Coat Rack photo
This piece is created using ash lumber which due to both the spread of the emerald ash borer is quickly dying off as a lumber resource for North America. The emerald ash borer was brought over to North America in wooden shipping materials from Asia. In North America the emerald ash borer lacks any natural predator, unlike in Asia where it is naturally kept in check by other insects, organisms and naturally resistance trees.
GRAHAM JOHNSTON
Coat Rack design
Humans helped spread the ash borer faster across North America by transporting infested lumber and firewood. The ash borer also benefits from warmer, shorter winters allowing more of their larvae to survive year to year.
In My Old San Juan
"In my old San Juan", an original music composition by Noel Estrada, is a tragic tale of a man who is torn from his family by war, drowned in nostalgia and remorse.
This diptych is a reminiscence of a bygone era, before the advent of the fast-paced technology driven lifestyle, when strangers fostered deep bonds with their surrounding natural environment and each other. In an almost Utopian narrative, it represents a connection between a man who escaped the bloodshed in his country and a trumpet player who uses the melancholy of Estrada’s composition to bring people together. This connection allows them to escape, just for a few moments, the harsh realities of human existence.
EMILY ROTH
Afternoon Cigarette
I am interested in capturing the human experience through moments of unspoken raw emotions. Often, we alter ourselves temporarily for the sake of congeniality in our surroundings, but I am drawn to the even more fleeting moment of truthful exposure--when an individual is experiencing a quiet moment and have turned their attention towards inner thoughts. However, our daily lives and the simplest actions we perform in order to make us more comfortable frequently revolve around habits and materials that are harmful to the planet. While we are focused on our own lives and problems, we take little notice of what harm our habits and routines cause.
Floating Landscape 2
My "Floating Landscape" series is informed by the micro/macro worlds found in eastern forests, Chinese scholar stones and Yixing ceramics. The work begins by collecting tree debris left behind by storms that I assemble into small-scale invented landscapes. The landscape models are then sculpted in realistic detail out of red clay.
GAYLE FICHTINGER
Floating Landscape 1
Surfaces become fields of texture and the terracotta clay is fired without glaze for its color and to be closer to its natural state. My work is meant for contemplation.
Awareness at Fernandina Beach, FL
Awareness at Fernandina Beach, FL
Fernandina Beach, FL is my hometown and this dock is a very special place. My grandparents lived in their sailboat that they built there for about 10 years. I've walked the docks several times, attended events, enjoyed dinners, and created memories that will last a life-time. My parent's house is over the river and through the trees in the distance. Fernandina will always be my home, even though it is changing it will stay in my heart forever.
MARIAH HOWINGTON
Tybee Island GA
This painting is of my favorite bend of Tybee Island, GA, where the beach turns into the river on the South end. I have many happy memories of this location which include painting, relaxing with friends, swimming, and enjoying the sunshine. The water is calmer, but I have seen someone catching a shark in the water, be careful!
Shore Site 3
My photographs were taken during a short stay at Perdido Key, Florida. This strip of land is just 16 miles long and used to be a peninsula connected to the mainland of Florida, but during the 1930s, it was turned into an island to complete the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. Currently, 9.5 miles of this strip of land are protected by Federal or State parks, and environmentalists are trying to restore the native wildlife in these areas.
CASEY BLANDFORD
Shore Site 1
However, it is only a few hundred yards wide in most places. With the threat of rising oceans, this land could be one of the first to disappear on the gulf coast. These photographs were taken on land but predict a time where that land may not exist anymore.
Process
Cleaning products historically have been marketed to women as something that enhances their home, beauty, and sexuality.
BECKY SLIVINSKY
Elle September 2018 cover
As we wash away our imperfections in attempts to attain an unrealistic standard of appearance, chemicals are sent down the drain to sully the landscape, ultimately turning something "beautiful" into something harmful and toxic.
Animal Majesty
The first painting of a triptych by Sarah Posey focuses on the human effects on the global environment since the industrial revolution through the tale of Lilitu, a human and bird hybrid creature who embodies untouched nature. She is hunted and hounded by a metal-masked race of impostor animals who are attempting to take her place as mistress of the Earth.
SARAH POSEY
Capture - Volume 2
In the second painting Lilitu is hunted and hounded by a metal-masked race of impostor animals who are attempting to take her place as mistress of the Earth. In the third painting a race of fabric-masked animals are more sympathetic to her plight, but they still unwillingly help the metal-masked creatures in their mission to destroy her.
Earth Poetry
This painting refers to the theme of Anthropocene as it glorifies a sparsely populated city with little human impact on the land as a means to emphasize and preserve its natural beauty.
KELLY HYMES
River Street
River Street is a painting that focuses primarily on the historical persona that is Savannah, Georgia. The image pictured is one that was captured while on the Savannah Belles Ferry. While you are able to see the beauty that once was old Savannah, you can also witness the imposition of human kind on the land. There are many things that change around us daily, but the preservation of our unique and historical downtown holds precedence.
Visions of a God
These photographs illuminate the ongoing battle between man and nature. Light shining down on nature portrays the importance of nature herself and reminds us of the power and resilience that she possesses.
ELYSABETH MARTIN
Star of the Show
Both photos convey my love and also concern for how we as society have viewed nature versus how we treat the Earth that we inhabit and further invites the viewer to consider the power that is nature herself and our lack of respect we’ve continued to give to her in this dire hour of reckoning.
Ecclesiastes 3.2
Many have heard the expression “there is a time for everything”. This originates from the Bible in Ecclesiastes 3.1-8. Verse 2 (NLT) states that there is, "A time to plant and a time to harvest.” Unfortunately, our culture’s overconsumption disregards the time to harvest. We make unsustainable demands; farmers continually gather crops before its time to meet our gluttonous demand and allow the earth a sabbath rest to replenish itself. Continually replanting new crops year-after-year, season-after-season, depleting the earth of its natural nutrients. We need to stop greedy overconsumption now.
ELISE ALEMAN
Authority Given, Authority Lost
The care of the earth was a mandate given to us by God from the beginning. Genesis 2:15 (NLT)
States that, “The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it.” We were given the authority to care for the animals and the earth. When Eve was deceived and ate from the fruit, we lost our authority to the enemy. The earth has been reaping the disastrous results since. We have hunted and consumed animals to extinction. We have depleted the earth or its natural nutrients by our overconsumption. We have packed our landfills with plastics and garbage beyond normal consumption. We take take and give little back. Let’s end the madness now!
Dear Ms. President
Perhaps it seems silly and far-fetched to think of plastic in a leaf, however we live in a reality where microplastics exists all around us, polluting our oceans and the air we breathe embedding themselves into the earth and all living creatures. At a university for creative careers we have the means to dream and create solutions to this problem. It is our responsibility to instigate a change rather than allow our earth to be overcome by plastics. In light of celebrating the monumental accomplishment of SCAD’s 40th year, I would like to call to the attention of students, staff and administration how we have fallen short of a high standard in regard to stewardship of a healthy planet. Since living in the freshman dorms, I have been appalled by the amount of waste and the lack of care taken to dispose of it within the University. Only 9% of plastics are recycled in the United States and even if 9% of plastics make it to a recycling bin at SCAD, an even smaller portion actually make it to the recycling center. We have fallen short but out of short comings change is possible, our narrative does not have to be that of waste and apathy but can instead be a story of change through creativity.
Untitled (sedimentation 1)
I grew up in Las Vegas, NV, and being from the desert, I always heard the phrase 'wherever there's water, life will bloom." While Las Vegas has an already tense relationship with water and growth, what always blows me away is the beauty and strength of the environment. These works, then, are a meditation on sedimentation, urbanization, water, land, and ultimately -- hope.
ANDREW K. SHEPPARD
Untitled (sedimentation 2)
Man's relationship with the environment must change in order to be a sustainable relationship, and we must respect and cherish the earth -- but the earth will always respond, and whether or not we like the outcome, life will find a way. That's beautiful, and that's what I'm thinking about with these works.
Anthropocene Poem
Anthropocene
I.
In this era of man,
it is so easy to forget.
Every dead language is crying out
to be spoken but there
are no vacancies, only rooms
for tourists, and the lungs
want to know when they stopped
being able to breathe in Beijing.
II.
The carrier pigeon coos itself to sleep
and then extinction. It joins the dodo
and the mammoth. The last male white rhino
follows, ashes to Kenyan dust, and
I'm trying not to imagine Earth
stripped of all her crown jewels
though most are already caked in blood.
III.
I heard of a tribe that killed a Christian
in self-defense. It was all over the news.
He invited himself over, armed with the idea
that he could bring them salvation.
During the commercial break,
I contemplate showing up to dinner unannounced,
bearing a packet of seeds to grow a rainforest
out of basic human compassion.
IV.
Tell me, who lives when it’s all over?
I'm not sure I’m willing to take one
for the team. The heart can only stand
so much, and mine is choking
on the plastic from a six-pack.
The right whale slowly bleeds itself to death
off the coast of Georgia. I am drowning
in my own humanity. The beaches
are all stained red.
V.
On nights like these, I wish I could sleep
with the windows open. Breathe in the sting.
Be brave for once and tell the coming epoch
that it is not welcome here. But I am tired of this world
and its endings. I, the carrier pigeon,
dismantling myself to sleep
and then extinction.
Rachel Sandene
ALEC BURRAN
Embrace
"Embrace" features affordable dynamic housing that will rise and fall with the storm surge, a tram line connecting myriad neighborhoods to the Victorian district, a port expansion to accommodate larger ships, and walk/bike "green breaks" facilitating wellbeing. Combining hard data, collage renders and technical drawings, Burran's presentation answers his own question: "How do we solve big issues through architectural intervention?"
ALLISON MC INTYRE
Deer
Humans now arguably change the Earth and its processes more than all other natural forces combined. One facet of this involves a deepening and intensifying discontinuity between the world of the animal and the world of man.
ALLISON MC INTYRE
Deer
It would seem that there is a possible connection between the extinction of animals and an increase in animal imagery; they coincide historically during the 19th century. It is as if animal design objects help to somehow make up for something that is missing, making an absence more bearable.
SARA PAULA HOFFMAN
Word of Board Games
A transparent fragment of a 1963 Kodak moment is suspended below a checkerboard and confessional screen. Blue sky backdrop to the shell casings I gathered from the dirt road while cycling at Hunter Army Airfield in 2018. There is a redaction.
SARA PAULA HOFFMAN
Gulf Oil
“Gulf Oil was a major global oil company from 1901 until March 15, 1985…
One particularly memorable Gulf advertisement carried by NBC during their coverage of the Apollo missions showed aerial and onboard views of the Universe Ireland with Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers singing "Bringin' Home the Oil" – a tribute to the opening of Gulf's operations in Bantry Bay.” Wikipedia