GLOBAL WARMING ART PROJECT

Arts Services Inc.’s (ASI’s) Global Warming Art Project fund supported qualified individuals and organizations from across Western New York in their creation of artistic projects related to the dangers of global warming and climate change.  Selected projects had the strong potential to impact and inspire the community to change its behaviors in a meaningful way. Funding for the Global Warming Art Project came from Ben Perrone and the many ‘Environment Maze’ project donors. At this time, the Global Warming Art Fund panel has distributed all of the available funds. Please check back for updates as we work to secure additional funding for this grant.

PROJECT BACKGROUND

For the last several years, Ben Perrone and Hugh Levick have worked on an environmental project called ‘Environment Maze,’ but were unable to find a suitable location for the installation of their project.  Ben did, however, raise approximately $70,000 dollars in donations for the project.  Since the project could not be completed as envisioned, Ben decided to re-purpose the funds by donating the money to Arts Services Inc. (ASI) to create a fund for artists who are creating projects related to the dangers of global warming and climate change.

Environment Maze Project by Ben Perrone

PROJECT PURPOSE

The Global Warming Art Project grant will provide funding to local artists in Western New York doing artistic work that relates to the dangers of global warming and climate change and inspires change within the community. Grants will be awarded from a range of $1,000 up to $10,000.  Larger project funding requests will also be considered.   Submissions can be from new projects or re-envisioned past projects.

The review panel, in consultation with Arts Services Inc., reserves the right to make any and all decisions regarding the selection of proposals submitted. Our review panel is comprised of: Scott Propeack (Burchfield Penney Art Center), Adele Henderson (Department of Art, University at Buffalo), and Aitina Fareed-Cooke (Get Fokus’d Productions).  Our panelists follow ASI’s code of ethics and conflict of interest policies when selecting final projects.

RESOURCES FOR APPLICANTS

Partner / Venue Resources

If you do not have a partner, location, venue, or other related collaboration lined-up, ASI can assist in connecting you with these partners to further your artistic project growth. Contact [email protected] for more information.

GLOBAL WARMING GRANT RECIPIENTS

Dorothea Braemer is the daughter of two biologists and has been addressing environmental concerns in her art throughout her entire career. Her project, “Solar Global Warming Oracle,” consists of creating a three-foot globe with solar panels and a window through which viewers can peer inside. Visitors will select from a panel of about 10 choices, each presenting a common climate change concern or fear, such as “It is too late,” “I feel guilty about my lifestyle,” or “I as an individual can make no difference.” Once selected, a video will play that addresses the particular concern with a personal message offering perspective, support, and resources. The tenor of all video messages will be that “you” are not alone, and that political activism and individual behavioral change can create positive social change, despite mainstream media’s tendency to silence or under-report stories of this nature. Braemer’s previous environmental art projects include “Random Notes of Ragpicker Woman,” “Earl Butz,” “Tree House,” “Searching for Paradise,” and more.  She currently serves as an assistant professor in media production in Buffalo State’s Communications Department.

The Buffalo Center for Arts & Technology (BCAT) has provided arts-focused educational opportunities in an environment of hope and discovery for the Buffalo community since 2014. BCAT partners with Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Arts Center to offer The Buffalo Youth Media Institute (BYMI), a youth arts program that targets under-served high schools and provides teenagers with access to media production equipment and instruction. Together, the group is created“1988,” a student-led film documentary that explores the future effects of global warming through the eyes of the next generation inheriting this crisis. Viewers will experience vignettes involving future environmental disasters, interviews with climate and environmental justice leaders, and “future commercials” that creatively address the effects of environmental degradation caused by global warming. Visuals will be selected from television and the internet and will be included to appeal to audiences with diverse opinions about environmental issues, and through playful yet meaningful techniques, the filmmakers will engage viewers in critique about how technology can solve issues rather than exacerbate problems. Learn more on their website HERE

“UNSEEN” by Chantal Calato is a multimedia installation contrasting the beauty the world knows Niagara Falls for with the dark personal stories of those who have lived in the shadows of this industrial toxic city. Calato interviewed 18 people from Niagara County whose dark, personal stories are interwoven as a haunting soundscape revealing how they have been affected by toxic waste inside their homes. The “UNSEEN” voices will permeate the exhibition with the physical and emotional burden that is their environment. A double-height projection of Calato’s cinematography of the cascading water of Niagara Falls will illuminate the Project Space at the Burchfield Penney Art Center. “UNSEEN” opens in March 2020. For more information visit www.unseen-voices.com

Timothy Frerichs has been engaging with issues of human interaction and impact on the natural world for the last 25 years as a professional artist. His project, “Navigation: Lake Erie – Great Lakes,” consists of creating a traveling exhibition and installation with accompanying workshops and lectures that address how climate change is impacting the Great Lakes, and in particular, Lake Erie. The installation will consist of a group of varying-sized works on paper alongside a video and artist book, and the accompanying workshops lectures and workshops will include direct approaches to address and counter these impacts and changes. The exhibition will be hosted at venues along Lake Erie and, potentially, at other Great Lakes sites.

“Open Waters” by Judith Goldman is an interactive, multi-media art installation that investigates environmental and geopolitical changes linked to the melting of the polar ice caps, in light of the 500-year Anglo history of expedition to the Northwest Passage and the (once-mythical) Open Polar Sea. The exhibition (Burchfield Penney Art Center in Fall of 2019) will feature a print-digital hybrid book of poems and an interactive wall of video and audio work evoking effects of human disruption of the Arctic. It will also register how this environmental change affects the Western New York region. This project is the latest work in a 3-year collaboration among a poet (Judith Goldman), visual artist (Andrea Wollensak), computer scientist (Bridget Baird), and sound artist (Brett Terry).

“100 Seconds Before Midnight/It’s Hot Here” by Kyla Kegler is a devised theater performance addressing the Ecopsychological impact of Global Warming on teens. The big-head mask play will premier at Hallwalls, made in collaboration with teens of the Youth and Climate Justice Initiative of Western New York and professional researchers in the field of Climate Justice and Ecopsychology. The two-month making process will involve generating content through conversations, theater exercises, Skype conversations with international Climate Justice researchers, in-person conversations with local leaders, conversations between the teens about their relationships to the topics and relevant field video recording. It’s Hot Here is a platform for young climate justice activists to be heard, not just in a political realm but in a personal and poetic conversation that responds to the many layers and emotional nuances of the issues teens are facing as inheritants of this planet.

“For Future Generations: A Plastic Pollution Study of Lake Erie” by Alexis Oltmer is a traveling exhibition comprised of photography & sculptural work highlighting Lake Erie plastic pollution collected at Emerald Beach, Buffalo NY from 2017-19 by artist Alexis Oltmer. Specifically gathering creative data Oltmer cleaned the beach 33/40 days. Each time she photographed & removed plastic pollution for 4 hours, kept a bag of the oddest found plastic pollution objects for sculptural purposes & collected data for the Alliance for the Great Lakes.FFG consists of 12 separate days curated as photographic grids comprised of 30 6×4 images, 20 fossilized plastic pollution sculptures & an artists talk focusing on lifestyle changes regarding plastic pollution in the Great Lakes.

For Future Generations flyer

“Waist Deep” by Derek Roland is a new play set outside a Mega Mart Superstore before the annual “Maniacal Monday Gift Giveaway” with a line of people camping out over night to receive free gifts, such as a glow in the dark unicorn pool floatie with built in speakers. They are entirely preoccupied with saving their places in line and getting the (ultimately useless) gifts and refuse to leave. They repeatedly ignore storm surge advisory warnings as an approaching hurricane threatens their survival. The lights go out as they lose electricity, and still they remain dedicated to winning the prize. The wind picks up and they secure themselves to the building. The water begins to rise from a storm surge, and they double down, more afraid of losing their spots in line than drowning. This production aims to expose how trivial our interpersonal conflicts seem in the face of natural disaster, directly challenging us to examine the forces which prevent us from acting to ensure our own survival and fight them. This project is presented in partnership with Road Less Traveled Productions where Mr. Roland is a Regional Playwright Resident.

Anna Scime with Lumiflux Media will create “Lake Sturgeons’ Guide for Surviving the Anthropocene” (LSGFSA), an experimental media artwork created from 8 years of research and fieldwork collaborations with scientists working in biology, geology and ecology. It consists of a series of short video essays and a multimedia installation. This work examines history, art, culture, and language through an ecological lens pointed at a single species, and zooms outward from there. This film will be shown at film festivals around the United States and will be broadcasted at the Burchfield Penney in 2020.

GLOBAL WARMING ART PROJECT SPONSORS

Ben Perrone
Donors of the Environment Maze Project