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Great to have the Dia Chelsea to ourselves on Sunday, December 17. El Abrazo (The Embrace), inspired discussion at the conclusion of our visit. Happy to share a related connection that might be of interest. The World Hope Forum, founded by Li Edelkoort and Philip Fimmano, recently presented a webinar called, Healing Trauma Through Craft, which looks at the role of comfort, healing, cocooning, story telling in cloth and more, through the eyes of individuals, particularly women, who have experienced trauma. Presentations by World Hope Forum examine the intersection of art, craft, culture, economics, and fashion, in the hope of putting people and the planet first. Previous presentations have focused on Regeneration, Earth Day, Mexico, How Art Transforms us, and more. Here is the web address: www.worldhopeforum.com

Hope you find it interesting.

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from Maya, for all of us interested in rocks, art/arch and cabins in the Alps ... (This is NOT the best pic; click on image to follow link)

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from Maya, for all of us interested in rocks, art/arch and cabins in the Alps ... (This is NOT the best pic; click on image to follow link)

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Mountain hideaway hidden inside concrete boulder in the Alps

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Swiss studio Bureau A has concealed a wooden cabin inside an artificial rock and transported it to a remote site in the Swiss Alps

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To follow up on interest expressed in class.

Posting article on the U.S. Customs and Immigration Center at Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls, the place where a flying car exploded some weeks back. Thankfully, the Inspector's booth saved his life. If recollection serves, that was some hardy construction...

Architects: HHPA, my role: project architect for the 600 foot-long "banana" that floats above the 3 base buildings, officer booths, inspection stations, etc. at the complex.

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Emily Johnson- A Yup'ik land back artist-Fish skin lanterns

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Emily Johnson- A Yup'ik land back artist-Fish skin lanterns

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NIICUGNI INSTALLATION

(ongoing)

NIICUGNI - THE WORD - IS A YUP'IK DIRECTIVE TO PAY ATTENTION. NIICUGNI THE DANCE, QUIETLY COMPELS SUCH ATTENTIVENESS THROUGH ITS LAYERING OF MULTIPLE DANCES, LIVE MUSIC, STORIES, AND HISTORIES.

Niicugni 's fish skin lanterns were sewn by volunteers in Vermont, Alaska, California, Minnesota, and Arizona over the course of two years in a series of free workshops led by Emily Johnson. Each lantern took an average of twenty hours to complete - a task that begins with a large filet of wild caught salmon, which, after it is eaten and shared, is scraped, sewn, and dried, over the course of many days.

These fish-skin lanterns were made for Emily Johnson / Catalyst's performance installation Niicugni.

THE LANTERN MAPS WERE DESIGNED TO ACCOMPANY THE US TOUR OF NIICUGNI.

It details the distribution of 47 hand-sewn fish skin lanterns that hung, glowing above the stage, audience, and lobby as part of the performance. This map represents each unique lantern's shape and design and where it hung as part of the larger installation. Use the corresponding numbers to find where the lantern was placed, who made the lantern, what kind of fish the skin came from, and where the fish was caught. The mileage noted in the map key symbolically represents energy - the migration of fish, the work of harvest, the work of preparing and sewing fish skins. In reality, this mileage charts the migration of each particular fish after it was caught - to where it was eaten, where the fish-skin lantern making workshops were held, and to the subsequent tour of the lanterns with Niicugni.

Lanterns made by
Akikwe Cornell, Carol Schnabel, Emily Johnson, Tania Balsley, Alexis Balsley-Petraska, Kris Hall, Marlaine Cox, Elena Vetter, Jonathan Whitney, Elin Waagen, Harold Mendez, Brydee Rood, Damon Little, Judy Dow, Angie Vo, Julia Bither, Elizabeth Day, Michelle Holzapfel, Max Wirsing, Isadora Snyder, Sara Kazemi, Anne-Marie Schwankl-Hoolihan, Keely Eastley, Yarrow Keenan, Cynthia Elek, Cherie Buck Hutchinson, Katie O'Brien, Brian Ganter, Chandler Willie, Melissa Vuletich, H. Tracey Mason, Laurel Johnston, Veronica Whitney, Allison Thiel, Barbara Parker, Chholing Taha, James Everest, Guinevere de Brunier, Veronica Edwards, Pam Passey, Sally Dischinger, Neva Boechenek, Colleen Jennings Roggensack, Virginia Fairchild, Kris Pourzal, Julie Mate, Cynthia Elek, Inertia Dewitt, Emily Sawyer, Cheryl Amick, Brittney Dale, Co Pelgarito, Sam King, Elisha DiiMatteo-LePape, Heather Sperling, Erica Morse, Kate Morgan, Evelyn McLean, Sara Kazemi, Carol Hendrickson, Sara Coffey, Ellie Joy, Minnia Joy, Susan Moore, Caroline Keefe, Annette Joy, Maryanna Harstad, Karen Kasel, Aretha Aoki, Heidi Eckwall, Nor Hall, Elena Vetter, Sarah Mahowald, Lisa Yankton, Olivia Starkie, Chantz Erolin, Rose Todaro, Claire King, Beth Barron, Matthew Hardy, Brita, Marty Everest, Alexa Yankton, Alicia Denny, Kathleen Gavin, Kim Yeager, Fedya Korobtsov, Katya Korabtsova, Greg Hines, Lauren Smith, Violet Steingrube, Michael Reed, Shane, Brad Meyers, Dana McGuinness, Theresa Dickerson, Michelle Johnson, Victor Hamburger, Alexis Green, Ana Smith, Thomas Swenson.

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Niicugni 's fish skin lanterns were sewn by volunteers in Vermont, Alaska, California, Minnesota, and Arizona over the course of two years in a series of free workshops led by Emily Johnson.

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The Fight To Take Back Hawaii | Foreign Correspondent

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From the article: “This is a historic moment for the Siekopai Nation,” said Elias Piyahuaje, President of the Siekopai Nation of Ecuador. “The land of Pë’këya has always been and will always be ours. For over 80 years, we have been fighting to get our land back.”

The ruling “will mark the first time that the Ecuadorian government delivers a land title to an indigenous community whose ancestral territory is found in a protected area,” Amazon Frontline said, adding it “sets an invaluable precedent for all indigenous peoples fighting to recover their lands across Latin America and the world.”

-Amanda

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Indigenous community in Ecuador wins legal fight to reclaim ancestral land after more than 80 years | CNN

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An indigenous community has won a court battle to regain ownership over its ancestral homeland in the Ecuadorian Amazon, more than 80 years after they were displaced because of war.

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Panama was able to take their land back for now.....

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Panama was able to take their land back for now.....

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PANAMA CITY/TORONTO, Nov 29 (Reuters) - For more than a month, a group of 16 fishing boats has been blocking a key port in Panama, choking off coal and essential supplies destined for First Quantum Minerals' (FM.TO) giant copper mine there, eventually forcing it to halt operations at the company's biggest revenue source.

The fishing flotilla has provided a fresh jolt of marine backing to the thousands of Panamanians who have been marching daily to demand the annulment of the Canadian miner's contract, arguing its presence violates Panama's sovereignty and threatens its environment.

The fishermen are angry that the company has appropriated resources, land and water, and worry about the mine's environmental consequences. Cobre Panama has said it is committed to growing more new forest than is impacted by its mine.

Panama's top court on Tuesday declared First Quantum's contract unconstitutional and its president announced an orderly shutdown of the mine, but the vigils on land and sea are set to continue as protesters insist that authorities take concrete steps to close the site.

"We aren't going anywhere," Sabino Ayarza, a representative of the protesting fishermen, told Reuters on Tuesday from his boat.

A complete shuttering of the mine, which accounts for about 1% of global copper output and 5% of Panama's GDP, would signal a David vs. Goliath victory for Panamanian protesters.

Their grassroots movement, nearly unheard of in business-friendly Panama, has wiped C$11 billion ($7.4 billion) off First Quantum's market value and raised global copper prices on supply worries. Copper is a crucial metal in electrification as the world moves to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

The protesters' victory in Panama is emblematic of the outsized and sometimes unexpected influence local communities are having on mining companies worldwide. In Portugal, for instance, Europe's biggest producer of lithium, some local activists are determined to halt mine developments. Canada's First Nation groups have also mounted fierce opposition against mining on their lands.

Those hoping to halt the mine's operations have seen false dawns before. Panama's top court struck down First Quantum's previous contract in 2017, but the company was allowed to mine while a new contract was approved. So protesters aren't taking any chances this time.

"If this goes on for a year, we will stay a year, there is no end-date," Ayarza said.

Cobre Panama accounted for about 46% of First Quantum's overall revenue in the third quarter, according to company data. The company was "reasonably confident" last week in ships carrying supplies reaching the port soon, but failed to circumvent the fishermen's blockade, said a person familiar with the mine's developments who asked not to be named.

First Quantum, said it would respect the court's ruling and on Tuesday announced the mine has suspended commercial production due to the blockades.

SURPLUS THREATENED

A Scotiabank report forecasts Cobre Panama's copper output in 2024 to represent about 1.6% of global supply and warned an indefinite shutdown increases risks of First Quantum potentially defaulting by the third quarter of 2024, and threaten its liquidity by early 2025.

First Quantum did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the question about possible default.

Together with dwindling supply from Peru, the world's No. 2 copper producer after Chile, the Panama shutdown threatens to wipe out what had been seen as global surplus in 2024, according to Macquarie.

In Chile, the copper outlook for 2023 went from 5.9% growth in May to 1% in July, as state-owned miner Codelco, the world's largest producer, lowered production amid operational difficulties, though it is expected to recover in 2024.

The fishermen have added muscle to a movement which blocked roads, causing daily losses of more than $90 million to businesses, according to experts, and food shortages nationwide. Protesters also hurled rocks at a bus transporting workers to the mine on one occasion, injuring eight workers.

The court verdict leaves three possible outcomes: Panama could close the mine indefinitely, nationalize it, or agree to settle its differences in international arbitration by negotiating a constitutionally correct contract with First Quantum alongside a new joint-venture partner.

"We believe it may be time for FM to consider bringing in a major mining partner to share the future risk of operating in Panama," Scotiabank said in a note on Tuesday.

However, protesters are pushing firmly towards a ban on all kinds of mining despite warnings of economic consequences.

The protesting fishermen have been posting their bank account details on social media for people to donate food and fuel. Ayarza did not detail how much they have received, but said he was confident they can outlast the mining giant.

"We know our sea. We know the area in which we are waging war," said Ayarza. "We use ropes to make them back down and, well, threaten them so they have to go back."

($1 = 1.3579 Canadian dollars)

Reporting by Valentine Hilaire in Mexico City and Divya Rajagopal in Toronto; Additional reporting by Fabian Cambero in Santiago; Editing by Christian Plumb, Denny Thomas and Nick Zieminski

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Valentine, a French-Panamanian who majored in journalism and philosophy, joined Reuters in December 2021 after spending eight years in Spain. She studied at the University of Navarra and after graduation held different roles at Spanish news outlets 'El Español', 'El Confidencial', and 'La Información'. Valentine has helped boost the team's win rate, broke news on high-profile developments, and collaborated with the Spanish service and polling teams. She spends her free time producing podcasts, playing violin, trying to learn Mandarin, and searching for the best cafes in town.

Divya Rajagopal reports on Canada mining sector, where she covers breaking news on critical minerals deals, takeovers and mergers in the mining sector and how miners deal with climate change and ESG imperatives. Divya previously worked as a financial journalist with Economic Times and CNBC TV18 based out of India. She holds a Masters in Global Affairs from the University of Toronto and a Masters in Technology and Social Change from Lund University, Sweden.

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'We aren't going anywhere': How Panama fishing boats brought First Quantum to its knees

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Panamanians argue the mine's presence violates Panama's sovereignty and threatens its environment.

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This is one of the articles I use with students to discuss the issue of the Land Back Movement. In NY, part of the 4th grade social studies curriculum is "Native Americans". The curriculum seems very outdated to me (although I keep pushing the people whose curriculum we use that changes need to be made, and I'd be happy to help them make them!!). I like to bring current issues into the classroom, especially with subjects such as this. Many students think of the Indigenous tribes in North America as extinct, and do not realize there is still a strong culture and community in this country. We also discuss returning artifacts from museums to the tribes they were stolen from. This article specifically talks about the tribes buying the land back, which the Instagram post brings up. It's a perfect tie-in, and very relatable for students since it is from a social media platform!

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This is to compliment the other post I am submitting for this assignment. I use articles, images and videos to spark discussion with the students. The article discusses that certain tribes have been able to "buy back" their land as a landback deal, but it raises the question of why they have to pay, when the land was taken.

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bricks, digital print of Flatiron gem shop, crystal, Radiohead lyrics from House of Cards (In Rainbows album) 

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NO MATTER

_H OW / IT

E NDS NO

M AT TE_R

H_OW / _IT

/ST ART _S

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Patoja pots made in the Mixe region of Oaxaca

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The pre-Columbian form interpreted by Gabriel Chaile, is alive and well in the kitchens of Mexico, Central, and South America. The pots, called patojas, have a unique asymmetrical shape that allows them to cook on embers, while also allowing access to their contents, as well as handle, for adjustment on the embers. This potter, in Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec, makes patojas in unslipped plainware, used for slow-cooking items, like beans.

Although they are used primarily for cooking, there is research that supports their use as effigies, primarily because of their bird-body form. Pato means duck, in Spanish; they have also been called shoe pots. The word for shoe, is zapato, and its familiar shortened word form is pato. Their natural materials, unique form, and culinary function, support their cultural connection.

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Mamá Luchona, at 2021 Triennial, Soft Water, Hard Stone, New Museum, NYC

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Gabriel Chaile, artist, takes a form found in pre-Columbian ceramics and creates a story that is both ancient and contemporary. The title, Mamá Luchona (Spanish verb, luchar = to struggle, strive, fight) refers to mothers caring for their children independently. The body of the form is embedded with egg shapes, and has features resembling a wise owl.

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The Wind Blows Where it Wishes, Gabriel Chaile

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Gabriel Chaile, Argentina, creates large sculptures inspired by pre-Columbian cultures. His themes combine indigenous myth with social themes. His materials are adobe, clay, wire, and steel.

This sculpture, called The Wind Blows Where it Wishes, on view on the High Line, at W. 24th Street, NYC, was inspired by nature and pre-Columbian ceramics from Argentina. It comes to life with the wind, rain, snow, and vegetation to create music.

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“Imagine the heart of the earth”

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A channel of the subterranean salt water stream that flows into the salt ponds. The ponds and channels have been in continuous use since the pre-Inca/Early Horizon period, and they’re now owned by the local communities in Maras and Pichingoto, who collectively establish agreements of production.

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Sacred Valley, Peru

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Over the weekend I saw this amazing performance at BAM by Geoff Sobelle , closing November 18th! Like Pina Bausch it also features soil on stage. In this case it is used to illustrate how industrialization has affected the soil. Catch the dirt at 00.20 of this trailer. The quote below is a review from the Lighting & Sound America magazine that gives some more context on how he uses the dirt.

"Sobelle removes the tablecloth altogether -- no mean feat, considering its size -- to reveal a vast dirt landscape that is gradually transformed by the addition (and deletion) of buffalo action figures and grain crops. Reaching into the dirt, Sobelle withdraws his hand, which is covered in oil. Derricks are added, along with a mansion, a factory emitting smoke, additional buildings, and dozens of motor vehicles. It's the rise of the modern industrial society in miniature and it paints a bleak picture of grim overdevelopment."

-David Barbour/

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David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (Face in Dirt), 1991,

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bronwyn.katz ore

2019, Steel, iron ore

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Field trip creation.

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We spend time in class talking about small plots of land, colors from the earth that inform our art, sensory experiences that tie us to dirt/soil/nature, etc.

But if you want to take this into the reality and immensity of how we develop, require, and seek essentials such as sand, iron, copper, silicon, and quartz - read this. It's by the brilliant Elizabeth Kolbert (New Yorker staff writer) and will blow you away.

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Our accelerating rates of extraction come with immense ecological and social consequences.

The town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina, doesn't have a lot to say for itself. Its Web site, which features a photo of a flowering tree next to a rusty bridge, notes that the town is "conveniently located between Asheville and Boone." According to the latest census data, it has 2,332 residents and a population density of 498.1 per square mile. A recent story in the local newspaper concerned the closing of the Hardee's on Highway 19E; this followed an incident, back in May, when a fourteen-year-old boy who'd eaten a biscuit at the restaurant began to hallucinate and had to be taken to the hospital. Without Spruce Pine, though, the global economy might well unravel.

Spruce Pine's planetary importance follows from an accident of geology. Some three hundred and eighty million years ago, during the late Devonian period, the continent of Africa was drifting toward what would eventually become eastern North America. The force of its movement pressed the floor of a Paleozoic sea deep into the earth's mantle, where, in effect, it melted. Over the course of tens of millions of years, the molten rock cooled to form deposits of exceptionally pure mica and quartz, which were then pushed back up toward the surface. In the twentieth century, Spruce Pine's mica was mined to make windows for coal-burning stoves and insulation for vacuum tubes. In the computer age, it's the town's quartz that's critical.

Silicon chips are essentially made of quartz, although this is a bit like saying that the "Mona Lisa" is essentially made of linseed oil. Manufacturing microchips is phenomenally complex and supremely exacting. The process generally begins with quartz's cousin, quartzite, which consists in large measure of silicon dioxide. Under very high heat, and in the presence of carbon, the quartzite gives up most of its oxygen. Then acid and a great deal more heat are applied, until the silicon reaches a purity level of 99.9999999 per cent, or, as it's known in the business, "nine nines." At this point, the silicon is ready to be fashioned into a "boule," or ingot, that weighs upward of two hundred pounds and consists of a single perfectly aligned crystal. It is here that Spruce Pine's quartz comes into play.

To form a boule, pure silicon has to be heated in a special crucible to twenty-seven hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The crucible must be tough enough to withstand this temperature, and, at the same time, it must have the right chemical composition, so it won't introduce contaminants. The only substance that meets both these criteria is high-purity quartz, and one of the only spots where the right sort of quartz can be found is Spruce Pine.

Spruce Pine's quartz is so valuable that, as the Vancouver-based journalist Vince Beiser observes in his book " The World in a Grain," almost everything about it, outside of its purity, is a closely guarded secret. The company that owns the town's largest mine-Sibelco, a Belgian conglomerate-doesn't publish production figures. When contractors arrive to make repairs at the mine, they are reportedly led to the equipment in blindfolds. According to documents filed in a case that the company once brought against a former employee, it tries to divvy up its contracting jobs, so that no individual can learn too much, and for the same reason it purchases its supplies from multiple venders.

All this stealth, Ed Conway suggests in his new book, " Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization " (Knopf), is justified. "There are few such cases where we are so utterly reliant on a single place," he writes. He quotes an unnamed industry veteran who notes that someone flying a crop duster over Spruce Pine and releasing "a very particular powder" could "end the world's production of semiconductors" within six months. No production of semiconductors would mean no production of computers, cell phones, automobiles, microwaves, game consoles, fitness trackers, digital watches, digital cameras, televisions-the list goes on and on.

"Even in devices that don't have 'smart' in their name, mechanical linkages have long since given way to a network of semiconductors," Conway, a London-based journalist, observes. "Nearly every economic activity, nearly every dollar of global GDP, relies in one way or another on the microscopic switches of semiconductors." Prudently, he does not reveal what that very particular powder is.

Of the ten largest corporations in the world, six are tech companies. In 2021, fifty per cent of Americans said they spend more than half the day in front of a screen, and a recent survey found that kids in the United States devote almost seven hours a day to staring at pixels. Statistics like these can produce the sense that matter doesn't matter all that much anymore. Conway thinks that this is an illusion, and a dangerous one. Contemporary society continues to rely on raw materials, like Spruce Pine's quartz, taken from the earth. Indeed, extraction rates, far from slowing, keep accelerating. These days, Conway reckons, humanity mines, drains, and blasts more stuff out of the ground each year than it did in total during the roughly three hundred millennia between the birth of the species and the start of the Korean War. This comes with immense consequences, both ecological and social, even if we don't attend to them.

Consider sand, the first of Conway's not so dark materials. According to a 2022 report from the United Nations Environment Programme, global demand for "sand resources" has tripled in the past two decades, to something like a hundred trillion pounds a year; this amounts to almost thirty-five pounds a day for every person on the planet. A lot of sand (though no one seems to know exactly how much) goes into land building. Among the world's biggest sand importers is Singapore, which has grown by more than fifty square miles since the nineteen-sixties. Among the major exporters is Vietnam, where sand dredging along the Mekong Delta has caused so much erosion that whole villages' worth of homes have been swept downstream.

"Where once there were riverbanks, today there are sheer drops into the water," Conway writes. Such is the hunger for sand that, in many parts of the globe, an illicit trade has sprung up. In India, so-called sand mafias are rumored to pay off cops and politicians. According to the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, a Delhi-based advocacy group, at least a dozen civilians and two government officials were killed by sand mafias between December, 2020, and March, 2022. (This was down from twenty-three civilians, five journalists and activists, and eleven government officials killed during the two years prior.)

A lot of sand also goes into building buildings, not to mention dams, bridges, overpasses, and roadways. Sand and gravel are the major ingredients in concrete, some seven hundred billion tons of which now slather the earth. Often, concrete is reinforced with rebar, which is made with iron, the third of Conway's six materials. (The material I've skipped here is salt, which, Conway says, is essential to just about every chemical process that's ever been invented.)

Worldwide, nearly three billion tons of iron ore are extracted each year. Australia is currently the leading source, and its biggest mines are in the Pilbara, a region in the country's dry, dusty northwest. Iron from the Pilbara is mined by blasting the landscape apart and then carting away the pieces, using, as Conway puts it, "church-sized diggers." Just the other day, several people died in the Pilbara when a truck carrying ammonium nitrate, an explosive used in the blasts, collided with another vehicle.

Conway devotes a hefty chunk of his discussion of iron to the story of the rock shelters in Juukan Gorge. These were sacred to two of the Pilbara's Aboriginal peoples, the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and the Pinikura, and contained artifacts that were some forty thousand years old. After assuring the communities that "all reasonable endeavors" would be made to minimize the impact of its operations in the area, the mining company Rio Tinto blew the rock shelters up. (The company has since apologized for what happened.)

"Perhaps what makes the destruction of the Juukan caves most disturbing is that we are all, one way or another, complicit," Conway writes. Most of Australia's iron ore is shipped off to China, where it's converted into steel and used to construct the factories and machinery that churn out the phones, consoles, chargers, T-shirts, running shoes, housewares, and assorted tchotchkes the rest of the world buys.

Like many books in its genre-about how x number of y items explain z-"Material World" has trouble sticking to its chosen integer. One of Conway's six raw materials is oil, but into this category he also squishes natural gas. Both are obviously fossil fuels, but, as Conway himself notes, they have distinctive properties that make them essential in different ways. Oil powers the transportation sector-cars, trucks, airplanes, and supertankers-and its by-products go into plastics, which show up in just about every consumer product you can name, from air mattresses to zippers. Natural gas, meanwhile, is primarily used to generate heat and electricity. It's also a key ingredient for synthesizing nitrogen fertilizer, without which, it is estimated, half the world's eight billion people would starve.

"Much of what we eat today is, one way or another, a fossil fuel product," Conway observes. Despite a lot of talk about cutting back on fossil fuels, the world, he points out, is consuming just as much oil and gas as ever before (and very nearly as much coal). But, if Conway is concerned about our continuing reliance on fossil fuels, he's also concerned about what it will take to replace them. Two of the alternatives are solar and wind. Conway calculates that building enough wind turbines to shutter a hundred-megawatt natural-gas plant would take fifty thousand tons of concrete and thirty thousand tons of iron. Meanwhile, a transportation sector that runs on electricity will require a whole lot more of his fourth material, copper. A recent report from S. & P. Global predicted that, worldwide, copper consumption will double over the next twelve years and that "there is a looming mismatch" between the available supply and the growing "copper demand resulting from the energy transition."

Conway visits the Chuquicamata copper mine, in northern Chile-Chuqui, for short-which is believed to be the largest open-pit mine on the globe. When a blast goes off at the bottom of the pit, more than half a mile down, the noise, he says, is "shattering."

Industrial mining operations began at the site a century ago. In the intervening decades, most of the best-quality ore there, and indeed around the globe, has been churned through. "Even as people demanded more copper the earth became considerably less willing to give it up," Conway writes. In 1900, fifty tons of rock yielded a ton of copper; to obtain that ton today, some eight hundred tons of rock must be processed.

Next to the Chuquicamata mine sits a town of the same name, which was abandoned in the early two-thousands, as waste rock began tumbling into people's gardens and residents fell ill. (The citizens of the town took to calling it Chuqui qui mata, or "Chuqui which kills.") By now, the waste has piled up high enough to consume a quarter of the vacant houses and a seven-story hospital.

Lithium-the last of Conway's materials-is equally essential to electrification. A typical electric-car battery contains nearly twenty pounds of the metal, which, in the era of climate change, has been dubbed "white gold." Like many strategic resources-see, for example, high-purity quartz-lithium is unevenly distributed. More than three-quarters of the known resources lie in just four countries: Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, and Australia. Competition over lithium supplies is one of the many sources of tension between the U.S. and China. Conway fears a replay of the nineteenth century, "when European countries colonised their way through much of the world, seeking rubber here, copper there."

The best option he sees for the future lies in what he calls "unmanufacturing." Iron, copper, and lithium, in contrast to oil, can be recycled. Faced with climate change on the one hand and the material demands of new energy infrastructure on the other, perhaps humanity will finally figure out how to reuse the gazillions of tons of resources it's already dug up. Conway doesn't believe this will happen anytime soon-"We are still a long, long way from that promised land," he cautions-but it is at least theoretically possible.

Chip Colwell, too, argues that it's time to rethink our ties to the material world. But Colwell is an archeologist, and, as such, he takes a longer view. In " So Much Stuff: How Humans Discovered Tools, Invented Meaning, and Made More of Everything" (Chicago), he seeks to explain how Homo sapiens went from knapping chert to ordering granite countertops. What happened, he asks, "that led our species from having nothing to needing everything?"

Colwell, a former curator at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, divides humanity's association with "stuff" into three periods. At the start of the first (and by far the longest), our hominin ancestors realized that some of the objects that were lying around-rocks, primarily-could be fashioned into implements. By two and a half million years ago, hominins-it's uncertain which species they belonged to-had mastered what's known as "secondary tool use"; they could take a stone and bash it against a different kind of stone to produce a blade with one sharp edge. This method of tool production continued, pretty much unchanged, for a million years or so, until some other group of hominins-probably Homo erectus-made a breakthrough: they figured out how to make stone tools with two sharp edges. Meanwhile, the story goes, humans began to evolve in concert with their technologies. Their hand axes allowed them to chop up other animals (and also, presumably, plants); this, in turn, allowed them to devote less effort to digestion and put more toward cogitation. The result was a feedback loop.

"Bigger and smarter brains led to the ability to create better tools, which in turn provided more energy for bigger and smarter brains," Colwell writes. Eventually, early humans became so dependent on their tools that they couldn't do without them.

The next period, in Colwell's telling, begins with the invention of what might, broadly speaking, be called art. This happened perhaps as early as half a million years ago, when a Homo erectus living in what's now Indonesia made some scratches on a mussel shell. By thirty thousand years ago, Homo sapiens living in what's now Italy were grinding ochre to paint figures on stone. The advent of art marks the point, Conway writes, at which things were no longer valued only for their utility-"when objects began to do more than just serve our biological needs."

During periods one and two, accumulating stuff was tough. In the days before agriculture, humans were constantly on the move and could possess only as much as they could carry. Once they began farming and settling down, around ten thousand years ago, whole new classes of objects were created-wheels, plows, sickles. The new objects, along with the food surpluses they helped produce, gave rise to new forms of human relations. Societies became stratified, and their most powerful members began to express their status by accumulating objects of value. Still, everything had to be made by hand, and the vast majority of people remained, by today's standards, dirt poor.

Then came the Industrial Revolution, which ushered in period three. People figured out how to reliably turn iron into steel and sand into concrete. They invented steam engines, followed by steam turbines. Each innovation begat more innovation, and the feedback loop was, in a manner of speaking, electrified. To manufacture demand, marketers capitalized on the equation of stuff with status. In the Global North, at least, scarcity gave way to superabundance. Colwell quotes an estimate-perhaps reliable, perhaps not-that the average U.S. household possesses three hundred thousand things. (Some of these things, admittedly, are paper clips.) Americans now have so many belongings, he notes, that they routinely pay to keep piles of them in storage.

While writing his book, Colwell decides to try to step off the consumerist treadmill. Together with his wife and nine-year-old daughter, he embarks on what he calls a "slow-buy year." Each member of the family agrees to purchase no more than five items over the course of twelve months, besides "necessities"-a category that includes food and school supplies. Before the halfway mark, Colwell and his family are already starting to chafe against their self-imposed limits. Then they purchase a new house. The idea of slow buying gets tossed out with the moving boxes.

"So Much Stuff" and "Material World" each make strong points; taken together, the books are even more compelling-and alarming. Consumption patterns in the Global North-and South, increasingly-simply cannot be sustained. Everyone who's read the news lately, or just ventured outside into this summer's smoke-filled, record-breaking heat, knows this. But that knowledge doesn't seem to change much. Conway explains this failure as a function of modernity. The industrialized world was built out of mountains of sand, iron, and copper, and it cannot operate without vast quantities of these or other materials. Colwell traces the problem back even further. Our special talent as a species is our ability to refashion raw materials-first rocks into tools, then, eventually, quartz into integrated circuits. We are, he suggests, Homo stuffensis, a creature "defined and made by our things." We should change our ways-we must change our ways-but this long history is against us. ♦

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The Real Cost of Plundering the Planet's Resources

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Elizabeth Kolbert reviews "Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization," by Ed Conway, and "So Much Stuff: How Humans Discovered Tools, Invented Meaning, and Made More of Everything," by Chip Colwell.

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Listen to the soil--Underground Sound project by Nikki Lindt

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Listen to the soil--Underground Sound project by Nikki Lindt

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Beneath us, there are diverse and dynamic worlds. The soils in this park contain microscopic food webs, fungal networks, animals that turn dead materials (like fallen leaves) into nutrients, and more. Similar to ecosystems above ground, soils can vary from one season to the next and from one place to another. As soils freeze and thaw, some microbes become dormant while others come to life. Healthy soils can also look, smell, feel, and sound different from degraded, polluted, and compacted soils because of differences in their physical, chemical, and biological properties. Recently, scientists learned that there are unique fungal communities in NYC that can metabolize heavy metals and other pollutants and also bacteria that can potentially produce new biomedically important products. We are still only beginning to uncover the wealth of knowledge hidden in our soils, including its dynamic sonic ecosystem.

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Nikki Lindt's project that explores and reveals the world of underground sound that can be heard under our feet through a virtual tour with information about each of the stops and videos that alternate between sound onsite and underground.

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A heart is in the middle
I hear your center is hot
But I haven't seen it
People say you are a rock
People say you are alive

A heart is a pump, distributing the ingredients for living to their proper places at the proper times
Our Blood flows. Your wind and water flow. I'm not sure about the pump

A heart is a symbol of love
And care, I put my heart in it
And a heart can ache
Are our feelings contained in our bodies?
Sometimes it feels like mine fill up and spill out.

Love sustains us and you sustain us
And contain us and every living thing
How big your heart must be
People say we are destroying you
Is your middle holding? are you flowing? do you feel loved? can I feel your ache? is it spilling over? our beautiful earth, we need your heart strong.

Amanda B

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Sap oozing out of canker wound in a cherry tree 

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This time of year sap is falling to the roots, being drawn back into the earth through vein like networks in trees, nourishment stored underground for winter and ready for spring.

Here the sap is leaking out through a wound the size of a heart.

Recently I learnt that cherry tree sap could be used as an alternative to gum Arabic when making paint and you could collect the sap by making a cut in the trunk a quarter of an inch deep, wait a week, and then collect the sap.

With a sharp knife in my right hand, I pressed my left to this tree and asked their permission to make the incision. And as I looked up into the branches I saw this sap, a full handful, jellylike and ready to be collected. And cried with relief that I did not have to inflict another wound on this world.

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I am barefooted, sinking ankle deep, into the rich, loamy, soil of a farmer’s tomato field.

All 14 stone of me , by this ground is not just welcomed, but happily absorbed, and standing here I am calmed and comforted.

I, who usually have trouble seeing past my own horizons can now let that foolishness go because I am surrounded in all directions by sturdy stalks of heirloom tomato plants. Resplendent in their fruiting palate which contains every possible shade of blue, yellow, red, green, purple, pink, gold, brown, both separately and blended together.

Their foliage emits a deep, deep woody-mineral fragrance of the greenest green imaginable.

“What flavor is this?”, I ask myself as I am covered, blanketed, hypnotized by its richness, now floating in this sea of green and rainbows.

And I am awakened, but not frightened as our energy’s, flow back and forth, one to the other, and back again. I take root into the Mother and she in turn takes root in me.

I transmit to her all my hopes and dreams. She responds by sending her nurturing strength up into my rooted tomato plant toes-she knows no difference between what and whom needs her.

Such are the blessings of our Earth Mother’s Heart…

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Halloween is for making. Here me and my partner are George and Martha from the children's book series. Materials : Paper mache masks and a hand painted skirt.

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Upheaval In The Heart of The Earth Part 3

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Upheaval In The Heart of The Earth Part 3

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In response to Heidi Gustafson's quote, "Imagine the heart of the earth," I posted a photo I took of a turtle that visited our home in Mexico several months ago. Her size (approx. 2 feet long), her nature, her composure, her very arrival stunned us. She laid her eggs in front of our house, covered them up with her hind feet, and walked into the woods.

I related her arrival to the Native American origin story, where the earth is born on turtle's back. In the story, the Great Turtle comes up from the depths and offers its back as a foundation for the earth, and a landing place for Sky Woman, who comes down from the sky and sprinkles seeds into the soil, which produce trees, plants, and flowers. This is the beginning of life on earth.

November 2023

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'Imagine the heart of the earth' when making a homemade weight (cement in a bucket with a pole in the center), and then it splits and is left in the trash. 

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Stacy Bogdonoff.  Thoughts on "Imagine the heart of the Earth".

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Stacy Bogdonoff.  Thoughts on "Imagine the heart of the Earth".

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"Imagine the heart of the earth"

And then imagine:

The core of my humanity ..

The essence of my soul ..

The reason for my being ..

The center of my world ..

The notion of proportionality ..

The kernel of truth ..

The shred of evidence ..

The pulse of a nation ..

The roar of the crowd ..

The power of the people ..

The weight of guilt ..

The speed of a lie ..

The labor of love ..

(Book) A Hole in the Heart of the World ..

Language often devolves into cliche; we should all be on guard to that trap.

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My response to the prompt. I picture the heart of the earth as broken. Our climate indifference, gun violence and war. Our poor earth. Hope in groups like this. Most of these are Karen's soil watercolors! (a couple are mine, but from plants)

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The fingerprints are her ancestors hands

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The fingerprints are her ancestors hands

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Following up on the conversation around the significance of hands/fingerprints on cave paintings. Artist Rose B. Simpson from New Mexico talks about how why she leaves her fingerprints as a marking on her clay sculptures. She says she loves visiting her ancestral sites/homes and seeing finger prints in plaster because they remind her of ancestors hands who made these objects just like her making sculptures today. This is a section of the Art21 episode "Everyday Icons".

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On a rare snowy day in Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, artist Rose B. Simpson assembles a maquette for a new public sculpture. The three small figures are models for the 12 concrete sculptures that stand nearly 11 feet tall at the Field Farm meadow in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Gazing forward with soft expressions and eyes that are hollowed through the back of their heads, the sculptures embody ancestors watching over the landscape. Simpson's work stems from these moments of observation and connections to the past, emphasizing the processes of making and becoming in which we discover new ways of being and of healing. Working quickly and intuitively in her studio, the artist shapes her clay sculptures by hand using a technique she developed called "slap-slab." Each of her clay sculptures is embedded with fingerprints and other evidence of the artist's hand, leaving traces of the act of making that produced the work. "I'm trying to reveal our deep truth," says Simpson, "and that deep truth is process."

The history, culture, and land of Santa Clara Pueblo are highly influential in the artist's practice. Simpson's ancestors have lived in Santa Clara Pueblo for millennia. On a walk through a nearby mountain range, the artist and her daughter use footholds made centuries ago, and find other signs of the bodies that once shaped the environment. Given the knowledge and heritage of her ancestors, Simpson finds ways of continuing their shared narrative. Building upon the skills passed down to her by her mother, Roxanne Swentzell, and her great-grandmother, Rose Naranjo, both artists and ceramicists, she creates and explores inventive ways of making work, understanding herself and her home, and continuing her lineage.

Living near the "lowrider capital of the world," Española, the artist became inspired by the region's car culture. Searching for empowerment, Simpson began work on a lowrider of her own called Maria (2014), which is both a sculpture and a functioning car. Painted with a black-on-black design, Maria references the forms used in traditional pottery of the region. Maria Martinez, a Tewa potter who developed the black-on-black style, is the car's namesake. In Simpson's first processional performance, what she calls a "Transformance," Maria drove loudly alongside the metal and leather-clad performers. However, in a 2022 "Transformance," the artist decided to omit Maria from the performance, exploring new modes of empowerment and ways of taking up space. Moving between worlds and modes of being is not new for Simpson, and these spaces of in-betweenness have become most generative for her. "When you can't ever be comfortable in one place, the discomfort can create an incredible environment for investigation," she reflects. "You kind of have to fall back and close your eyes, and hope that where you land is exactly the place you need to be."

More information and credits

Credits

Executive Producer: Tina Kukielski. Series Producer: Nick Ravich. Director & Producer: Ian Forster. Editor: Bryan Chang. Director of Photography: LeRoy Grafe.

Assistant Curator: Jurrell Lewis. Associate Producer: Andrea Chung. Design & Animation: Ryan Carl, Nikita Iziev. Composer: Andrew Orkin. Additional Music: Chocolate Helicopter. Additional Vidoe Editor: Addison Post. Additional Photography: Jarred Alterman, Allie Humenuk. Assistant Camera: Javier Castillo, Christina Zuni. Location Sound: Matthew Betlej.

Video Post-Production Services: Cut + Measure. Video Post-Production Producer: Alex Laviola. Colorist: Chris Ramey. Video Post-Production Coordinator: Catherine DiRosa. Online & Conform: David Gauff. Additional Animation: Andy Cahill. Audio Post-Production Services: Konsonant Post. Re-Recording Mixer & Sound Editor: Gisela Fullà-Silvestre. Assistant Editors: Ellen Askey, Michelle Hanks. Audio Description: 3Play Media. Station Relations De Shields Associates. Legal Counsel: Withersworldwide. Additional Curatorial Research: Susan Thompson.

Additional Art21 Staff: Lauren Barnett, Hannah DeGarmo, Lolita Fierro, Joe Fusaro, Molaundo Jones, Emma Nordin, Anna Pruett, Jessica Svenson, Noor Tamari, Nora Wimmer. Interns: Stephanie Ades, Sekou Cherif, Yeon Cho, Michaela Esteban, Emma Flood, Renee Rienecker, James Santiago, Adam Varca, Dani Wieder.

Artwork Courtesy: Rose B. Simpson, Jack Shainman Gallery, Jessica Silverman Gallery. Archival Materials: Drury Bynum; Chiaroscuro Gallery, Santa Fe; Addison Doty; Ben-Alex Dupris; Darrick Fields; Global ImageWorks, LLC; Kate Russell; Tim Salaz; Naomi Vegas.

Special Thanks: The Art21 Board of Trustees, Bandelier National Monument, Jennifer Bindman, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Fawn Douglas, Sydney Freeland, Sasha Hecht, ICA Boston, Maria Martinez, MASS MoCA, Permaculture Flowering Institute, Roxanne Swentzell, Shaandiin Tome, The Trustees / Field Farm.

Major underwriting for Season 11 of Art in the Twenty-First Century is provided by PBS, National Endowment for the Arts, Lambent Foundation, The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Toby Devan Lewis, Robert Lehman Foundation, and Nion McEvoy & Leslie Berriman.

Series Creators: Susan Dowling and Susan Sollins.

©2023 Art21, Inc.

Closed captions

Licensing

Interested in showing this film in an exhibition or public screening? To license this video please visit Licensing & Reproduction.

Rose B. Simpson was born in 1983 in Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, where she lives and works today. In 2007, the artist received her BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and in 2011, she received her MFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design. Simpson's work reflects on the multilayered history of her home in New Mexico and of the United States, exploring modes of empowerment and resilience that carry traditions into the future. Working across media, the artist finds new ways to connect past and present, express experience and identity, and contemplate freedom and strength.

"I'm trying to reveal our deep truth and that deep truth is process."

More from "Everyday Icons"

Donate

Art21 is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization; all donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.

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Rose B. Simpson in "Everyday Icons" - Art21

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Working quickly and intuitively in her studio, Rose B. Simpson shapes her clay sculptures by hand using a technique she developed called "slap-slab." Each of her clay sculptures is embedded with fingerprints and other evidence of the artist's hand, leaving traces of the act of making that produced the work.

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I imagine the heart of the earth is soil in constant motion.

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I imagine the heart of the earth is soil in constant motion.

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The painting was made with earth pigments during the field trip this past Sunday.

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A hospice nurse describes her patient's experience of being born into "the earth room."

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David Marchese Photograph by Mamadi Doumbouya

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A Hospice Nurse on Embracing the Grace of Dying

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Hadley Vlahos​, TikTok star and best-selling author​, wants us to let go of our fighting words​ about death.

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Eight rocks gathered from a 1 sq ft section of my community garden and rinsed with rainwater. What creates the greens? I wonder where these rocks came from—how long they have been in this garden, and whether or not they were brought in by human hands.

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There is so much to say about this IRIS weaving that I decided to write a little bit more for anyone interested. IRIS stands for Indicator of Reduction in Soil. Iron- and manganese-coated IRIS devices are used to identify reduced conditions in soil - really, what we are looking for are anaerobic or anoxic or non-oxygenated zones in the soil. If there is significant color change on these devices when installed belowground - we gain a glimpse into the redox (reduction-oxidation) environment and can determine if a soil is an official hydric soil (it's a requirement for wetland determinations plus hydrophytic vegetation & wetland hydrology).

I have been researching and using IRIS devices since 2004 as a brand-new soil scientist. I was in graduate school in Maryland when we first started to test, explore, and quantify the results we saw in the field. Fast forward to present day - I noticed a bunch of old (they have a shelf life b/c the oxides crystallize over time) IRIS films hanging around thanks to former graduate students (thanks Anna and Chelsea) and thought - I should weave those and then bury them to see a beautiful microbial masterpiece. So, here we are. The orange color is from an iron oxide paint we create in the lab - combining ferric chloride and potassium hydroxide to just the right pH to give us 60% ferrihydrite and 40% goethite. The brown/purple color is a manganese oxide called birnessite that is also synthesized in the lab. Those pigments are painted onto large sheets of thin PVC, then cut, rolled, and put into cylinders we use to deploy them into the soil. Below you can see my mini field assistant from years ago next to some films plus films installed in a wetland at 10,000 ft in the Snowy Range Mountains, and a bucket of iron IRIS ready to be installed, and lastly, films freshly pulled from a wet soil.

I cut the PVC into very thin strips that I could weave into the science tapestry you see above. I buried the piece in a bucket of soil that was fresh mixed with some that was already sitting under water (leftovers from my paint making refuse bucket) plus we included an egg (for added sulfur) and oats (for added carbon). We waited only 7 days b/c I was impatient and pulled the tapestry. Out came the beauty you see above. The newly white areas are zones that were reduced with respect to whichever element (Fe or Mn) that was there and the black is zones of iron monosulfide (FeS), a transitory reduced compound that will oxidize when exposed to air. As you can see in the images, that dark black, FeS, fades over time. We love using compounds found in nature to help understand the belowground world. So much so that we even made an IRIS cake years ago to celebrate.

So - what you see in the tapestry is evidence of anaerobic conditions (an area devoid of oxygen) such that the microbial community needed to use an alternate terminal electron acceptor to perform it's basic life functions. Oxygen is the most energetically favorable followed by nitrogen, manganese, iron ... see the image above. The soil I put into the bucket was already anaerobic from months of sitting in a bucket so the reaction happened within a week. If I was starting with dry soil, I would have waited at least a month before taking a peek at the tapestry.

There is so much to say about this IRIS weaving that I decided to write a little bit more for anyone interested. IRIS stands for Indicator of Reduction in Soil. Iron- and manganese-coated IRIS devices are used to identify reduced conditions in soil - really, what we are looking for are anaerobic or anoxic or non-oxygenated zones in the soil. If there is significant color change on these devices when installed belowground - we gain a glimpse into the redox (reduction-oxidation) environment and can determine if a soil is an official hydric soil (it's a requirement for wetland determinations plus hydrophytic vegetation & wetland hydrology).

I have been researching and using IRIS devices since 2004 as a brand-new soil scientist. I was in graduate school in Maryland when we first started to test, explore, and quantify the results we saw in the field. Fast forward to present day - I noticed a bunch of old (they have a shelf life b/c the oxides crystallize over time) IRIS films hanging around thanks to former graduate students (thanks Anna and Chelsea) and thought - I should weave those and then bury them to see a beautiful microbial masterpiece. So, here we are. The orange color is from an iron oxide paint we create in the lab - combining ferric chloride and potassium hydroxide to just the right pH to give us 60% ferrihydrite and 40% goethite. The brown/purple color is a manganese oxide called birnessite that is also synthesized in the lab. Those pigments are painted onto large sheets of thin PVC, then cut, rolled, and put into cylinders we use to deploy them into the soil. Below you can see my mini field assistant from years ago next to some films plus films installed in a wetland at 10,000 ft in the Snowy Range Mountains, and a bucket of iron IRIS ready to be installed, and lastly, films freshly pulled from a wet soil.

I cut the PVC into very thin strips that I could weave into the science tapestry you see above. I buried the piece in a bucket of soil that was fresh mixed with some that was already sitting under water (leftovers from my paint making refuse bucket) plus we included an egg (for added sulfur) and oats (for added carbon). We waited only 7 days b/c I was impatient and pulled the tapestry. Out came the beauty you see above. The newly white areas are zones that were reduced with respect to whichever element (Fe or Mn) that was there and the black is zones of iron monosulfide (FeS), a transitory reduced compound that will oxidize when exposed to air. As you can see in the images, that dark black, FeS, fades over time. We love using compounds found in nature to help understand the belowground world. So much so that we even made an IRIS cake years ago to celebrate.

So - what you see in the tapestry is evidence of anaerobic conditions (an area devoid of oxygen) such that the microbial community needed to use an alternate terminal electron acceptor to perform it's basic life functions. Oxygen is the most energetically favorable followed by nitrogen, manganese, iron ... see the image above. The soil I put into the bucket was already anaerobic from months of sitting in a bucket so the reaction happened within a week. If I was starting with dry soil, I would have waited at least a month before taking a peek at the tapestry.

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IRIS weaving explained - the ART of SOIL

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There is so much to say about this IRIS weaving that I decided to write a little bit more for anyone interested. IRIS stands for Indicator of Reduction in Soil.

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1. I have many rocks...

2. No wonder my suitcases are heavy.

3. Many more in very strange places...

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These were pebbles in the garden, and laying them on the brick paving drew my attention to the beautiful variation in brick colour too

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These rocks came from as far west as Gallup, New Mexico, to as far east as East 6th Street on the Lower East Side of NYC. There's some pyrite and pink tourmaline added to the mix for good measure.

October 2023

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My friend just got back from Greece and dug out some obsidian rock for me. The rest of the painted rainbow is from earth collected by Julia. I took a class with her where we made watercolor uses these earth pigments.

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Not the complete spectrum, but best I could do. Included are an arrowhead, a pottery shard (not quite a rock, but from the earth none the less!) and a piece of glass found on a hike (also not a rock, but made from the earth also!)

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petrified wood, iron-oxide coated gypsum, ironstone, quartz, green?, and basalt

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The day that wasn't meant to be? First-the earth made a statement by having a mudslide on the metro north tracks on my train line. So I took a different train. Then, the email from Julia went into my junk folder, so I didn't see it before I left. I went anyway and had a lovely solo viewing. I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it-BUT-they were having an infestation of "fungus flies" !! Interesting development; but certainly makes it a living installation! The guy working there suggested I also visit The Broken Kilometer around the corner-also by DeMaria. A total contrast. Then back to the subway, where I saw the beautiful "damage" of water seeping beneath the tiles. Seemed like a fitting image!

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Look what's happened to my little earth-work in just one week's time.  If it grows much more I can sculpt it into a field of waves like Maya Lin. Seeds and soil are inseparable; they exist for each other.

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There is already so much dirt, dust, earth in my house. It gathers on the windowsill and I let it be. I thought about the word “dirty” this week—dirt-y, earthen, and its suggestion of uncleanliness.

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location: bed stuy, brooklyn backyard

lil jar: soil from ground, generates mostly "weeds" / lighter shade of brown / sealed in a jar, light moisture collects on the sides

medium jar: store-bought soil from a gardening bed, feeding edible herbs / darker brown / sealed in a jar, light moisture collects on the sides

acrylic bookstands enclose a mix of both in open air

all sit on my working desk

feels: earthen embrace, home

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From our basil pot to a shell - later to compost. 

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my garden project.. just finished laying the soil today:) 

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A new member joining the rest ( kale seeds, foraged sand, water, soil )

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Created my earth room with found items.  

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A project I am currently working on

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Some our homemade compost enjoying its 15 minutes of fame before being used to fertilise houseplats.

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my interpretation of a room fit for earth

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I created a sort of diorama - a scaled down "room" fit for soil, surrounded with paintings made with soil. I included a full profile of soil, complete with an organic later to encourage conversation and the sharing of soil stories.

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JP’s Earth Room

Ingredients:

White Pebbles
Basil Leaves
Black-Eyed Susan Petals
Dahlia Petals
Rose Petals
Zinnia Petals
Pine Needles
Aster Blooms
American Beautyberries
Pez Space Ship
Garden Soil
Recycled Plastic Salad Container

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The soil came from my patio planters, where tomatoes and peppers grew this summer. When I placed the soil in the bowl it looked like little hills and valleys. It became a mountainous region in miniature, and then an Andean landscape with the addition of two miniature llamas.

October 2023

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My mini earth rooms! They are travel size, so my rooms can be with me anywhere. ✈️

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Stacy Bogdonoff.                             Dirt Found in Curtain Lining.        Too beautiful to even try to remove.

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Stacy Bogdonoff.                             Dirt Found in Curtain Lining.        Too beautiful to even try to remove.

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Title: Split Level. 18"w x 24"h.

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Just potting soil in French (of course) yogurt jars, sprinkled with wheat berries.  My own earth work.  

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"A Little Bit of Dirt and Seeds"              by Stacy Bogdonoff           

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"A Little Bit of Dirt and Seeds"              by Stacy Bogdonoff           

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Rituals on the Run-Natural Clay workshop

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Rituals on the Run-Natural Clay workshop

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I attended a workshop in Philadelphia this weekend that was very relevant to our class. This class was part of a larger exhibit called Teaching at the End of Times that is up until October 29th in Philly. It was taught by Marcela Torres. The workshop came from the premise "In times of transition we lose the locations, materials and community that were the foundation of our ceremonies, yet we don't lose our rituals."

We started off by drawing a map of our life and then we picked out a shape from the drawing to make a clay structure. The clay was collected by Marcela from a spot Long Island New York. We ground the earth then added water. These structures were  intended to be small travel size ritual items that would hold incense. We made the incense from a Japanese wood binder and various medicinal herbs. The incense was then decorated with dried flowers.

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What struck me about the Earth Room when I visited it was how the soil filled the space. So when I approached this homework assignment I thought about having an smaller version. So you could closer see the grains of soil. This is potting soil that is placed on a miniature table. The TV remote is for scale.

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"A Loft Filled with Dirt, the Man Who's Cared for it for 19 Years"

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"A Loft Filled with Dirt, the Man Who's Cared for it for 19 Years"

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This is cool video of about the caretaker of the NYC Earth Room. When I visited the room last time with Julia's class I noticed he was drawing.

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A Loft Filled with Dirt, the Man Who's Cared for it for 19 Years