Green Options » artist

Eco-Artist Creates ‘Puff’ Device to Monitor Car Emissions

Michael Ricciardi — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:04:38 +0000

Puff is attached near the exhaust pipe of your vehicle. Its color changes dynamically, visualizing the amount of pollution your car is producing. Green indicates the lowest rate of pollution, red the highest.

Modern artists have often tackled environmental and ecological issues head on, such as through incorporating litter and refuse into sculptures, while other artists (such as photo, video and film artists) have sought to document industrial waste and/or have taken strong oppositional/advocacy stances in their works.

In recent years, many artists have sought to move beyond these “reactive”, commentary, and documentary approaches and create objects and devices that serve practical purposes (if still a bit fanciful in appearance). One such artist/designer is Karolina Sobecka, whose car emissions monitoring device, ‘Puff’ , provides colorful feedback to the car owner on how “cleanly” (or efficiently) he/she is using/burning gasoline.

This author recently contacted Ms. Sobecka and asked her about this device (’Puff’) as well as her other designs, and her artistic/social/environmental goals.

Yearn Worthy Yarn: Newspaper

Kelly Rand — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:30:34 +0000

If you find yourself gathering your daily news from internet blogs and the Daily Show and less and less from a physical newspaper, you might be interested in learning about this yarn (on the internet, nach.)

For those hip to the online craft world, this might not be news to you, but to us here at CAGW, it is the uber example of reuse, and therefore we are in love. So, read all about it: newspaper yarn!

Via Green Upgrader, artist Greetje van Tiem has created yarn from old newspapers by hand-spinning the paper. Not a spinner myself, I can not speak to how one would go about doing this themselves so I leave it to Green Upgrader again who have this great step by step tutorial on how to spin newspaper into yarn!

Don’t Drink the Water

Jake Kulju — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:12:52 +0000

A community artist and a South Providence neighborhood will help raise awareness about a health hazard in the community while designing a series of informational signs through a partnership between three state agencies.
Warwick, Rhode Island-based artist Holly Ewald has been commissioned by the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts to create a series of informational signs warning residents of the South Providence neighborhood near Mashapaug Pond off Adelaide Ave. about the dangers of swimming and fishing in the pond. The pond has contained unsafe levels of dioxins and PCBs for years—the State Arts Council is working in collaboration with the Rhode Island Departments of Health and Environmental Management on this project to help educate community members and youth of the danger.

I have to ask—wouldn’t the money be better spent on cleaning up the pond? Community awareness about health hazards is definitely a positive step, and I am glad to see that a South Providence neighborhood is getting attention from state agencies and artists, but I think this needs to be taken a step further.