The first phase of the Alchemical Garden in August 2010

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.

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.

To make a tax deductable donation to the Alchmical Garden project click here . For The Green Artists League to receive the donation, Alchemical Garden/Green Artists League must be put in the Designation Field on the Urban Arts/Network for Good website.

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

“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.

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

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.

I vow to unplug my outlets when I am done using my appliances.
- Kyle Weeks
I will take shorter showers using hot water and when brushing my teeth turn off the water. – Lori Daniels
I vow to unplug my outlets at night.
-Nicole Crescimanno
I will try to use my towels more than once.
-Gena
I own too many ICE’S (Internal Combustion Engines) Ride bicycle
-Jim Hawsgate
I’m going to try to unplug my appliances more, turn the lights off and filter my water more! -Maggie Seaver
My government employer wastes too much paper on forms that a lot of people don’t really understand and can’t follow. Simplify it to a letter and make a personal visit.
- L. Rivers
I want to quit smoking on Christmas Eve!
- John Martin
I will try and fix all leaky faucets.
- Eric Sarra
I will not leave the TV on when I’m not watching it.
- Noah
I will try to not to use disposable food containers. Instead, I will use a Tupperware container from now on.
-Jessica Jarrard
I will design and work with sustainability in mind and encourage my clients to do the same.
- Jon H.
I will pay more attention to where my clothes come from and avoid the unsustainable.
- Cassie
I will make a more conscience effort to not waste energy. I will turn off lights and other elements when I am not using them.
-Ethan Penny
I will buy a reusable thermos that I’ll use every day and will try to unplug my electronics.
-Emi
I will clean up the pieces of trash in the parking lot.
- Jim
Sometime I don’t recycle my water bottles.
-Frankie
I throw too much paper away.
- Devin
I leave my lights on and leave my room.
-Josh
I will lower my heat below 74 degrees.
-Alan Kafka
I will work on not using Styrofoam cups at work. I will buy glass cups for my co-workers!
-Pam K.

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.

Examples of card text

Save My Home

My longer commute for food is killing me.

Please Carpool and use public transit.

Drive energy efficient/clean emission cars.

Save My Home

I can’t adapt to being a vegetarian.
But you can. 30% of human-induced

climate change is from agriculture. Beef production

contributes 57 times more to global warming than

potato production.

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.)