Two artists that literally and non-literally illustrate the everyday simple matters of life from Barry Underwood’s uninvention of the styrofoam cup and plastic bags to Katie Kurtz’s dissection of strong eco images affecting culture and past landscape portraits capturing history are residing at headlands under the title of “Visual Eco Criticism”.

Light pollution from the urban backdrop or red and amber lights shining through the forest meld nature and city into Barry Underwood’s art form.  A current resident at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Barry goes through the forest to find a way to mix light and nature to represent his view of the world mixed together with human engineering and natural formations.

Mr. Underwood talks about plastic bags and styrofoam cups being uninvented (a new green word to learn), which would take the government banning it or putting high taxation on the bags themselves.  A hard policy to adopt, due to special interest groups and it being interwoven with our daily lives.  Only a quick legislative system like China’s could ban plastic bags so quickly.

A future representation of how we innovate our structures to collaborate with nature around us and a direction that architectural and environmental creators lead our society towards as our world becomes more populated and seeks sustainable options, is definitely cool.

Katie Kurtz reports,

“Given the popularity of such photographers as Chris Jordan (represented below), we seem to be becoming more interested in mountains of throwaway objects than in Mount Fuji.”

How much we use and throw away is one of the seven wonders of human civilization.  The fossil records we leave behind for future archaeologists will be a gold mine of ideas and history.  Mount Fuji took a million years to create, while we pump out mountain heaps of trash in just a generation.  Metaphor’s and comparisons of consumption and affluenza are modern poetry are well published everyday, from alarmist to humbly persuasive point of views, so much that the green movement has now become woven in all parts of our lives.  Katie’s “Visual Eco-Criticism” paper recognizes the visual media in a poignant manner with five strategic points from art to non-art representations and the roles of race, class, gender and sexuality to dialogue with cultural producers.

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