The Green Artists League (GAL) is an interdisciplinary artists' collective
that creates public art addressing the
global environmental crisis. GAL is a forum of contemporary artists exploring
art and ethics in an era of ecological degradation. GAL engages
the public through interactive art experiences and hopes to raise awareness
and inspire environmentally healthy behaviors and attitudes. Find
out more ->
The ubiquitous plastic bottle in our landfills, watersheds, and elsewhere are the quintessential signifier of frivolous consumer waste and environmental pollution. Frogs are an important indicator species for crisis-level environmental degradation. The present epidemic of malformed, hermaphroditic and sterile frogs is the harbinger of zoological disaster.
GAL will be roaming the streets of Provincetown with an eco-intervention that highlights the consequences of waste and pollution on the New England environment. Our giant frog – mutated by water-born toxins with multiple flailing arms and legs – has awakened form winter hibernation and needs food.
Our tragic hero will engage passers-by and crowds as he moves through the festival begging for sustenance in the form of plastic bottles. Ubiquitous plastic bottles act as the signifier of frivolous consumer waste and environmental pollution, while our indigenous frog, an important indicator species for crisis-level environmental degradation is the harbinger of zoological disaster. For more information on “Appearances” and the Provincetown Green Arts Festival go to .
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.
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.
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