Guy GAL Tim Gaudreau

New Hampshire Sunday News (Manchester, NH) April 25, 2010

This eco-artist lives green

By JIM KOZUBEK

Special to the Sunday News

PORTSMOUTH

IT WAS LATE February, the winter light pale and snow remained in dirty patches. Tim Gaudreau emerged from a reconverted barn turned art studio on this old farmstead on Jones Avenue, carrying a pile of firewood, and smiling big. His biggest problem — he was running out of vegetables. ”By this time of year, it’s running out,” he announced. Gaudreau is a vegetarian, and he grows most of his own food in an extensive raised-bed garden in his backyard, which he stores to eat in the winter. Squash, onions, carrots, and a pumpkin was turned into a pumpkin bisque with roasted potatoes. Chickens squabble and shuffle in coops behind his studio, of which he uses to harvest eggs on a daily basis, but he doesn’t eat doesn’t eat them. “They’re pets,” he says. “They’re our friends.”

As a professional artist, Gaudreau is rare as one who is able to make all of his annual income each year from his art; as an environmental advocate, unique in his embodiment of ideals that he extols.

Cars in his driveway, a pair of diesel Volkswagens, one plastered with a “Free Tibet” sticker, run on biodiesel from local distributor Simply Green, LLC. He installed a solar hot water system and passive solar devices from Manchester-based Solar Components Corp., and he is installing a photovoltaic system.

National Public Radio chortles on the air in his studio.

Sleeves of harvested honeycomb from a backyard apiary lean on the floor.

Gaudreau keeps hives of bees on his property and talks about the perils and disappearance of bees and bats in the Northeast, and on all things ecology-related. He thinks his sympathies and awareness developed at a young age, probably due to his own biology. “I’ve always had a soft spot for the underdog,” he said.

As holder of an MFA and a self-described “eco-artist,” whose photography and sculpture is designed to “raise eco-consciousness,” he has made a mark, capturing a $30,000 grant from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, and others from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts.

His gorilla tactics have included a decent on the City of Boston, with fellow rabble rousers, the Green Artists League, in which he wore a polar bear costume, asking passersby for spare ice.

Even as his work is overt and provocative, Gaudreau has not shied from turning criticism on himself. In one stunt, which resulted in an exhibited piece called “Self-Portrait As Revealed by Trash,” he photographed every single thing he threw out for an entire year, building it into a 5,000-picture collage.

“The details about it … it was a piece of advocacy, but it was very intimate,” Gaudreau said.

It is how Gaudreau met his wife, Atlanta McIlwraith, a social enterprise manager for Stratham-based Timberland Company, who saw the art project as an exceptional “singles advertisement.”

The couple married in 2007. Gaudreau built her an earthen couch in the backyard that sprouts grass. “Adults don’t sit on the grass much anymore, so this was a way to do that,” he said.

Atlanta's Living Couch

He subsequently began several commissioned projects for Timberland, which ranged in pay from a couple hundred dollars to more than $10,000, including a sign for an Earth Day ad, created entirely from Dumpster diving, which read “CHANGE THE CLIMATE.”

For the sign, he built each letter out of a different waste product: The T was made out of trashed electronics, another T from compact discs, an H from plastic bottles, a C from aluminum cans, an M from plastic shopping bags, a G from thrown-out toys, and so on.

“It was a great demonstration for kids,” Gaudreau said. “I asked how many of these toys do you think are broken, and it turns out, all of them were serviceable.”

Timberland also asked him to create a demonstration for a new recycled boot line, which he did, with a gigantic boot made out of plastic bottles and bootlaces woven from discarded shopping bags.

The ad for a campaign called “Give Plastic the Boot” began an international campaign for the company.

“The image appeared all over the world, so it was very exciting for me,” he said.

Gaudreau’s income is derived from a mix of private and public commissioned projects. He led a project at the Lincoln Street School in Exeter to build an outside classroom out of the logs from a 250-year-old tree that had fallen on the property.

“This tree was pretty important to the identity of the school, and its loss was palpable,” he said.

With volunteer support from 50 Timberland employees and the school, he helped create a circular classroom with wooden benches encasing sculptures of bears, turtles and birds cast from recycled aluminum cans, based on the concept of a Native American medicine wheel.

“I wanted to create something with strong roots to aboriginal history, something that ties back to all of history,” he said. “Each stone has a meaning.”

Copyright, 2010, Union Leader Corp

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.

“Flower Power” Pot

Supported in part by a grant from the Newburyport Cultural Council, GAL collage artist Pamela Perkins will conduct five weekday workshops during April school vacation. Students will work in teams to create four large Art-Pots which will later be planted and installed in a shared community garden. This is the beginning of GAL’s “Articulture #3”—a series of ongoing projects.

Called “Flower Power,” the workshop utilizes drawing, painting, decoupage and collage techniques. Participants will visually explore the world of “plant guilds,” permaculture and edible flowers, and upon completion, each pot will represent the horticultural science of the plants growing in them–how they’re working together to create and sustain a healthy environment.

In collaboration with permaculture expert, Charlotte Dion, GAL developed the design and layout of the pot gardens to keep the soil nourished, attract pollinating insects and repel unwanted insects. What each plant is doing will be explored and artfully represented. The colors and flavors of the various flowers will also be discussed.

This workshop begins a growing season during which students will be encouraged to keep a garden journal, help harvest the flowers and make collective decisions as to the best use of the bounty—some ideas are to use as garnish in soups and salads, frozen into ice cubes to garnish beverages or make candied petals. The process fosters creativity, teamwork and successful outcomes.

In partnership with the Newburyport Learning Enrichment Center, GAL’s “Flower Power” will take place Monday, April 19th to Friday, April 23rd from noon to 2 p.m. in the Center at 15 Storey Avenue in Newburyport. For more information, please call Nancy Earls, Project Director at (978) 884-1343.