Green Artists League

Alchemical Garden will be a richly layered evolving art and horticulture experience accessible on many different levels to the public. Located on a 155′x25′ site at the southern end of the Clipper City Rail Trail, the Garden will include pathways, sculptural seating areas and art, living pavilions, archways and furniture and planting areas. It will function as a living laboratory of soil remediation, permaculture and hyper-accumulation. It will also be an exceptional educational opportunity, a beautiful public destination and an interdisciplinary venue promoting a variety of artistic projects.

Erin's Frog Painting in 5 Year Plan Art Book

Exciting News!! GAL founder and Co-director Erin Stack is one of only 32 artists internationally who have been tapped to contribute to a magnificent green arts fundraising project!!

Click here to read the press release.

Click here to visit the 5 Year Plan website.

Boston, MA

ON August 22, the Green Artists League participated in Acteon’s Wake, A Bike Ride and Site-Specific Performance Event across Boston, curated by Andrew Barco and Ion Colon. Participating Artists included Maria Molteni, Siri Gossman, Allison Vanouse, Patrick Wallace, Green Artists League, Ben Smart

The Green Artists League performance was a perverse revision of the children’s fairy tale the Frog Prince. The audience became an integral part of the performance as they were entreated to help save the cursed and malformed Frog Prince by kissing him. A “Fairy Godmother” rewarded the audience’s act of compassion by attaching grotesque, plastic prostheses to those who took pity on the wretched Frog Prince. The hope of salvation via the frog’s embrace turned into contamination as a graphic representation of how our poisoned waterways are now affecting water flora and fauna, but human infants as well.

As a postscript to the performance, The Frog Prince removes her frog head and talks about the endocrine inhibitors caused by BPA’s in plastics, hormones in the waters human medications that travel through urine, agricultural run off that are flooding our water wrecking havoc with fish, amphibians, and now humans.

On a bright and crisp November day, the Green Artists League  gave the Stonehill College community an opportunity for confession and redemption. Tapping into people’s guilt and denial of poor environmental behavior, GAL exhorted passer-by’s at Stonehill’s Family Weekend to come clean by giving public  eco-confessions. Participants where invited to sit down and give their private “kitchen table” confessions to GAL artists Jeannie Dunnigan and Erin Stack. After these initial confessions, GAL encouraged participants to air their formally private “eco transgressions” on reclaimed clothing and hang them on a 60′ laundry line installed in the center of campus. GAL gave participants the chance for redemption via a public vow  to change their eco-transgressive behaviors. These public declarations of change are listed on our full post. GAL has only posted those declarations that were signed. The playful and supportive atmosphere of “Air Your Dirty Laundry” allows people to look honestly at their consumption habits and empowers them to change.

Continue reading ‘“Air Your Dirty Laundry” at Stonehill College’

Polar looking for lunch in Portsmouth

On April 17th, 2009, a homeless polar bear was spotted in downtown Boston during lunch hour. She was accompanied by several members of the Green Artists League who passed out cards asking for help in saving her vanishing habitat.

The polar bear engaged lunching corporate executives in Post Office Square by waving her placard that read “Will Work for Fish” and asking for “Change”.  Finding little relief, she pushed her shopping cart throughout the downtown financial and tourist districts. Hoping to adapt to her new compromised circumstance, the polar bear attempted to befriend Bostonians by washing the windshields of cars waiting for a light near Faneuil Hall.

On April 19th, the polar bear had migrated north to Portsmouth, New Hampshire in hopes of finding a suitable habitat. Unfortunatly, no home was found but she did discover some day-old fish behind a sushi restaurant.

As the polar bear’s command of the English language is severely limited, GAL supplied the bear with cards to distribute in the hope of rallying people to change their environmentally destructive habits.

To read card texts go to full post. Continue reading ‘“Recently Homeless Polar Bear Needs Ice!” in Boston and Portsmouth, NH’

Larry Gibson, Activist, and his dog, at Kayford Mountain, WV

GAL has made exposing the “dirty truth” about coal as a “clean” energy source one of its top priorities.

As our society’s wants and needs grow, the pressures being put on our natural resources are overwhelming. The environmental diversity of our flora and fauna is collapsing around the world under this strain. Here, in our own country, the seed bed of the North American continent, our mountains and forests are being burned, bulldozed, and exploded daily, all because behind closed doors in Washington, a group of people decided that the Appalachian Mountains and its people could be sacrificed so the rest of our country could have a cheap and readily available fossil energy source —coal. We are talking about ground zero for our nation’s energy.

The burning of coal emits hundreds of toxic chemicals into the air we breathe and is a leading contributor to global warming. For every ton of coal burned, 3.6 tons of CO2 enters our atmosphere. Although coal supplies about 52% of our nation’s energy, it is responsible for 97% of the particulate matter in our atmosphere generated from all of the various power industries combined. All of the mercury raining down on our land, polluting our waters, poisoning our fish and our people, comes from burning coal. Sulfur Dioxide, a contributor to acid rain, comes from burning coal. Ground-level Ozone air pollution is caused by burning coal.

Mountain top removal coal mining (MTR) is how most of our coal is obtained. MTR is a fast and relatively inexpensive operation for the mining companies. MTR sites can be manned by fifteen or twenty men, using giant equipment, and working round the clock —twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

Mining companies are blowing the tops off mountains, often 1,000 feet down, to extract the thin seams of coal. For every ton of coal extracted, approximately 100 tons of rock and earth called “over burden” is bulldozed into the valleys below. Two thousand miles of rivers, streams, and headwaters have been buried in Appalachia by coal company operations. On our planet where water seems so abundant, only 1% is actually drinkable. Water is our lifeblood, and is too precious to squander.

After the coal is mined it must be washed before it can be transported. For every ton of coal washed, 95 gallons of water is poisoned forever, turning it into a toxic sludge that weighs four times what it did to start. The sludge is stored in man-made impoundments, held back by earthen dams, many of which are leaking. These ponds often store billions of gallons of sludge.

The time has come to end the tyranny of mountain top removal coal mining. Three thousand five hundred people (3,500) die prematurely every year in West Virginia from the effects of coal mining and its resulting pollution. We must all spread the word about how damaging coal is, and how coal companies are laying waste to our beautiful Appalachian Mountains and their people.

This new age of awareness means we can no longer hide from our energy problems. We have an ear in Washington now. We must inform our legislators on the issues, and get them to act. Let’s make clean renewable energy happen. We have the technology. All we need is the will.

We are all culpable in this destruction of Mother Earth. In Massachusetts 50% of all electricity comes from coal extracted from mountain top removal mining.

What can you do?

Reduce and use clean energy:

National Grid now offers 50% and 100% green energy options through their “GreenUp” renewable energy program in Massachusetts. Click on the following link to find out about this program: http://tinyurl.com/greenup.

To see if there are any similar programs in your state, look here: http://tinyurl.com/greenelectricity.

National Grid also offers a free energy audit. This is a great way to save money and save the planet at the same time. (http://tinyurl.com/energyaudit)

Go to the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (www.ohvec.org) and www.stopmountaintopremoval.org to find out how you can use the democratic process to stop the destruction.

(All photos in this post courtesy of Mark Schmerling. Click on each photo below for more information about it.)

Erin Stack

GAL created several temporary installations of site-inspired “Green Haiku” along the Newburyport waterfront. The installation site at an urban park and river boardwalk, brings into focus how the natural environment is “developed” and tamed for human consumption. Pedestrians discovering these “Green Haiku” were given the opportunity to reflect on their experience and influence on Nature. .

GAL has installed Green Haiku at the Newburyport Waterfront in 2007 and 2008. The photo above is a haiku by Erin Stack.

Continue reading ‘Newburyport Green Haiku’

Savage Rituals

Erin Stack
Stephenie Strogney

Erin Stack and Stephenie Strogney collaborate annually on an interactive performance called a “Savage Ritual.”

“Savage Rituals”, Earth Day, 2008, Newburyport, MA

This roaming interventionist performance, addressed Americans’ ambivalent, veiled as romanticized, relationship to Nature. Our “friendly” polar bear offered gifts of cards to people on the street and in commercial establishments. These cards were inscribed with one of twenty-six “Savage Rituals”. These rituals, when performed, would press for a more intimate relationship with Nature and were often humorous and always challenging.

Continue reading ‘Roaming Intervention: Savage Rituals’

Hungry Ghost on Bartlett Mall, Newburyport, MA

Inspired by Kafka’s short story, Metamorphosis and Buddhist Cosmology, GAL’s roaming intervention, “Metamorphosis: Hungry Ghost” is a cautionary tale of excessive consumption.  A GAL barker led our character, the Hungry Ghost, through an Earth Day fair announcing the tragic news that Stephenie, a savvy, yet profligate shopper, awoke one morning transformed into a ravenous Hungry Ghost. She is now doomed to roam the world consuming without ever being satisfied. The public was encouraged to feed the hungry ghost by putting their waste water bottles, napkins, candy wrappers, etc. through the many gaping red mouths of the ghost. This waste could then easily be seen through the translucent “digestive sacs” that lay exposed on the outside of her body.

Hungry Ghost Getting Sugar Fix at Convenience Store