Green Piece: Connecting Art and the Environment
Elli Thompson

A walk along the Raven Nature Trail in Minocqua provided view after view of northwoods beauty: smooth and shiny leaves rustling softly in the breeze; the chirping of birds echoing through the trunks and branches of the forest; the combined scent of fresh earth, plants and grass.

Every twist and bend of the trail revealed more of Wisconsin’s natural splendor. Turning one corner, however, the scene was anything but expected. Large, looming chainsaws hung suspended from tree branches. Below them, more machinery sat heavily on randomly placed wooden posts. A small bird perched on one of them, picking at its rough surface—perfectly embodying the contrast between human and nature, foreign and native.

But this clash between nature and industry wasn’t the result of man’s destruction—quite the contrary. The chainsaws—actually wooden casts covered with coats of suet birdseed—were artfully created, deriving their beauty and meaning alongside and with nature, as a part of the Forest Art Wisconsin project, a unique “gallery” created in summer 2007 under Ute Ritschel, a German professor-in-residence at UW-Madison.

This intertwining of art and the environment does more than just provide bewildering imagery—it offers a new way to look at and experience art in Wisconsin while raising awareness about environmental and social issues.

A dizzying array of art that closely connects to nature peppers the state: art made from natural materials, art made out of biodegradable materials, art made from recycled products or junk left on the wayside, and art made within a natural environment. But when focusing on the messages behind their vibrant, capturing, even quirky, façades, the lines between these different art forms begin to blur. With environmental and social topics spanning across fields of study and arising in everyday conversation, artists have contributed to the discussion in their own way—visually.

Roy Staab, an environment site installation artist working from West Allis, creates his art to support the protection of nature. He constructs large-scale, outdoor sculptures in an effort to not only be closer to the earth and the elements, but also to bring attention to the environment.

“There is a message without a message,” Staab said. “I believe in passive education, and I believe in working and being in harmony with nature ... I want more people to look at and respect nature and keep it clean. How long can you look at the mess that men are making and let it be?”

Julia Taylor, a graduate student in art at UW-Madison who contributed to the Forest Art Wisconsin project, agrees that art’s quieter form of demonstration speaks volumes about a wide variety issues. Rather than talking about, writing about or marching in protest to modern and relevant concerns, artists can react creatively.

Working under the umbrella theme of “Native/Invasive,” artists involved in Forest Art Wisconsin displayed their thoughts on issues of population movements and invasion—ranging from plant invasion in Northern Wisconsin to white settlers invading American Indian territory in Wisconsin’s early history to current immigration issues in the state.

For Aristotle Georgiades and Gail Simpson, professors in the UW-Madison Art Department, making their chainsaw display on Raven Trail gave birds a chance to symbolically strike back against modern society and encouraged people to think about the destruction humans create when they intrude on the natural world.

More importantly, beyond just raising awareness, art incites change and inspires solutions, according to Nicole Gruter, a graduate student of art at UW-Madison. She believes it helps people “to realize that you can manipulate certain environments … in order to foster a positive environment and a creative environment.”

Crafting the meaning
For Green Bay artist Colleen LaBrosse, other people’s trash makes up the majority of her projects. An avid bike rider, LaBrosse finds much of her material outdoors in the form of discarded debris on the roadside. Nearly any object has the potential to be art in her eyes, no matter how obscure.

“Some people’s junk that [they] just throw out or that falls off their car I just find and think, ‘Ooh, this could be a part of a bird,’” LaBrosse said.