Art
Celebrating environmental activism with art – Halifax Examiner
EAC’s Joanna Bull, Zuppa Theatre’s Ben Stone, and 50 Things artist Lorne Julien sit in front of Lorne’s mural on Agricola Street in Halifax. Photo: Contributed
How do you celebrate 50 years of environmental activism in Nova Scotia during a pandemic?
For the Ecology Action Centre (EAC), a giant community park picnic party was out of the question, so they partnered with Zuppa Theatre Co. to create an interactive, app-guided, provincial treasure hunt.
Featuring 50 original pieces from Nova Scotia artists spanning spaces from Cape Breton to Cape Forchu in Yarmouth County, the ’50 Things’ artworks were inspired by the province’s legacy of environmental activism and EAC’s history.
“There’s a comic book about the folks who stopped the spruce budworm spray back in the 70s, there’s a song about salt marshes, there’s video work, there’s audio soundscapes, there’s a couple of quilts, paintings, and other things too,” EAC community engagement manager Joanna Bull said in an interview.
“There are some site-based installations like artist Nat Chantel has at The Deanery about reconnecting to land and the relationship with land. It’s really a whole range of things. It’s a treasure hunt of art of all different kinds from established artists and also emerging artists across the province.”
EAC’s community engagement manager Joanna Bull listening to a recording on the 50 Things app. Photo: Contributed
While some of the work can be accessed through the 50 Things mobile app, others are physical objects. Bull said each piece was intended to be experienced in a specific geographical setting to help bring to life the history of the activism that protected it and to reflect on where we are now. She points to an on-site installation by artist Lou Sheppard overlooking Stoddart Island in Shelburne County.
“One example is what would still be today the largest nuclear power generation plant in the world, a 12,000 megawatt nuclear power plant on Stoddart Island,” Bull said.
“As part of our 50 things, you can go down to the little area right across from the island and you can look at that island and you can see how there’s no nuclear power plant there and then when you get there, you get to see an augmented reality thing about the effect of radiation on our bodies.”
Bull said EAC’s accomplishments over the last 50 years come down to the environmental movement as a whole and to the people working at the grassroots level.
“We’re standing on the shoulders of 50 years of truly impactful activism and organizing. Nova Scotia is a different place than it would be without the Ecology Action Centre and all of the other amazing community partner groups that we’ve worked with over the past 50 years,” Bull said.
“At the same time in this moment, we’re facing up against the biggest environmental crises that we’ve faced as human beings, the climate collapse and the collapse of biodiversity and all of the environmental injustices that have been going on. We have some very real questions to ask ourselves about where we go from here as an organization and as a movement.”
That’s why the EAC turned to artists, people Bull described as those who help spark our imaginations and help us to envision the future.
“If you look at any successful social movement, artists have a very key role to play in catalyzing our desires and our motivations for action,” she said.
Bull said if Nova Scotians take one thing away from the app-guided 50 Things adventure, she hopes it’s the recognition that change is possible and that we — Nova Scotians — have shaped change here.
“You know, often we’re told that you can’t make a difference, and the story of the past 50 years shows that that isn’t true,” Bull said. “You can make a difference, and here are some quite inspiring examples of where we have made a difference.”
Artist Angie Arsenault is one of the 50 artists lending her creative talents to the 50 Things project. The artist and Concordia University PhD student grew up in Sydney and has returned to Nova Scotia. She describes her art practice as exploring imperial debris, specifically plants — often invasive species or weeds — that were brought by settlers.
“It’s appreciating these plants in general in a new light or acknowledging their existence not just as a nuisance as people often view them, but as something that’s actually life-giving and something meant to be celebrated,” Arsenault said.
“And also, I think that it sort of has a symbolic sense of resilience to it as well.”
Her interactive installation is located in Bridgewater and is called Little Library of Foraged Inks. A twist on the many little libraries she frequented in Fredericton during part of the pandemic, her little library swapped out the books for ink bottles.
Arsenault made the inks from plants growing in Nova Scotia. People can visit the little library, borrow small bottles of ink to create their own art somewhere else, and then submit their pieces to an Instagram page where she intends to showcase their creations.
Angie Arsenault. Photo: Elizabeth Arsenault
“It’s sort of like a community building project, but it’s also a project that I’m hoping will make people take notice of the natural world around them a little bit more,” Arsenault said.
“I’ve been using these same plants for medicinal purposes and even for consumption, for food. But in this particular iteration, it’s all about colour.”
The app was scheduled to launch on Friday, but was delayed due to technical issues with the Android version. Bull said they hope to have it operational this week. Through the app, users will be able to unlock the art pieces and learn about the stories and history behind them.
Updates on the app’s status will be provided via the EAC’s social media accounts. When it launches, the app can be downloaded for free here.
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Who created the first work of abstract art has long been a fraught question indeed. Better, perhaps, to ask who first said of a work of art that a kid could have made it. A strong contender in that division is the Russian artist Véra Pestel, whom history remembers as having reacted to Kazimir Malevich‘s 1915 painting Black Square with the words “Anyone can do this! Even a child can do this!” Yes, writes novelist Tatyana Tolstaya a century later in the New Yorker, “any child could have performed this simple task, although perhaps children lack the patience to fill such a large section with the same color.” And in any case, time having taken its toll, Malevich’s square doesn’t look quite as black as it used to.
Nor was the square ever quite so square as we imagine it. “Its sides aren’t parallel or equal in length, and the shape isn’t quite centered on the canvas,” says the narrator of the animated TED-Ed lesson above. Instead, Malevich placed the form slightly off-kilter, giving it the appearance of movement, and the white surrounding it a living, vibrating quality.”
Fair enough, but is it art? If you’d asked Malevich himself, he might have said it surpassed art. In 1913, he “realized that even the most cutting-edge artists were still just painting objects from everyday life, but he was irresistibly drawn to what he called ‘the desert,’ where nothing is real except feeling.” Hence his invention of the style known as Suprematism, “a departure from the world of objects so extreme, it went beyond abstraction.”
Malevich made bold claims for Suprematism in general and Black Square in particular. “Up until now there were no attempts at painting as such, without any attribute of real life,” he wrote. “Painting was the aesthetic side of a thing, but never was original and an end in itself.” As Tolstaya puts it, he “once and for all drew an uncrossable line that demarcated the chasm between old art and new art, between a man and his shadow, between a rose and a casket, between life and death, between God and the Devil. In his own words, he reduced everything to the ‘zero of form.’” She calls this zero’s emergence in such a stark form “one of the most frightening events in art in all of its history of existence.” If so, here we have an argument for not letting young children see Black Square and enduring the consequent nightmares — even if they could have painted it themselves.
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Being Spider-Man is about so much more than webbing up bad guys. Spider-Man is the neighborhood guy. He gives back to the community. He protects the community. There’s swinging, there’s fighting, there’s dangling, and sure, sometimes he has to traverse the multiverse and see all his alternative versions.
In a new print series from artist Oliver Barrett though, we focus on the simple stuff. Spider-Man just being Spider-Man. Seven prints, available individually or as a series, each showing Spider-Man at his ground-level best. The pieces are from a collaboration Barrett did with Restoration Games/Unmatched and are being released via Bottleneck Gallery and Acme Archives on October 3.
Each piece is a hand-numbered, 10 x 10 inch giclée in various edition sizes and they’ll be available individually (for $30 each) or as a set (for $200) on the Bottleneck Gallery site at noon ET October 3. Check out all the images in our slideshow.
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Dr. Frasier Crane has always been an admirer of the finer things in life, and artwork is no different, which is why it feels fitting that, in preparation for his return to our screens, television’s most renowned psychiatrist poses alongside striking pieces of art in new posters designed to promote the launch of Paramount+’s upcoming reboot series, Frasier. The series follows Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) as he enters the next chapter of his life. Viewers will see him return to Boston which will come with its own set of challenges, relationships, and even dreams. Frasier has finally re-entered the building.
While the first of two newly-released posters show Grammer next to a striking collection of statues, the second poster emphasizes the start of the new chapter in his life. In addition to Grammer, the new series stars Jack Cutmore-Scott as Frasier’s son Freddy; Nicholas Lyndhurst as Frasier’s old college buddy turned university professor Alan; Toks Olagundoye as Olivia, Alan’s colleague and head of the university’s psychology department; Jess Salgueiro as Freddy’s roommate Eve; and Anders Keith as Frasier’s nephew David.
The new iteration of Frasier comes from writers Chris Harris (How I Met Your Mother) and Joe Cristalli (Life in Pieces), who executive produce with Grammer, Tom Russo and Jordan McMahon. The series is produced by CBS Studios, in association with Grammer’s Grammnet NH Productions. The first two episodes of the new series are directed by legendary director and television creator James Burrows, who is best known for his work as co-creator, executive producer, and director of the critically acclaimed series Cheers, as well as the original Frasier series, Will & Grace and Dear John. The series is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution outside of the Paramount+ markets.
The Legacy of Frasier Crane
The original series, which aired from 1993 to 2004, had an impressive 11-season run and earned numerous awards and honors. It was a major success at the Primetime Emmy Awards, winning an incredible 37 Emmys throughout its time on the air. This accomplishment set a historic record for the most Emmys ever won by a TV show at that point in time. The awards covered a wide range of categories, including recognition for Outstanding Comedy Series, Lead Actor (Grammer), Supporting Actor (David Hyde Pierce in the role of Niles Crane), and Supporting Actress (Bebe Neuwirth as Lilith Sternin), among others.
The upcoming series will premiere in the U.S. and Canada on Thursday, October 12, with two episodes, and on Friday, October 13, in all other international markets where Paramount+ is available. New episodes will then drop weekly on Thursdays, exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S. and Canada, and on Fridays, internationally. In addition, the CBS Television Network will broadcast a special airing of the first two episodes back to back on Tuesday, October 17, beginning at 9:15 p.m. ET/PT. Until then, check out the new posters below:
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