Environmental Art

Redwood Area High School Advanced Art 3 Students recently studied the art of Andy Goldsworthy (which you can read about here) and Christos and Jeanne-Claude (which you can read about here).  The unit focused on Environmental & Earth Art. 

{What Is Environmental/Earth ART}

Environmental Art...

Informs and interprets nature and its processes, or educates us about environmental problems.

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Is concerned with environmental forces and materials, creating artworks affected or powered by wind, water, lightning, even earthquakes.

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Re-envisions our relationship to nature, proposing new ways for us to co-exist with our environment.

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Reclaims and remediates damaged environments, restoring ecosystems in artistic and often aesthetic ways.

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The culmination of the unit was our installation of five environmental artworks the week following Earth Day.

The students chose their groups, then scouted the nature center for ideas and materials.

Students then planned, created and installed their artworks.

The artworks were made {mostly} from items found in the nature center,

that were both natural & earth friendly.

Please view their art & read their statements below...

Our Gallery:

The RVHS Nature Center

Through Our Eyes..."Dmamakota" - (I am Dakota)

Through Our Eyes “Damakota” - (I am Dakota)

Vanessa Goodthunder and Alisa Bednarchuck

For our Art Project, we decided to create a Tipi which was the home of our indigenous people who were the Dakota. Using the tools that they once did we wanted to re-create the past. We located it next to the prairie because we are prairie people. It is sturdy and structured enough for one to sleep in and even in the Minnesota winter. We have painted a story on the canvas and welcome you to interpret the story in your own unique way.

Pidamayaye – Thank You 

Dream Catcher 

Dream Catcher

BrainnaFarmer, Cassie Thordson, Sarah Bernardy

We made our dream catcher from natural resources from the nature center along with twine and beads.  According to Native Americans, dreams that humans have while they sleep, are sent by sacred spirits as messages.  According to their Legend, in the center of the Dream Catcher there is a hole.  Good dreams are permitted to reach the sleeper through this hole in the web.  As for the bad dreams, the web traps them and they disappear at dawn with the first light. We thought it would be nice to create a dream catcher for the Nature Center.

 Eroded Beauty

 Eroded Beauty

Hannah Ovre, Cassie Kranz, Cameron Haase, Leticia Morais, Insa Hartmann

The creation of Eroded Beauty is inspired by the symbol of a kite which we feel resembles freedom, childhood, and the connection of humans and nature in a celebration of spring. We carved sticks and cut leather to create the kite to emphasize the message of nature in a human creation i.e. the kite. The kite is not perfect because we wanted to capture organic shapes as well as demonstrate erosion. The message we hope to express is that even after years of weathering, some things (especially in nature) can be just as beautiful, if not more so.

 Window To The Past

Toothpicks

Toothpicks 

Alexander Tshauj Vang "the assistant", Ben Schmidt "the boss" 

 Hello, I’m Alexander Tshauj Vang the assistant, and my boss is Ben Schmidt, we created this art piece called Tooth Picks. We didn’t really have a plan for making this environmental art...at first. As soon as we went outside, the boss saw some grasses that we could use to make our art. Since the grasses were sturdy, easy to use, and there were a mass amount of them we decided they would be the perfect medium to sculpt with. After picking up all the pieces we needed, we cleaned the grass to make them linear as possible for our artwork. After that, we started to stack the piles of grass into a shape. The shape resembles a pile of tooth picks falling out of the box. So we went with it and created this environmental artwork called Tooth Picks. We hope you have a nice time viewing our environmental art and thank you.

Stay Creative My Friends...