who "reduces" his materials. In Chin's case what is reduced is "unseen" and the artist's tool is biochemistry rather than the chisel. As with Michelangelo, the end result is a kind of "liberation."

If Chin's work leaves one feeling excluded from a "danger zone," Patricia Johanssen's landworks invite the community inside. Johanssen designs public gardens with planted paths shaped like macrocosmic projections of tiny organisms--bacteria, lichens. In Dallas, Johanssen created a park around a lagoon that had been depleted due to algal growth caused by chemical seepage. To reclaim the lagoon biologically, the artist reintroduced native plants, fish, turtles and shrimp. A series of curving sculptural paths extends from either end of the lagoon in the shape of two of the introduced plant species.

Species and watershed preservation is also the milieu of San Diego artists Newton and Helen Harrison, who travel around the world analyzing environmental problems and devising solutions. In the Sava River Valley, for example, the Harrisons were invited to study the effects of chemical contamination on one of Europe's last great oak forests. Traveling up and downriver they talked to farmers and foresters, factory workers and bureaucrats. They consulted botanists, ornithologists, civic historians. After synthesizing reams of data, the artists came up with a proposal to create a nature corridor of unpolluted land along the entire length of the Sava: wetland plants introduced to adjacent swamps would absorb pollutants naturally; organic farming would eliminate run-off from chemical fertilizers. (The Harrisons even suggested raising warm water fish in streams released for cooling from a nuclear power facility nearby.)

An integral part of the Harrison's work are the exhibits which complement their proposals. Combining transcribed texts and photographic documentation with poetry, sculpture and performance art, these form complex experiences which reconfigure the "landscape" of our collective cultural imagination: how we think about waterways, about forests, about the natural world.

Reclamation art takes many forms. Lynn Hull creates sculptural habitat structures for wildlife... Agnes Denes builds "Tree Mountain--A Living Time Capsule," a man-made mountain in Finland on which 10,000 trees are planted by 10,000 people from around the world... St. Paul artist Viet Ngo developed a patented process using duckweed to clean wastewater. Through his Lemna Corporation, Ngo has built more than a dozen "water parks"--actually water-processing plants--in shapes evocative of prehistoric sites... In a project of global proportions, "Ocean Earth," artist Peter Fend collaborates with naval architects, engineers and marine biologists on plans to restore the earth's coastline and harvest algae as a non-greenhouse gas-producing fuel.

 

REAWAKENINGS

Reawakeners create works that restore our sense of connection to the earth and renew our awareness of the beauty and delicate balance, intricacy and splendor inherent in nature.

For over 19 years, Andy Goldsworthy has worked almost exclusively with natural objects, creating on-site sculptures of twigs, pebbles, dandelions, ice, snow. In essence such work is ephemeral. A many pointed star formed out of icicles melts and leaves no trace. A screen of delicate twigs is blown over by the wind and reenters the ecosystem. Only photographs remain. Yet the fact that we can see the work only through documentation actually heightens its power to stir up a wrenching sense of the fragility, as well as the astonishing beauty, of the natural world.

Like Goldsworthy, G. Augustine Lynas sculpts natural materials into "ephemera," building giant sand sculptures on the beaches of Fire Island, New York. They are fantastical: princesses and ogres, mermaids and moats. Altered and finally reclaimed by the tide, Lynas' work recalls the sand castles of childhood, awakening us to delight and to an awareness of natural flow. "An arm goes," writes Lynas. "A city is washed away. The demise...is gradual, haphazard, sometimes violent, always surprising and fresh. You are reminded that everything is change, that it is the natural order of things."

Reviving nature-consciousness is also the concern of Alan Sonfist, an artist who introduces lost historical landscapes into urban centers. "Time Landscape," located on West Broadway in New York City, consists of a fenced-off area filled with vegetation from Manhattan's precolonial forest. The piece divides into three areas: a field of flowers and grass, and two forests--one of birch cedars, one of oak. While symbolically restorative, "Time Landscape's" real impact lies in its evocation of a buried heritage, its poignant demonstration that parks or no parks, something original and important has been lost.

Other Reawakeners concentrate our attention on particular elements of nature. Walter DeMaria made "The New York Earth Room" out of tons of soil piled onto the floor of a posh Soho gallery. Peter Richards uses the waves and tides of San Francisco Bay to produce the resonant sounds of his "Wave Organ." James Turrell draws our attention to light and sky. In works like Pennine Skyspace in Nottingham, England, the sky is seen through a framing aperture. We experience the way it changes across weather conditions and time of day with heightened awareness. Turrell's magnum opus, the Roden crater project, slated to open in three years, will be a massive complex of chambers and passageways aligned with astronomical events, all built within the crater of an extinct volcano in Arizona. A tunnel will lead the visitor to the exact center of the crater. Overhead, the sky will appear as an inverted bowl, perfectly aligned with the crater's rim--a true "celestial vault."

 

RECYCLINGS

Recycling as art is nothing new--think Duchamp's urinal as fountain, think Karl Schwitters' merz pieces--whole environments constructed from rags and junk. Art by definition always involves recycling, the resynthesis of materials and imagery into new aesthetic forms. Certain contemporary artists, with or without an environmentalist agenda, work entirely with "found" objects--bottlecaps, newspapers, buttons, poptops, iron from scrap heaps, discarded TV sets--and in this way celebrate recycling as a creative process.

Following in a long tradition of Outsider Art, many Recyclers exist beyond the established circuit. Clarence and Grace Woolsey in Iowa created "Caparena," an environment of over 400 bottle-cap constructions--little figurines, animals, a full-size bicycle, a wishing well. Ray Cyrek, a retiree in Florida, used thousands of aluminum poptops to construct lawn ornaments in the form of snowmen, windmills, angels and butterflies, covering the entire property in front of his trailer. Chinese refugees who arrived illegally in the United States in 1994 and were detained in federal prison, created American Eagle "freedom birds" out of woven magazine paper and toilet paper machŽ during their incarceration.

Others use the recycling process more self-consciously. Italian sculptor Enrico Prometti turns junk into jewelry/sculpture pieces which resemble artifacts from ancient Egypt. Topy Labrys, also Italian, creates art objects--jewelry, hats, purses, and strangely formed "lily pads"--out of recycled plastic, as part of a megaproject, "Stone Relics from the Year 3000." And Ken Butler, an artist/musician living in New York, has made hundreds of musical instruments out of objects found on the street--chair backs, brooms, screwdrivers, washboards and bicycle wheels. Butler plays the instruments which exist also as sculptures evocative of Picasso and Bracque's guitar collages. In 1996 he performed a multimedia opera, "Insects and Other Anxious Objects," at The Kitchen, New York's avant garde performance art center. Slide projections displayed fantastical insects with wings growing out of screwdriver, scissor and wrench "bodies" mutating into one another; the libretto was a series of poetical musings on insect life.

 

DRAMATIZATIONS

Other ecological artists create works which comment dramatically on critical environmental problems. Their art, often in the form of installations, communicates with striking visual imagery: allusion, metonymy, metaphor and visual puns.

Exemplary in the field is Betty Beaumont, installation artist extraordinaire. Her pieces are densely evocative, containing single images or an overlay of images which resonate poetically. One responds emotionally, and therein lies the artist's power. "Toxic Imaging" (1987) was born from investigations Beaumont began after a visit to Love Canal. Subsequent years of exhaustive research into chemical contamination inform the large installation: a rotating drum covered with pale yellow tickertape on which stand black and white TV sets turned away from the viewer...(hidden information)...a metal screen across which move stock market quotations...oil barrels topped with bound volumes of news clippings about dioxin spillage, leakage from waste dumps, Bhopal, Chernobyl--ten years worth of meticulously documented disasters...projections of boarded-up houses from Love Canal...TV sets used as light projectors for x-rays of damaged lungs...news reports of the disasters played simultaneously in a jumbled cacophony of sound: all fuse in a piece that is strangely terrifying. Reality has become surreal. Information overwhelms.

Another installation by Beaumont, "A Night In Alexandria...The Rain Forest...Whose Histories Are They Anyway?" (1990) forms a kind of poetic elegy to the destruction of the rainforests. "I didn't want to depict the subject matter literally," says Beaumont. Instead she created an installation containing shelves of burned books made, of course, from trees. The piece alludes to the great classical library destroyed by fire at Alexandria, and interprets the rainforest as an irreplaceable library of genetic information.

Beaumont's counterparts around the world make kindred dramatic statements. In Britain, Cornelia Hesse-Honegger has painted a series of riveting watercolors depicting mutant insects affected by fallout from Chernobyl... After the Exxon Valdez oil spill, New York artist Nicholas Arbatsky traveled to Alaska and used canvas as a blotter to absorb oil from contaminated beaches... As part of his ongoing series, "When the Tide is Out the Table is Set," Portland's Buster Simpson inserted giant porcelain plates into sewage outfalls. The pollutants the plates absorbed over the course of a year created a vividly colored glaze when Simpson fired them... Dutch artist Anne Mieke Backer's series "Living Houses," in which hedges grow up shaped as TV sets, tables, refrigerators and beds, comments on uncontrolled urban development in Flevoland.

 

RITUALS/PERFORMANCES

Finally, there are those artists who use ritual and performance to explore new ways of relating to nature either individually or collectively.

Joseph Beuys, often seen as the progenitor of ecological art, staged many quasi-ritual "actions" in the late '70s and early '80s. A founding member of the German Green Party, Beuys tried to expand the role of the artist in society: "We have a restricted idea of culture which debases everything," he wrote. Artists must go out of the world of museums into the "real world" and deal with a range of issues including "problems of nature." For Beuys, performance and ritual become a means to invoke and re-embody the idea of artist as shaman or communal healer.

In "Coyote: I Like America and America Likes Me" (1974) he staged an "action" that began when he landed on American soil. Wrapped in felt, he was picked up at the airport by an ambulance and carried on a stretcher to a downtown Manhattan gallery where he lived for three days shut up in a cage with a coyote--"in total communication and dialogue." The gallery floor was strewn with crumpled up copies of the Wall Street Journal on which the coyote urinated when "nature" called. Top that!

Some ritual and performance events are communal, and relate to ancient agrarian mythology and practices. Once a year, over Labor Day weekend, thousands of postmodern "pilgrims" swarm to "Burning Man," a contemporary mystery rite where a giant effigy, reminiscent of the Green Man sacrificed during Medieval midsummer rituals, burns day and night. Spectators are encouraged to participate in any way they want--wild outfits, spontaneous performances. The desert is celebrated as a locus for creative renewal and communal cross-fertilization.

Minimalist British sculptor Richard Long is also a kind of pilgrim, traversing the earth, mapping its contours with his crossings and recrossings. Since 1967, Long has walked across English countryside and Scottish hills, the deserts of North Africa, the Himalayas and the Andes, leaving little trace of his presence behind. A small pile of rocks, a line of sticks. For a 1967 "path piece," Long walked back and forth across a grassy field until his shoeprints merged into a single indistinguishable line cut in the sod. Walking, the artist dramatizes a way of "being in nature," of passing through both the natural world and life itself, which is both open and gentle.

Countless fistfights have broken out over the question: Does art matter? Was Auden right that "poetry makes nothing happen"? In this era of electronic communication and global economy, it's debatable whether the product of one person's hand can be said to cause change in civilization. What is indisputable, however, is that art retains its power to provoke emotion in the hearts and minds of its viewers, and in the provocation of that emotion, perhaps, lies hope for the preservation of the natural world.

Katherine Kormendi is an actor and free-lance writer in New York City. Check out her website at http://www.libertytree.org/News/kormendi.html.

 

©1998 Talking Leaves
Summer/Fall 1998
Volume 8, Number 2
Art and Ecology

Singing in the Wilderness

I have just returned from an experience that is a perfect example of how Art and Ecology are interrelated. The trip was called "Singing and Hiking with Joanne Rand (in the Ishi Wilderness)." It was organized by Common Earth, a non-profit organization sponsoring wilderness trips for women. During this five-day outing, in between singing and hiking, I informally interviewed Joanne Rand as well as Angie Curtes (a Co-Director and trip leader of Common Earth) on the topic of Art and Ecology. I also pondered the subject myself while sitting under giant Ponderosa Pine and on a boulder beside the roaring river.

So how do art and ecology intermingle? What is their dance about? Art is a form of expression; a way of expressing oneself creatively. It is creative in that it does away with our primary spoken or written language as the way of communicating or it alters how we use that language. Singing takes language and blends it with rhythm, tune, emotion, and harmony--all things present within ourselves and the rest of the natural world. Art as a form of expression implies it is also a form of communication. When you express yourself you communicate what is going on in your soul. Through art we can communicate with nature. We can express what is within us and we can also channel the expressions of other life forms and energies in nature. Art, in its essence, increases our connection with the natural world.

Sitting on a large flat boulder in the sun, I watch Joanne. Her eyes are closed. She is tapping her fingers against the palm of her hand while she rocks back and forth humming...creating. It evolves into a beautiful chant that flows right down into our souls as it probably flowed up from the earth and through Joanne. This sound, this expression resounding in the valley feels to me that it speaks of and for the Yahi people--a Native American tribe once inhabiting this land. I listen, I sing along, and I understand (stand under).

To prepare for creating song in our workshops, Joanne shows us breathing and grounding techniques that help us be more open for the energies to flow through us. In the morning we do a Cherokee Dance of the Four Directions. Using sound and movement, our connection with nature is empowered. We are pushing out the blockages and opening up the channels to the four elements and Spirit...and then seeing how it moves us...in song.

 

SONG AS PRAYER

This dance and many of the songs we sing are really prayers. In this form, song enhances our spiritual connection with nature.

I asked Joanne how she felt about song as prayer:

JR: Many songs are written to help us through ordeals, prepare us for transition, or to help shape our vision. There are different types of songs for different emotions. Prayer songs are like a mantra. They are often born out of fear. They help us endure and thrive as individuals and as a group or mass. One night while backpacking alone in bear country, I created the song "Sacred Places"" to help deal with my fear. Here is an excerpt:

SACRED PLACES, SACRED SPACES
WE STILL COME TO BE NEAR YOU
SUN AND SNOW AND SOIL AND ROCK, SAFE PLACE
ANGELS CIRCLING ABOUT, SACRED PLACE

Prayer songs are also born out of reverence and love. This is an excerpt from "I Love It":

I LOVE THIS PLACE
I LOVE THIS PLACE
I LOVE THIS HEALING PLACE
THIS PLACE THAT SINGS

TALKING WITH JOANNE

JB: Joanne, how do you feel song connects us with nature?

JR: We are nature. We're extensions of the earth. Everything is made up of the same stuff. Our culture is based on separating us from nature. When this place gives us a song, it is this place--the voice of a rock, tree, etc. That is what the word channeling means to me. Art in any form is giving voice to spirit, manifesting it, communicating it so others can see it. In order to do this, you need to clear yourself out. We receive these messages from beyond the capsules of our bodies. Sometimes when I'm writing (channeling) a song I feel like an erupting volcano is moving through me! Other people recognize the spirit voice in art when they see or hear it. It rings true to their core. It makes sense. They are reminded that they are nature.

JB: Can you talk about how your songs are created?

JR: My art comes from my connection with nature. The first time I got the courage to share my art was when I witnessed the Redwoods being cut and carted away. Those trees were like flesh. I thought that there was something more important going on here than my fear of failure! The emotions brought on by that experience gave me the courage to spew. Many of my songs have come from the land I lived on in California. I can't seem to write when I can't access my subconscious and that is more easily done in the wild. My dreams are vivid out here. It is interesting; we have this fear of the wild but ultimately, nature soothes us. If we sit here long enough, it becomes natural...again.

When we're children, it is important to develop a sense of the matrix. You begin with the mother and gradually move out into the world. For me, the connection to Mother Earth (Earth as matrix) allows me to go forth and move out with song.

JB: How can art serve as a tool for the caring stewardship of Mother Earth?

JR: If there is one redeeming aspect of civilization, I would say it is the creative arts. It is important when sending out a message through art to the human race to consider its effects. Try to make it good medicine! And songs aren't only for human ears. Vibrations we send out in song affect our environment. I believe the ancient spirits of this place can hear us and also speak through us. I do these workshops because we're all channels. When we recognize this, we can open to receive and give through song and not have to take credit for it! "Come through me... Say what you want to say."

Not all art heals the world. Punk/Heavy Metal releases negative energy. This can be seen as healing. Artists are historians reflecting the culture of the time. Punk reflects the angst, the tension between love and fear. The tension is growing, the polarity is increasing as two movements grow. One is bent on killing our wild nature (fear keeping us in control, separated, ego-ruling) and the other is committed to protecting our wilds (desire to belong to and dissolve in the universe, responsibility). There is much pain caused by this duality. Healing can begin with forgiving ourselves, honoring the wild, and not feeling guilty over who we are. Reach for equilibrium. People are in so much denial of what their world is about.

So, art is healing. It is our way of dreaming up into being our subconscious, our intuitive voice, that part of our brain that remembers, that connects us to the wild. Through art we send out prayers and visions...to manifest. We're sparking them in other people and taking them out of their rut. Art and ritual are very much connected. Ritual takes us out of ego. Art is the voice of intuition. Intuition is the voice from beyond ourselves but it is within us so the natural conclusion is that we are connected! We remember that we are more than ourselves. There is no separation.

 

TALKING WITH ANGIE CURTES

JB: Angie, how do you feel this trip reflects art and ecology?

AC: This is the second year I have led this trip. I see Joanne's singing as a force that brings us to a place of getting to know ourselves better. Wilderness uncovers the protective exoskeleton that we use in our daily lives in the city, etc. Wilderness unmasks Truth. Singing with Joanne makes everything upwell inside you and you just want to get it out...in song! Out here we are also creating community. We live together at base camp, do chores, and support one another. Thus, a sense of trust and comfort is established. One knows its okay if you sing a little off key!

JB: What is the significance of this place, the Ishi Wilderness?

AC: There was a rich culture of Native American peoples, the Yahi, living here. They lived communally and did their art, ritual, and ceremony on this land. These are the roots of who we are. Being closer to this ancient lifestyle reminds people of their own natural creativity. If we can drop a few seeds along the way to encourage people's thinking; with activities like pulling animal medicine cards as they move around our circle, then perhaps they will be reminded of their instincts and how they/we are all part of the web.

The night I returned home from this exquisite time of being and creating with other women in the wilderness, I couldn't sleep! I wrote this poem/chant:

Using sound
to ground
that deep tone
pushing up with your tailbone
moving energy as you breathe
releasing above pulling beneath
rising up through you from Earth
you give it birth
The Universe's song
impossible to sing wrong
so go now...down
down to the ground
rise now...high
high into the sky
and Sing! Sing! Sing!

Jules Bubacz has lived in the Eugene area for the past five years. She spends most of her time with plants under such guises as natural landscaper, gardener, herbalist, farmer, permaculturalist, and plant propagator. Lately she's been seen singing with the flora.

Common Earth also runs writing trips in the wilderness. They have a trip in the desert which involves mask-making and a solo Vision Quest. All their trips emphasize education over adventure but they are not lacking in the latter! You can obtain a trip brochure by contacting Common Earth, PO Box 1191, Fairfax, CA 94978, (415) 455-0646.

 

©1998 Talking Leaves
Summer/Fall 1998
Volume 8, Number 2
Art and Ecology

---

The Dispossessed

Editor's Note: I first met Rhonda Zwillinger in Provincetown in the summer of 1975. Aspiring young artists, we were both taking refuge from the oppressiveness of the New York City summer and looking for inspiration in the crystal clear light, beautiful beaches, and laid back lifestyle of this Cape Cod town whose years as a serious artist colony were just beginning to wane. Rhonda was also taking a break from her demanding role as a Jewish Brooklyn mother/housewife, having married her childhood sweetheart and given birth to a child before seriously beginning her path as an artist.

Several years later, back in Manhattan, we shared a studio for a time. As my shifting interests began taking me away from painting, Rhonda became more intensely focused on her work, discovering her own unique creative voice, and making serious waves in the embryonic art scene that was developing in the East Village. Within a couple of years she was at the forefront of what was, for a few years in the mid-eighties, the most vibrant and exciting movement on the international art scene. The East Village scene, composed of a multicultural collage of young artists from mostly working class families, boldly and outrageously challenged the "high art" establishment, which at the time consisted almost exclusively of white, male painters whose work was bought and traded as "blue chip" commodities in the exclusive galleries of SoHo and the upper east side. (This, sadly, is still the case--just leaf through a recent copy of ArtForum or Art in America.)

As did many of these artists who were challenging the concept of "high art," Rhonda deliberately chose materials from the "low art" of popular culture; in her case, old beads, sequins, costume jewelry, high heeled shoes, discarded furniture, and other objects generally associated with women. While her imagery, too, was drawn from popular culture, her work had nothing to do with the dispassionate and cynical masters of "pop art," such as Warhol and Lichtenstein. Quite the contrary; Rhonda's work had guts, passion, and genuine romance. It was intrusive, confrontive, and it was fun.

In the artistically dry but financially booming eighties, the boisterous East Village energy attracted the opportunistic attentions of a new crop of nouveau riche collectors looking for bargains, as well as the genuine admiration of the European art community, who were, in general, much more interested in artistic innovation and intellectual discourse than the Americans. Rhonda's work began receiving glowing international recognition. Curators and collectors throughout Europe and the US eagerly bought her work, she was featured in Life, People, Vogue, and numerous art journals, and a retrospective of her work toured Europe.

By the end of the European tour, Rhonda was at a point of re-evaluation. Between AIDS, which massacred New York's art community, the Black Monday crash, and intensive real estate speculation which forced out many of the artists and galleries, the short-lived East Village glory days were over.

It was an evening not long after that that she returned home to her Brooklyn condominium after a long day in her studio. While she was out, new carpeting had been installed throughout her home. Within 48 hours she was deathly ill, seriously and permanently injured by volatile chemicals released by the carpet. Her life as she knew it was over. From that time on, she suffered continual fatigue, pain and discomfort. Exposure to the slightest chemical--perfume, soap, solvents--knocked her on her back. She became moody and depressed, and at times suicidal. She was often hysterical and overwrought. Her family and friends backed away. In desperation she fled to the Arizona desert, a traditional refuge of asthma and tuberculosis sufferers, where she hoped to find a tolerable environment.

I had lost touch with Rhonda during those East Village years, my own life path having led me in very different directions. I was not aware of her injury. I only recently reconnected with her after I found some of her "Dispossessed" photographs in a catalog of an exhibit of eco-art that was part of this year's Environmental Law Conference at the University of Oregon. While it was painful to hear her story and to feel her suffering, it was great to talk with her again, to share each others' stories after so many years had passed, and to find that the circle had come around again, giving us another opportunity to be in each others' lives and create together.

For Rhonda, the whims and fashions of the art world are now irrelevant. Her life and her art have merged; there is no separation. She can no longer walk out of her studio at the end of the day and leave it behind her. She is a hostage to her condition and an exile from our chemically saturated society. The devastating reality of her injury is always with her. It is only her still eloquent artist's voice and the urgency of her message that have enabled her to press on.
- Larry Kaplowitz

The following is excerpted from the introduction to her book, The Dispossessed: Living with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (©1998, available directly from the publisher: The Dispossessed Project, PO Box 402, Paulden, AZ 86334-0402, email [email protected]).

In the late spring of 1995, I joined other environmental educators and students attending a three-day environmental symposium outdoors in the pristine pines of Northern Arizona to discuss the serious global ecological crisis. While participating in the healing circles and lectures, I positioned myself on the group's periphery for protection from fragrances, laundry smells and lathered-on sunblock. The lectures were informative, poetic and interlaced with song, yet I was becoming impatient. We were learning the "why's" and "where's" of our global crises, but when would we discuss the "how to" of getting our planet back on a healing track?! Suddenly, a white-haired man rose, introduced himself as an environmental educator and wilderness expert of thirty years and uttered the magic word "activism." Compelled to seek him out afterwards for a tete-a-tete, I found him "holding court" under a tree. I asked: "How do we get people to acknowledge the existence of Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS) to prevent further injuries and suffering?" He replied: "NO HOPE until the suffering reaches critical mass!"

My book, The Dispossessed: Living with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities focuses on MCS and the life-altering problems facing the MCS population. In designing its format, I considered how to provide information about this illness and its global ramifications, appealing to a wide audience range (from lay person to expert) without overwhelming or turning off the reader. Accompanying each black and white photograph is a brief biographical anecdote, a useful tool depicting the life of each sufferer--personalizing their plights and engaging the reader. I intentionally present more problems than solutions. This is reality; there is much work to do!

Until 1991, I enjoyed a full professional, social and family life. Then, at the age of 41, I developed a crippling case of MCS which forced me to leave my life and home in New York City. I could not have predicted the profound, all-encompassing effect of further ecological and environmental insights on my life, nor imagined the path I would follow once injured with MCS. Moving to Tucson with the hope of finding a clean, "safe" environment in which to heal, I found instead a pesticided, petrochemically polluted ex-paradise. Within a few months, I bought five acres of land in an isolated spot in Northern Arizona and had a 450 square foot "safe" house built to my specifications.

In 1993, I was asked to exhibit two photographs and anecdotes of people with MCS at Arti et Amicitiae, a museum in Amsterdam. Printed by a "fine art" printer to my specifications, these photographs evoked a great deal of attention from the Dutch press. I realized I had a book to do.

Hundreds of people had come to the openings of my exhibitions; now my only link to the world is the telephone. I cannot enter normal places, but instead must stand outside, tapping on store windows for help. While I know that I would do this work even if not injured, being an "insider" gave me a unique advantage in imparting the flavor of this project; MCS sufferers directly feel the pain of our ailing Earth. Despite my own life of exile from the chemical world, constant pain, great physical limitations and isolation, through working on my book and meeting the injured people who heroically face great odds each day I have learned memorable lessons of compassion. My emotional evolution after becoming sick was similar to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's stages on death and dying. It took me three and a half years to not contemplate suicide every minute, not to mourn my lost life and the loss of twenty-year friendships for reasons never disclosed by those who deserted me.

MCS is a devastating, chronic illness. As a direct result of their affliction, many sufferers lose their jobs, homes, careers, marriages, families, and friends; some even commit suicide. Because of the vast amount of petrochemicals and pesticides available and used since W.W.II, many chemically sensitive people are unable to go into most buildings, including stores, banks, libraries, theaters, restaurants, motels and places of worship. Even outdoor gatherings are problematic due to the frequent use of petrochemical-based perfumes, vehicle exhaust, sunscreens, barbecue fluid and lawn chemicals.

The people I interviewed and photographed have had to make major lifestyle changes to cope with this illness. Some have become virtual prisoners in their own homes, unable to experience normal lives. I have determined that approximately 60 percent of those injured with MCS are financially devastated. As a result of their isolation and inability to interact with society, most sufferers are unable to earn a living. As "safe" housing or shelters are unavailable or unattainable, they become dispossessed, ousted from our chemical world--they are the new homeless, living nomadic existences. Many establish residences in stripped-down mobile homes, RV's, old cars, tents, trucks or sheds, often moving around the country looking for a "safe" spot to live. Only a lucky few have been able to build or renovate "safe" homes in which to live; others have adapted rooms in their homes from which to work.

Although MCS knows no ethnic, gender, economic or cultural barriers, about 75 percent of the people interviewed for my book are women. With only a few exceptions, my subjects live within an hour and a half drive from my Arizona home. Even within this limited geographical area, there was no shortage of subjects! Some MCS victims, however, were reluctant to participate in the book, despite my sharing their affliction, due to their shame and fear of others' ridicule. I worked quite hard to gain the trust of those who did finally agree to participate.

I tried to include a full range of occupations to exemplify the risks of developing MCS as a result of petrochemical and pesticide exposures at home, school and the workplace. Also interviewed are people injured by mainstream medical practices like dental mercury amalgams, excess antibiotics and breast implants. There are, however, many professions with a high incidence of MCS (e.g., farm workers injured by pesticides, beauticians, pet groomers, auto mechanics, pest control personnel) which I was unable to include due either to their reluctance to go public with their stories or the project's time constraints.

Photographing the people presented some difficulty; shoots had to be completed quickly (10-15 minutes) because some of the subjects were too sick to tolerate an outsider entering their "safe" environment. Sometimes when conducting interviews, I had to stand at a distance so as not to make them sick. Occasionally, going into others' "safe" environments would make me sick, having such a bad reaction while taking the photographs that I would inadvertently open the camera, exposing the film (I work only in black/white). For me, even handling photographic materials is highly toxic.

MCS is one of the most challenging public health problems of our time and the incidence is thought to be on the rise. Throughout the country, MCS-based grassroots political and advocacy movements have been forming, often accompanied by newsletters with large mailing lists. A grassroots movement may begin, for example, when home-bound MCS people call each other to initiate letter writing campaigns to legislatures, agencies and corporate technical industries to raise issues concerning MCS. The final results of a 1995 California Department of Health Services study found, in a random survey, that about 3.5 percent or one million people in California have been diagnosed with MCS and are unusually chemically sensitive.[1] These numbers are staggering. What that study could not include are people who are misdiagnosed, as less than one percent of this country's physicians are trained to diagnose and treat MCS.

Though the medical establishment has been slow to recognize Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, MCS is recognized by numerous federal and state agencies such as the Social Security Administration, US Department of Housing, Environmental Protection Agency and the National Academy of Sciences. The Justice Department and the courts have, on a case by case basis, upheld chemically sensitive people's rights to "safe" housing, workplaces and schools. The Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) guarantees people with disabilities reasonable accommodations and access to public facilities, housing, education, employment and transportation. The ADA defines a disability as a substantial limitation on one or more of an individual's major life activities. MCS easily meets this criterion.

"We the people of this technological world are all experiencing a collective trauma. The trauma endured by technological people...is the systemic and systematic removal of our lives from the natural world."[2] Our contact with the earth is becoming abstracted as our direct experiences with her diminish. Our suffering due to the seduction by, promotion of, and addiction to the environmental pollutants such as petrochemicals and pesticides will surely reach critical mass. Even now, researchers seeking cures for illnesses such as asthma and cancer are looking to our negatively impacted environment as a causative factor. To bring this epidemic to the forefront of the American consciousness will require public figures to "come out of the closet" with their illness, like Rock Hudson, Magic Johnson and Elizabeth Glaser courageously did to help the AIDS cause. Where is our Liz Taylor? I am simply so tired of explaining why I can't go, see, use, and wear...!

Until that time, be assured that I will continue to take photographs of the chemically injured--documenting this holocaust in progress.

[1] Ann McCampbell, MD, via personal communication with Richard Kreutzer, MD, Acting Chief, Environmental Health Investigations Branch, California Department of Health Services, January 8, 1997.

[2] Chellis Glendinning, "Technology, Trauma and the World," Ecopsychology, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1995, p. 46.

 

The Dispossessed:
Living with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities
is available directly from the publisher:
The Dispossessed Project, PO Box 402, Paulden, AZ 86334-0402
email [email protected]

 

©1998 Talking Leaves
Summer/Fall 1998
Volume 8, Number 2
Art and Ecology

The Niche Hypothesis: Why Creatures Vocalize and the Relationships Between Natural Sound and Music

Prior to the European migration to North America, Native Americans partially experienced their aural world as a symphony of natural sound where all the creature voices performed as an integral part of an animal orchestra. With their habitats radically transformed by deforestation, agriculture, and urbanization, and with many tribes displaced by war and disease, numerous families lost their direct source of sonic natural textures in a relatively short period of time. This produced a gap between a direct association of their music to the natural world and the subsequent breach created as the wild natural became so profoundly transformed. In some isolated areas of the planet, however, this natural fragile link still exists. Older forest-dwelling humans are keenly aware of the impact of natural sound on the totality of their lives and integrate it into nearly every spiritual and non-spiritual aspect.

As an artist and naturalist, I have long been intrigued by the ways in which night time hunters from non-industrial societies determine types, numbers, and condition of game and other creatures hundreds of meters distant through dark undergrowth by sound where nothing appears to the Western eye or our untrained ear to be especially distinct. It is astounding how closely their music reflects the complex rhythms, polyphonies and sonic textures of the habitats where they live and hunt. Unlike these highly sophisticated groups, we are primarily a visual culture; no longer connected spiritually or aesthetically to what the wild natural can tell us through sound. As a consequence, we've lost a certain aural acuity once central to the dynamic of our lives, profoundly impacting our view of the natural world as abstract and distorted. For me, some insight into our ancient aural past began to unfold about 30 years ago.

While working with the Nez Perce in Idaho and central Washington in the late '60s and early '70s recording oral histories, music and natural sound, many of the elders wishing to have their traditions preserved generously allowed us to record their stories. Exchanges of family histories between me and my hosts played an important role in first establishing mutual trust over a period of many months. One member we interviewed, a tribal elder named Angus Wilson, suddenly became very pensive and quiet one afternoon when I told him, among other familial and personal revelations, that I was a musician. "You white folks know nothing about music," he blurted out, half serious, half teasing me with a confrontation unusual in his culture. "But I'll teach you something about it if you want."

Early the next morning we drove from Lewiston to Lake Wallowa, one of the many campsites in northeastern Oregon where Chief Joseph and his small band of Nez Perce lived and hunted for many centuries prior to 1877 when they were finally defeated after out-running five American armies for several months. Wilson led my colleague and me to the bank of a small stream, the east fork of the Wallowa River flowing into the southern end of the lake, and motioned for us to sit quietly on the ground. In the chilled October mountain air we sat in fetal positions trying to keep ourselves warm for the better part of an hour, every now and then glancing in the direction of Angus, who sat stoically and motionless upstream about 50 feet away. For a long while, except for a few jays and ravens, nothing happened. After what seemed like a very long period, a slight breeze coming from up the valley began to stir the branches of some of the aspen and fir trees. Suddenly, from nowhere, the whole forest burst into a cathedral of sound! Like a huge pipe-organ with all stops out, a huge cacophonous chord seemed to echo from everywhere throughout the valley. Angus, seeing the startled look on our faces, walked slowly in our direction and said, "Do you know what makes the sound, yet?" "No," I answered, shivering and irritated. "I haven't the slightest idea." Without another word, he walked over to the bank of the stream and, kneeling low to the water's edge, pointed to the different length reeds that had been broken by the wind and the weight of newly formed ice. Removing a hunting knife from the leather sheath hanging from his belt, Angus cut one of the reeds at the water line, whittled some holes and without tuning the instrument, brought it to his lips and began to play a melody. After a long while he stopped and said with quiet assurance, "This is how we learned our music."

It wasn't until ten years later, while recording in the forests of eastern Kenya that the chilly morning at Lake Wallowa with Angus Wilson came to mind again. I had been recording, working long hours over many evenings around Governor's Camp waiting for some grazing elephants to stop pulling up the trees around our tent and render some vocalizations so I could go to sleep. Exhausted from the heat and lack of sleep, I began to experience the early morning insect sounds and distant hyenas as a kind of animal symphony. As this was happening, many thoughts occurred to me all at once as the puzzle began to coalesce into a clearer pattern. I gradually became conscious of the possibility that this wasn't an illusion and began to record the ambiance to see if I would feel the same way later on when I replayed the sound.

Since the end of the 19th century, researchers in the natural sciences have focused research in large part on the study of single creatures in an effort to understand an organism's connection to the whole environment. This research is based on the assumption that isolated studies are always easier to grasp and measure within the canons of pure and carefully considered academic terms--that once the part is understood, the whole can be extrapolated. Study controls are easier to impose. And quantified results offer models that fit common expectations--at no little cost to comprehensive knowledge, however. Indeed, even in the relatively new field of bio-acoustics (bio=life, acoustics=sound) where feasible recording technology first emerged in the late '60s, field researchers enthusiastically recorded single creature sounds and isolated individual animal vocalizations only to find that significant parts of the messages eluded them altogether. It is what Stephen Jay Gould calls "the invisibility of larger contexts caused by too much focus upon single items, otherwise known as missing the forest through the trees."[1] Indeed, we have a great deal of difficulty grasping the larger, more complex concepts--even when they may hold the key to simpler truths. Bearing this in mind, we are just now beginning to realize the important role ambient sound plays in our environment. It tells the creature story in a very different way. From my perspective, abstracting the voice of a single creature from a habitat and trying to understand it out of context is a little like trying to comprehend an elephant by examining only a single hair at the tip of its tail (before cloning, of course).

Our ancestors had intimate knowledge of what successfully guides many forest inhabitants today. It is the knowledge that in every biome of the wild natural, where the environment is still completely intact, the voice made up of the complex relationship between all vocal creatures is quite unique. All sound-producing organisms generate sounds that fit uniquely into their environment relative to other vocal or sound-creating organisms in that territory. These organisms, when vocalizing, produce niches measurable by time and/or frequency. Furthermore, they have evolved sound-generating communication mechanisms which create audio output complementary and relative to other noise-producing creatures and the particular acoustical properties of their respective habitats. From what we can tell, this phenomenon occurs in every type of habitat on the planet--marine and terrestrial. What is especially interesting is the way in which the niche sound changes as one moves short distances throughout a forest--even where vegetation appears to remain the same. While there are general or regional similarities, subtle changes in the mix of creatures change the manner in which the niche articulates itself.

Figure 1 and Figure 2 show simple and complex habitat ambient niches where consistent dark lines running horizontally across the page represent a unique mixture of insect voices shown occupying several "bands" of a 20-10,000 Hertz frequency spectrum in Figure 1 and a 20-20kHz. spectrum in Figure 2. The darker the line, the greater the amplitude in that particular range. The short lines toward the bottom of the page in Figure 1 represent the low voice of a Zenaida dove (Zenaida macroura), a species of bird living in the Virgin Islands on St. Maarten. This sample was taken on Pic Paradis, a 400m mountain on the French side. The Figure 2 sample was recorded recently in Borneo. Again, the consistent horizontal lines running across the middle of the page represent insect voices. However, notice the Asian Paradise Flycatcher (Terpsiphone paradisi) vocalizations at both the left and right sides of the page. Its voice is made up of three harmonic components called formants. And they fit uniquely and exactly into several niches where there is little or no vocal energy represented by the light or white spaces. It turns out that in every unaltered habitat we have recorded, many birds, mammals and amphibians find and learn to vocalize in acoustical niches unimpeded by the voices of less mobile creatures such as near-ranging insects.

When examined from this perspective, territory is now defined in dimensions well beyond the 3-D topographical one might experience on a map. Furthermore, examining habitats from an aural perspective may allow us to actually date them in time. For instance, in younger environments, birds and mammals seem to occupy only one niche at a given moment. However, in older environments, some tropical rainforest animal vocalizations, like the Asian Paradise Flycatcher (Terpsiphone paradisi) in Figure 2, are so highly specialized that their voices occupy several niches of the audio bio-spectrum at the same time, thus laying territorial claim to several audio channels. This must have taken a particularly long time to develop.

Furthermore, these types of observations may be able to reveal a great deal more about the ways in which birds respond to the sounds of their environment. For example, not a few migrating eastern American warblers, able to learn only one song and call in their lives, find themselves unable to adjust to the changes in ambient sound when they fly to their disappearing Caribbean Latin American winter nesting grounds. Where these environments have been deforested, and when birds try to move to nearby and ostensibly similar or secondary growth habitats, they sometimes discover that they are unable to be heard. Our recordings are beginning to show a strong likelihood that survival might be impaired because territorial and/or gender related communications are masked.

To obtain these recordings we typically spend 500 hours on site to get 15 minutes of usable material...a ratio of 2,000:1. The long wait is due primarily to the introduction of human-induced mechanical noise(s) like chain saws (from 20 miles away), aircraft, motorized riverboats, etc. Mechanical noise is endemic and nearly universal. It has become so virulent that we are now beginning to include it as a component of niche studies to see how it affects creature voices.

After my experience in Kenya, the recording of ambient sound as a field endeavor became more prevalent. Partially, out of boredom during these long waits for events to occur, we typically recorded pure ambient sounds to give ourselves something to do. However, more and more, the discovery that there is an animal orchestra with each creature vocalizing in its own niche began to emerge in my mind as I found distinct patterns wherever I worked. I noticed that when a bird sang or a mammal or amphibian vocalized, the voices appeared to fit in relation to all of the natural sounds of the immediate environment in terms of frequency and prosody (rhythm). I refer to this combination of creature voices as a "biophony." Over a number of years I would return to the same sites only to find, when the recordings were analyzed, that each place showed incredible bio-acoustic continuity--much like we would expect to find from fingerprint matching. The bird, mammal and frog vocalizations we recorded all seemed to fit neatly into their respective niches. And the biophonies from each of these locations all remained the same (given time of year, day, and weather patterns) no matter where we worked. The sounds of each of these zones are so unique and important to creature life in a given location, if one creature stops vocalizing, another immediately joins the chorus to keep that acoustical system intact.

Here's an interesting note: from what I have just begun to see, it appears that ancient human beings learned well the lessons imparted by natural sounds. Their lives depended as much (if not more) on their ability to hear and understand the biophonies imparted by their surroundings as those given by visual cues. Small enclaves like the Jivaro and other tribes of the Amazon Basin survive using this information today as do the Bayaka of the Central African Republic. Not only can these extraordinary forest-dwellers distinguish one creature sound from another but they recognize the subtle differences in sound between the various mini-habitats (as small as 20 sq. meters) in a forest, even when these localities appear to have visually identical biological and geological components. More likely than not, even when traveling in total darkness, these travelers seem to determine their exact location simply by listening. Furthermore, when we closely observe the effects of chimpanzees, mountain gorillas and orangutans pounding out complex rhythms on the buttresses of rainforest trees, we cannot help but be struck by the articulation of the message, its effect on other groups of primates in the vicinity of the sounds, and the natural origins of the human art of drumming and making music--particularly when combined with the rest of the forest sounds.

Experienced musical composers know that in order to achieve an unimpeded resonance the sound of each instrument must have its own unique voice and place in the spectrum of events being orchestrated. All too little attention has been paid to the possibility that insects, birds and mammals in any given environment have been finding their aural niche since the beginning of time...and much more successfully than we might have imagined. Indeed, combining an audition with a print-out of the diversity and structure of natural sounds from a rainforest graphically demonstrates very special relationships of many insects, birds, mammals, and amphibians to each other. A complex vital beauty emerges that the best of sonic artists in Western culture have yet to achieve. Like the recent acknowledgment that medicine owes much to rainforest flora, it is my hunch that the development of our sound arts owes at least as much to the "noise" of our natural environments.

I believe that this newly discovered evidence points to the roots of ancient musical composition...something which has evolved over time and from which ancient human beings learned some pretty complex formulae. One only needs to hear the compelling music of the Bayaka (Bayaka: The Extraordinary Music of the BaBenzele Pygmies, by Louis Sarno, Ellipsis Arts, 1996), to hear the connection.

(I note in the postscript to that book/CD that, for those living in the rainforests of the world, the creature ambiance has served as their major communication influence--their radio, TV, CD and Walkman cassette. Many use these sounds as an animal karaoke orchestra to which they perform. Not only have the rhythms from chimps pounding on the buttresses of fig trees inspired the drum, but frog rhythms in different habitats have also spurred the use of complex time patterns, and lead melody lines have been influenced by bird song and certain mammals.)

If, as I am suggesting, the ambient sound of primary growth habitats functions much as a modern day orchestra with each creature voice occupying its own place on the environmental music staff relative to frequency, amplitude, timbre, and duration of sound, then there may also be a clear acoustical message being sent as to the biological integrity of these sites.

Research continues on the issues suggested by this hypothesis. The study of acoustic ecology begun in the late '70s with R. Murray Schafer and Barry Truax is currently being considered as a valuable tool for defining the health of both marine and terrestrial habitats around the world. Adding this information to our general body of knowledge is important for many reasons, not the least of which is rediscovery of a direct cultural link to our natural surroundings before they all disappear. For the past several centuries, at an ever-accelerated rate, Western academics, writers, and artists have labored at some length to keep themselves separated from the notion of the wild natural. This is especially articulated through their work. The use of the word "natural," itself, sets up an abstraction, and our efforts reflect almost no spiritual or other meaningful connection. By learning to listen unafraid and unthreatened to wildness and the incredible beauty it represents, we may yet be able to mitigate this deafness to our lovely world.

Natural orchestrations, the sounds of our unaltered temperate, tropical, arctic, desert and marine habitats, are becoming exceedingly rare and difficult to find. The keys to our musical past and the origins of complex interspecies connection may be better understood from the acoustic output of these wonderful places, as the late Angus Wilson once demonstrated in a remote part of the Oregon wilderness. We are beginning to learn that the isolated voice of a song bird cannot give us very much useful information. It is the acoustical fabric into which that song is woven that offers up an elixir of formidable intelligence that enlightens us about ourselves, our past, and the very creatures we have longed to know so well.

[1] "Abolish the Recent," Natural History, May 1991, pages 16-21.

Bernie Krause has been recording wildlife and natural sounds since 1968, and has produced or collaborated on over fifty albums. He is President and Director of Wild Sanctuary, which specializes in terrestrial and marine bio-acoustic recording and analysis, museum exhibit sound sculpture design and the creation of music and effects for electronic media. (Find them on the World Wide Web at http://www.wildsanctuary.com.) He recently published a book and CD describing his life in the field, Notes from the Wild (Ellipsis Arts, 1996). An earlier version of this article appeared as "Bioacoustics, Habitat Ambiance in Ecological Balance," Whole Earth Review, #57, Winter, 1987.

 

©1998 Talking Leaves
Summer/Fall 1998
Volume 8, Number 2
Art and Ecology

We Want to Stay Frogs

In my sessions of pre-school creative movement classes focusing on fairy tales, we were dramatizing "The Frog Prince," the well-loved story of the frog (actually a prince under the spell of an evil witch) who was metamorphosed back into a prince through the love of a beautiful princess. When we finally arrived at the magic moment, however, Willie and David rebelled: "We don't want to be princes; we want to stay frogs!" The only solution was to improvise an alternative ending, with the help of two frogs and several princesses. In our version, the princess and the frog remained good friends, and the frog introduced the princess to his world. He taught the princess to swim in the palace pond, to jump through the palace gardens, and to sing on warm summer nights. And they lived happily ever after, with the princess happy and fulfilled--even without a prince charming!

The story of our revised "Frog Prince" was itself an example of metamorphosis. Grimm, the author of the fairy tale, had assumed that frogs would prefer to be princes. Willie and David had helped us stretch our imaginations through their raucous croaks and their energetic jumps around the room, so that, indeed, being a prince began to seem a little boring. They helped us all--even the little girls, who definitely wanted to "stay princesses"--understand that human beings are part of the circle of creation, including princesses, pools, frogs, and the flowers climbing the castle wall. (The truth is that, given the choice, it is unlikely that any frog today would change his place for a prince, especially in this day of tabloids and paparazzi!)

Willie and David, the perpetual frogs, reminded me that we can achieve a metamorphosis through the arts. Music, dance, drawing, painting, sculpture, and the other creations we call "art" can both be a doorway through which we enter into a deeper relationship with our natural environment--the way Willie and David jumped right into a frog's life--and a way to express that relationship. The arts can raise our consciousness, and that surely is the first step in moving toward meaningful changes in how we live on this planet.

The arts remind us of two facts that are grievously neglected in contemporary industrial Western culture: that we are physical bodies and part of the natural world, not "apart" from it, and also that we are spiritual beings who find wholeness and joy in creating things of meaning and beauty.

In participating in the arts ourselves, or enjoying the creations of other people, we use our senses, those marvelous antennae of our physical bodies. The arts help people of any age fine-tune these senses, so that we can better respond to the natural world around us. Creating things--music, dance, images, poetry--frees our spirits, so that we can be human beings in touch with the reality both of body and of spirit, reveling in our place in the circle of life just as the small frogs reveled in their destiny in the princess's garden pond.

MUSIC

All of the arts have potential to transform our consciousness of nature and ourselves. They can call us back to our origins, both as individuals and a species. Take music, for example. I will never forget turning on the first episode of a television series many years ago, "The Music of Man"[sic], narrated by Yehudi Menuhin, and hearing a repetitive "thud, thud, thud, thud." Soon Menuhin's voice reminded viewers that this was the first sound each of us heard in utero, the sound of our mother's heartbeat, and that, throughout our lives, we would continue to seek that sound through the music we made and heard. Great music takes us home to something: to our primal connection to our life's source. In the early history of humanity, music, like dance and the creation of visual art, was a sacred act, homage to the deity or deities. At its best, it still is. Perhaps that is the reason that, when I sit at the piano and play Mozart or Bach for an hour, I am a more centered human being when I have finished.

Listening can be a first step in helping both young and old to connect with nature. I often suggest both to my pre-school dance and music classes and to my adult meditation classes that we sit in silence and take note of the sounds we hear. As we listen, we realize that the earth provides a veritable symphony of sound, to which we often do not pay attention. When we hear it, we also become motivated to combat the human-generated noise that often drowns it out.

When children learn to listen, they have learned the most important step in their relationships with other human beings, as well as with themselves and with their earthly home. When adults are able to quiet themselves enough to listen to music, perhaps they as well will be better able to listen to one another, to their deepest selves, and to the earth.

When we ourselves produce music, whether it is through making rhythmic patterns with our own bodies (clapping our hands, tapping our feet, slapping our knees), or through the use of the voice or instruments, we are contributing to that symphony which is already playing from the ponds and the treetops. There are some composers, in particular, who know this. The French composer and organist Olivier Messiaen based much of his music on the pattern of bird-song, and the Czech composer Jan‡cek, in writing music for the largely animal cast of his opera The Cunning Little Vixen, spent long hours listening to the voices of the forest animals he attentively depicted through sound.

But creating music is not just for the professionals; all of us are musicians at heart; all of us are seeking that primal heartbeat.

DANCE

A particular pleasure in my pre-school creative movement classes is echoing the movement found in our natural environment, because it is such a natural activity for children. Without hesitation, children "become" the ocean, rivers, trees, animals, stones--and, of course, frogs! They seem to find particular pleasure in taking the identity of these other species with whom they share the earth.

I hope that these early experiences will help them, as they grow, to see all of nature as a dance. The choreography of crashing surf and gliding gulls, of quivering aspens and soaring eagles, the slither of the snake and the scuttling of the beetle, all are the earth's dance. A wonderful celebration of this dance can be seen in the movie Microcosmos, a beautiful film not to be missed, about the vibrant life of the smallest inhabitants in a French meadow.

I hope, also, that the children will never forget that they are bodies, and that bodies need to move to be healthy, both physically and spiritually. Dance compels us to notice our bodies; as we notice them, we realize that we share with other creatures our need for food and for rest, the inexorable fact of aging and mortality, and what I think is the pure joy of expressing our life energy through movement. Dance, in which we experiment playfully with our body's weight in relation to gravity, reminds us of what Brian Swimme calls "allurement": the gravitational force pulls us towards the earth, as a lover is drawn to the beloved.

I will never forget teaching an Elderhostel class in creative movement, in which the participants, all of retirement age, portrayed in dance the Hebrew story of the creation of the world. I remember one eighty-year-old man, in particular, who was the blazing sun, his energetic arms sweeping yellow and orange scarves in a great circle around him, and also the group of women, ranging from healthy early sixties to frail-looking elderly, once again feeling beautiful, undulating like the waves of the ocean, blue scarves in their hands.

When we watch the dance of others, whether it be the Native American dancing so deeply connected to the earth, professional ballet or modern dance which stretches the capacity of the human body to its limits, or the early ground-breaking work of Isadora Duncan, who based her movement on the choreography of nature, as observers we connect profoundly with the movement we see. We experience dance kinetically, from the brain through the nervous system, down to the last step of actually doing. Dance helps us learn com-passion, "feeling with."

When we are attuned to our bodies, we thrill physically at the flight of the eagle, the leap of the deer, the pattern of the bumblebee. And we feel stricken ourselves, through this kinetic sense in our bodies, when we observe nature struggling: the fish gasping in the oxygen-deprived lake, the songbirds and grizzlies searching for habitat, the forests razed by clear-cutting, the farmlands bulldozed for luxury homes.

THE VISUAL ARTS

The artist Frederick Franck tells of his childhood discovery of his grandfather's "stereopticon," an antique gadget through which the observer looks at twin photographs which appear as three-dimensional. One day, he realized that he could order his eyes, "Now look through the stereopticon!" when he was outdoors. He writes, "They would obey and...every sprig of grass came to life and stood there separately in its own space; clumps of trees broke up into individual beings, each one springing from its own roots, deep in the earth. People, when looked at through my mental stereoscope, underwent an extraordinary metamorphosis.... That which, when merely looked at, was mailman, poplar or squirrel became--when seen stereoptically, unnamable, ineffable."

I remember once, as a child, taking a small water color set to a stream in a woods near my home. I dipped my brush in the quiet stream, trying to paint the scene. The result was far from what I wanted, but I know that now I can still see, in amazing detail, that scene in the autumn woods. Painting had given me Franck's "stereopticon vision."

Franck also speaks of the act of "seeing/drawing," in which his hand holding the pencil or pen became one with what he saw, so that he in essence entered its world. Our hand forming the image of what we see--in ink, or pencil, or paint, or clay--draws us into relationship with our subject. It is no longer an object, an "it," but a "thou." We do not have to be trained artists like Franck to experience this; we can be young children, or adults who draw simply in order to slow down our pace enough to really see the world around us.

Surely the world's great artists, from our early ancestors, the creators of the cave paintings in Lascaux, France, onward, have understood that. We know that when we really see the images they have created we are also drawn into relationship with the world around us. When we take time to stand in front of such a work, we don't just look, we enter into dialogue. Claude Monet, who painted a series of paintings of haystacks in various weathers and times of day, opens our eyes not merely to the landscape but to the quality of light itself. His paintings suggest that we ourselves might benefit from the practice of observing a particular feature of the landscape in similar manner, watching it change from dawn to nightfall, and through the seasons. We would certainly become more attuned to the rest of the natural world, whose sensitivity to light far exceeds our own.

There is a wonderful small book by the sculptor Silvia Shaw Judson, The Quiet Eye: a Way of Looking at Pictures. It is a collection of pictures which Judson, a Quaker, used for meditation. She writes, "This book...is intended as an experience....I have wanted particularly to find examples with a sense of 'divine ordinariness.'" She includes a spectrum of works from many cultures. Her book, like Franck's, helps me look at the ordinary things on earth and realize that nothing is ordinary; everything is extraordinary, charged with the divine.

CONCLUSION

Perhaps that is the particular secret of the arts: the valuing of what seems "ordinary." The arts teach us attention. They give us the tools of listening, observing, seeing, and moving.

We can't practice the arts, or appreciate them, as an abstraction. The arts are concret