Reuben Margolin

Reuben Margolin is a Bay Area sculpter who produces singular techno-kinetic sculptures. He creates sculptures to act as things move in nature such as waves. He does not create them to recreate nature but to better understand it. He crafts  the sculptures from everything; ranging form cardboard and wood to salvaged materials and they use a wide variety of power sources, hand-cranked to motorized as well as greatly varying in size. 
The inspiration for this Square Wave sculpture is a wheat field in the wind. His representations are highly abstracted yet they are well crafted and illustrate the motion very well. These sculptures are not easy feat, Margolin puts a large amount of effort into his craft, most sculptures include a complex set of pulleys, ropes, and hinges, as you can see in this sculpture dubbed the Double Raindrop.

The link  below is the motion generated by the Double Raindrop:

And here is a mini documentary of his work, Margolin explains his goals and purpose for creating the machines:

Jacob Berrier

Josh Keye’s Eco-Surrealism

I first stumbled upon Josh Keyes work about a year ago, I found it really interesting and intriguing not necessarily because I ever attempt such realism, but because of his use of strong visual metaphors and symbols. His work deals with natures relationship within itself while juxtaposing the effects humans have had on nature, all without actually showing a person. He employs very a scientific sensibility to his work which he combines with his own personal mythology, as well as folklore. He also addresses the current global warming crisis by depicting scenes that may show the aftermath of such an event. You could say his work follows an almost post-apocalyptic with a dystopian feeling about it.

Josh was born in 1969 in Tacoma, Washington, he currently lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Keyes graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and later received his MFA in painting from Yale University. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the United States. Over the past several years, Keyes has developed “an iconic and complex personal vocabulary of imagery, creating a unique juxtaposition between the natural world and man-made landscapes.” The objects and animals incorporated into Keyes’ dissected environments each hold individual iconographic significance. Either underwater or overgrown with vegetation, the imagery functions as a way for Keyes to express his personal experience while commenting on and sharing his interpretation of world events.

-Matthew Decker

Bonaire Island of Awesome

Bonaire is an island off the coast of Aruba and Curacao, which for those who don’t know is off the coast of Venezuela.  It is truly a ecological wonderland for scuba diver’s around the world.  What is so cool about this island’s scuba diving possibilities compared to any other place with coral reefs around the world you may ask?  Well Bonaire is different from any diving reserve in the world for the simple fact that Bonaire is actually a coral reef that raised out of the ocean to form an island.  This allows a diver to swim out from literally any point on the island and go diving right off the shore in some of the best and most luscious reefs existing in the world.  Bonaire is also one of the most populated and protected turtle sanctuaries in the world.  Bonaire’s diving capabilities were discovered by a sailor who would do business through the waterways and one day discovered just how beautiful the reefs there were.  He managed to get the island a protected reef status and the island grew in dive popularity very quickly.  It is now their main form of income.  Diver’s come from all over the world to swim in the reefs.  The reefs are teeming with wildlife.  One of the reefs, Alice in Wonderland, has the record for the largest amount of different species of fish ever recored in one reef.  I have been to Bonaire twice now and they were both two of the greatest experiences of my life.  The island inhabitants and tourists all share such a similar culture.  They all have one common interest.  That interest is diving.  There is really not much else to do on the island.  It’s tiny, a person could drive across it in less than a hour and there is really nothing there.  I believe it has like two grocery stores and one small town with a few shops.  Everyone who goes there eats, sleeps, and breathes scuba diving.  It’s a lot like art school in that sense.  Everyone shares a common interest and it is super easy to make friends and talk to people because you are all there for one reason and that is diving and supporting the reef.  The way the reefs are set up are quite interesting as well.  When you grab your tank and walk out into the water it is a very gradual slope down.  Then you hit the reef and the ground just drops out below you into a shear slope of beauty and wonderment.  When you hit the reef it’s a feeling that you can’t even describe.  It feels like you are flying.  I believe Bonaire is one of the coolest and most interesting places in the world.  It is so free and such a great time.  I highly recommend any one who has any interest in diving to go.

Artist: Stefan Sagmeister, Graphic Designer

STEFAN SAGMEISTER

Photograph found at: http://the99percent.com/conference/speakers/stefan_sagmeister

Stefan Sagmeister is an absolutely amazing Graphic Designer, and in my opinion the best in the 20th and 21st century. He was born in Austria in 1963, and has traveled around the world designing building off of natural inspirations taken in during his travels. Sagmeister frequently works in his sense of humor to his designs engaging the viewers to participate in his work.

Many of my favorite pieces he has done have involved a combination of nature and typography. Sagmeister has worked on posters, commercials, album covers for The Rolling Stones, to name a few. He is an author of a book entitled, “20 Things I Have Learned in Life So Far”. He is most known for his work being entirely hand crafted, and amazing typographic quality.

In this TED presentation Sagmeister discusses a one year sabbatical he, and his staff takes every seven years to help boost their creativity, give a fresh perspective, and come back to work with a renewed passion for what they do. He looks for places that are secluded where he can connect with nature. It is this connection that almost always is in much of his work. He has taken design to the next level by creating works that change over time naturally. He includes, plants, animals, elements, and photography in the designs he creates for his clients as well as the designs he does purely out of experimentation. I would encourage anyone to watch the full video, however it is 14 minutes long. If anything watch the first few minutes when he begins to talk about nature and his sabbatical.

Stefan Sagmeister: The Power of Time Off

When creating the poster below for the School of Visual Arts in New York Sagmeister said, “I found the line ‘Thinking that life will be better in the future is stupid. I have to live now’ under the heading: ‘Things I have learned in my life so far’ in my diary. The client graciously agreed to use it on the poster advertising the School of Visual Arts in New York.”An entire life cycle of caterpillars and butterflies lives within the twigs.

SVA Corporate Poster Designed by: Stefan Sagmeister

Each of the below designs are ideas that came to Sagmeister after a return from a year long sabbatical. You will notice by looking at them that each of them has some sort of natural element involved. Another interesting fact is that when Sagmeister creates these messages they are generally in various locations or cities in a given area. So a person might not ever see the entire message unless of course they looked it up online, or if they pass by each of these locations as they stood.

Art Grandeur Nature - Trying To Look Good... Designed by: Stefan Sagmeister

"Always" Designed by: Stefan Sagmeister

Lastly, I leave you with one last video of a presentation by Stefan Sagmeister. He uses newsprint paper, leaves, twigs and flowers to send a message to passersby. The message is, “Complaining is silly. Either act or forget.” Simple enough. 🙂

Billboard in Lisbon, Designed by Stefan Sagmeister

~Jessica Langstine

Robert Wyland

Wyland  Marine Environmental Artist

Robert Wyland is a marine wildlife artist that uses his art to promote awareness to protect and preserve the ocean.  Wyland is a educator, painter, sculptor and a photographer that creates beautiful art with a message to the public. “It is estimated that his murals are viewed by more than a billion people every year.” He created the Wyland Foundation in 1991, which is for informing people of the importance of protecting our oceans and to create environmental awareness in communities. Through his art he wants to convey the message of protecting the ocean by using color, shape, movement, scale, emotion and light.”

Here is one of his paintings showing whales swimming in the ocean with earth beneath them. He is trying to show a message about protecting the whales, marine life and the beauty of our ocean. Through the colors he chose I feel he captured the colors of the ocean. His paintings are beautiful and inspiring since I love the water and my favorite paintings are marine seascape paintings.  Some of the marine animals he paints are dolphins, whales, sea turtles, fish, and more.

Wyland teaches children about our ocean and how we can protect it. He is also known for painting really large murals or painting art of whales that are the actual size. For earth day in 2009 he painted a mural that measured 2.9 acres on a roof as a tribute to earth day. For Robert Wylands 25^th birthday he made a goal of painting 100 life sized marine life murals advocating for marine life conservation. It’s really inspiring to see that he did that to get more people aware of the problem. Also I admire how he uses his artistic skills to grab people’s attention to this matter.

Wyland also creates sculptures of marine animals made from materials such as glass, bronze, and kalonite. He also uses earth friendly materials when creating his art sculptures. I find it really interesting to see that this artist following his dream of making people aware and how he created a foundation to help inform everyone. He does public mural projects with children where they all paint to create a mural to make other people aware of protecting our oceans. He also donates art and has many Wyland galleries showing his art.

I didn’t know who he was before researching for an environmental artist but there is a Wyland gallery here in Sarasota. I had seen the whale paintings, and marine life paintings in there but never knew that he was an environmental artist. It’s really neat that I’ve seen his work in person at the Sarasota Wyland gallery when I stumbled upon him when I was searching online not knowing this. His paintings are amazing and really inspire me to keep painting traditionally since I’m always painting digitally due to my major at Ringling.

( I had technical difficulties adding photos into my blog post)

By: April Manuel

www.wylandgalleries.com

http://surfspots-gps.com

“We’re Not Growing Quality, We’re Growing Crap!”

So I recently just watched “King of Corn”, the documentary about two friends, Ian and Curt, who move to America’s Corn Belt to plant an acre of corn, the nation’s most grown and most subsidized grain, and follow their crop into the U.S. food supply.  Now I had a few problems with this documentary.  It had nothing to do with their message or what they were trying to get across but mostly technical things.  For example:    It starts really slow and I think that as a whole it was badly put together.  All of the jumpy camera work and how fast they moved the camera in the grocery store in the beginning made me feel really ill.  At first I really wasn’t sure what the hell was going on and why they were doing this, what made them decide to go on this journey and make a movie about it?  Also the film didn’t really feel finished.  What did they decide to do with that acre that they bought?  Are they just going to leave it empty so that no one can produce corn in that area?

I did find their journey very interesting though.  I had watched Food Inc. in my high school anatomy class so some of the things that they discussed, mostly about the cows/meat, I already knew.  But the things about the corn its self that is produced on the farms and the production of corn syrup I had no idea and to be honest its all pretty disturbing.  It makes me nervous about how genetically modified our corn and other food has become.  It is insane how much corn is grown every year and there is really no need for so much corn to be grown in the first place. Even though so much corn is grown every year an Iowan farmer can’t even feed their family on the food, corn, that is grown because it has to be processed before it can be eaten or else it tastes like chalk!  It’s upsetting that we have changed the way that we produce our food so much that you can’t eat what you grow unless it has been chemically processed first.  We have changed for the worst.

It’s all about making money, making it fast and cheap.  Farmers are now being awarded with subsidizes to continue to over produce cheap corn so that the government can ship it off to slaughter houses and corn syrup makers to be made in to unhealthy food for the American people. “I don’t care where it’s (corn) going, I’m selling it!”  Our generation is at risk of having a shorter life span than our parents because of what we eat.

“We’re not growing quality food, we’re growing crap!” and I don’t see that changing any time soon which is heartbreaking.

Extra Credit Blog

Rosaleen Magnone

Artist: Jody Barton

Jody Barton is a London-based illustrator and hand-drawn typographer. Most of his work is minimalistic and sketchy with some sort of sarcastic or comical phrase or slogan handwritten somewhere on it. His cynical take on important environmental issues helped him get some recognition in the art world. He studied art in London at Camberwell College of Arts and the Royal College of Art. Barton has extensive experience working in animation and sound. He has a way of combining word and image that is unique and compelling. short simple phrases can go a long way – espeically when tackling topics that have been drilled so far into our heads that we almost don’t hear them anymore.

For example:

Although he doesn’t always do environmental work, Barton primarily focuses on his annoyance with the way that people don’t care about vital problems within mankind. He claims to want to use illustration to “promote conversation and debate about important issues”, and that the inspiration for his art stems from ” being annoyed with the common hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness of people.” (How hipster).

One of this most compelling pieces is about climate changes effects on people. His work illustrates a mass exodus of humans due to a change in habitat.

He offers no information about himself on his portfolio website, Facebook fanpage, or blog so I don’t have much to say about him other than his work is interesting and compelling and he’s got some great things to say.

Check him out! http://www.jodybarton.co.uk/

[Bianca Pol]

Get Up And Actually Do Something!

I have noticed that throughout this semester there has been a lot of debate in our class and most of it always comes back to our school, Ringling College of Art and Design.  Whether it be about the selling and use of plastic water bottles on campus or about having our own garden, people seem to constantly blame the college for not caring about our environment.  You would think that bringing up that a lot of our buildings are LEED Platinum certified would shut these people up or at least made them reconsider who they are blaming but no they, of course, have a rebuttal.  “They aren’t really LEED Platinum certified!  They just do the minimum in order to get certified but then once that it over they don’t do anything else or keep up with it.”

I have also noticed through listening to these conversations in class that a lot of the people who are doing the most talking don’t ever say that they actually talked to someone in charge to get these answers.  The recycling for example.  Everyone is complaining that the school has these sectioned off receptacles for plastic, paper and waste but there is really just one giant trash bag in it.  Now this I think, I didn’t actually talk to any one about it that works there so I don’t know for sure, is true for the most part.  But I don’t think that it is entirely the colleges fault.  Yes someone made the decision to just put on big trash bag in there but the food services is completely different from the school.  They run their area the way that they want to.  Plus I know from observation that most of the students don’t even care where they through their trash.  I do know for a fact that the waste receptacles everywhere other than the cafe all have separate trash bags in them.

Also this whole thing about having a school garden isn’t going to happen if people don’t talk to the college about it.  The staff in charge of that kind of thing can’t read your minds, you need to actually put the pedal to the metal and take some initiative.  Same with the food services.  If you have a problem with it then do something about it.  Don’t just sit in class an d complain about how no one is doing anything and that the college doesn’t really care about the environment.  Because guess what people you’re not doing anything either.  Get out there and show that you care, don’t just tell the class that you do.

It’s hard for the college to show that they care about the environment when their students aren’t showing that they care too.  By either talking to someone in charge to get the ball rolling or by raising awareness in some way to get people’s attention.  I’m sorry to say but sitting in class just complaining about everything isn’t helping anyone, it’s just annoying everyone in that class.

Extra Credit

Rosaleen Magnone

No Impact Man

No Impact Man

Watching “No Impact Man” was an eye opener for me. Being from south, Texas where we didn’t have recycle bins in our neighborhood or anywhere except for a recycling place that you would have to make a drive to. Watching the movie made me realize how much we waste, and how much potential there is to reuse things we would normally throw away. What I noticed after seeing this movie is that I started noticing how much trash I create and how much trash I throw out every week. Also when ordering Chinese take out I realized they put food in plastic bowls with lids that could be reused. The movie really made me feel inspired like that I should be doing something to help our planet and to lower the impact I have on earth. When watching No impact man they lived in the dark at one point, which is crazy but I was thinking about buying energy saving light bulbs since I don’t have any in my house. I also wash most of my clothes in cold water, which is supposed to save energy. Since I was reading in an article that “85 percent of energy from washing clothes comes from using hot water.” What they did looked really hard but I understand they are trying to make a point that if we all make our own changes it will add up. So some of the changes I was thinking about that I could do is to try being a vegetarian. If not, reducing my consumption of meat can help. For example, trying to eat more meals with out meat. I would also want to see where I can get local food and try to buy organic food instead of shopping at Walmart. I would like to become more healthy by buying and eating organic food. I want to respect our planet by recycling, not buying water bottles and changing my way of living. Making small changes can add up with all the people in the world. The movie made me feel like we should act now before its too late.

Here are some website links I found with interesting ways to help!

10 Ways to go green and save green

http://www.worldwatch.org/resources/go_green_save_green

How you can help the environment in your daily life

http://network.earthday.net/profiles/blogs/how-you-can-help-the

21 ways to help the environment

http://www.practicalenvironmentalist.com/21-practical-ways-to-help-the-environment

By April Manuel

Artist: Carlson Studios

Some people don’t see how interior design and architecture is art. Look at it that we as designers and architects don’t just work with one blank canvas we have six. The space planning for the floor plan, four walls, and the biggest and uninterrupted plan that many people don’t always notice is the ceiling. Green design is fairly new but progressing fast. Local architect Michael Carlson is at the forefront in sustainable design and LEED certified projects.

In 2009 Carlson Studios Architecture designed the “HGTV Green Home”.  Before the house was given away on HGTV I went and toured the 3 bedroom, 3 bath 2500-square-foot home, which earned LEED Platinum certification from the US Green Building Council, is loaded with sustainable features beginning with mindful building orientation to maximize north / south exposures for optimum shading and protect interiors from sun exposure. Natural day light is captured throughout the house with distinctive clerestory windows above the main open living area and solar tube skylights in the hallway and kitchen. The changing daylight in the house also creates a sense of time and connection to nature. Modern roofing technologies such as high solar reflecting materials and a roof garden create a cool, comfortable patio space. Even though the metal roof appears dark in color with its terracotta red finish, the technology of the painting system is actually highly reflective and prevents unwanted heat gain. Solar photo voltaic (PV) cells provide power to the home producing renewable energy that helps lower electricity use in addition to the solar hot water heater. Healthy materials without toxic chemicals were liberally incorporated in the home’s interior to provide superior indoor air quality. Many materials also have recycled content. The concrete foundation and glass tiles in the bathrooms are some examples of this. Water saving plumbing fixtures and rainwater collection for irrigation reduce the house’s water demands. Highly insulated, solid concrete wall system offers unparalleled storm protection and energy savings.

Michael has been practicing architecture in Florida since 1989 and founded Carlson Studio Architecture in 1997. As, one of the first architects in Florida to achieve the LEED Accredited Professional designation, Michael combines his diverse project experience with an ongoing dedication to quality in the built environment through sustainable design and building practices.

As a soon to be graduate with my degree in interior design I could see myself working at Carlson Studios Architecture if I wasn’t already employed in my field of study. A lot of people have an ignorant preconceived notion that interior designers are the same as a interior decorator and all we do is pick pretty fabrics and coordinating paint colors. It is a constant battle for us to educate people on hurdles we must climb to become a true interior designer. Yes we get to select finishes and fabrics but we do not just judge them on the color there are fire ratings for different building types as well as sustainable rating depending on if you are trying to be Green in your design efforts. The future for designing sustainably is looking bright and I’m glad we are starting to realize what architects and designers can do to help the planet rather than harm it.

-April