CLS Nature-based Art Day 2023
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Richard Long
“A line made by walking”
the Sahara Desert and England
Here, English artist Richard Long makes a line by walking. In the English country side, his repetitive step temporarily killed the grass he was trodding upon. What message (if any, do you think he was sending with this piece of art?) He did a similar piece in the Sahara desert where he kicked stones out of the path.
Robert Smithson
“Spiral Jetty” – Utah, USA
Robert Smithson's earthwork Spiral Jetty (1970) is located at Rozel Point peninsula on the northeastern shore of Great Salt Lake. Using over six thousand tons of black basalt rocks and earth from the site, Smithson formed a coil 1,500 feet long and 15 feet wide that winds counterclockwise off the shore into the water. Spiral Jetty lasted only two years before the rising lake level submerged it, hiding it from sight for nearly thirty years.
Simon Beck
Snow designs - worldwide
Similar to Smithson but more concerned with the decorative quality of the art that results from his walking in snow.
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Maya Lin
Mountainville, NY
Just down the road from Rhinebeck, at Storm King sculpture park, The Storm King Wavefield encompasses an eleven acre site, with the earthwork itself covering four acres. It is comprised of seven rows of rolling waves of earth and grass, each over 300 feet in length and no more than fifteen feet high.
Michael Heizer
Los Angeles, CA, USA
A 340 ton boulder sits over an entrance to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. (LACMA).
Krisztián Balogh
Hungary
‘World Tree’ by Krisztián Balogh doesn’t quite look real in photographs, but the 32-foot land art installation was really cut into the ground and filled with water to resemble a branching river in the shape of a tree.
Icy & Sot (Artist team from Brooklyn, USA)
The country of Georgia
A human silhouette cut into the grass in Tbilisi, Georgia by Brooklyn-based duo Icy & Sot reflects the sky in a subtle nature-based temporary art installation that makes a big impact.
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Alejandro Duran,
Mexico
Trash collected from beaches around the world transforms into surprisingly beautiful works of art when arranged by color, size and shape and laid out on the coastline in Sian Ka’an, Mexico. “More than creating a surreal or fantastical landscape, these installations mirror the reality of our current environmental predicament,” says the artist.
Unknown artists found on internet
Cool and accessible ideas on how to make art with things you find in nature.
Michael McGillis
Minnesota, USA
Artist Michael McGillis sliced into orderly stacks of logs and then painted the cut ends purple to create a beautiful path through the Franconia Sculpture Park in Shafer, Minnesota.
Norm Magnusson
Rhinebeck, NY
Norm Magnusson finds rocks and twigs and leaves and stuff in nature, paints designs on them and then photographs them back where he found them. He's completed nearly 200 of these pieces so far and the entire series can be seen here.
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British
A poet with nature and one of the great artists of our time, these are some of his greatest hits.
Norm Magnusson has an art career spanning over 35 years.
He’s in the permanent collection of NY’s MoMA, The Museum of the City of New York, The New-York Historical Society, The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, and The Anchorage Museum of History and Art amongst many other corporate and private collections.
He’s received numerous awards and grants including two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants, A NYFA Fellowship, two NYSCA grants, a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Grant and the Ulster County Award for Art in Public Places amongst many others.
As a visual artist, he’s shown in galleries and museums in New York, New Zealand, London, Paris and all over the U.S. He’s been reviewed everywhere from the NY Times to the Washington Post to the Utne Reader, Sculpture magazine, trendhunter.com, and many other national and international magazines, websites and blogs.
As a curator, he’s brought together exhibitions such as “FU”, which examined and illustrated U.S. fair use laws as they pertain to visual artists; “The Museum of Controversial Art”, which re-created some of the most controversial art through the ages; “Beautiful Nonsense”, which consists of objects and art meant to challenge the intellectual sure-footedness with which we move through our everyday lives; “abc@WFG”, a survey of text-based art; and “Abstract Evocative”, an exhibition of abstract art at WAAM in Woodstock.
As an educator, he’s taught art to under-privileged kids in NYC and over-privileged kids in Woodstock, NY, where he created a 12-class curriculum entitled “Art that’s Changed the Way I See the World Around Me” in which artists and gallerists and rock stars and film makers and authors and academics came and spoke on that topic with visual and audio aids. Most recently, he launched a new curriculum of appreciating and creating land-based art for 5th grade students.
For the last 11 years, on August 29, the date of its world premier in Woodstock, NY, Magnusson has produced an anniversary concert of John Cage’s 4’33” at the WAAM Museum in that town, a concert series originated to commemorate that town’s role in debuting this amazing piece of art.
A decade ago, he returned to his first creative love, acting; starring in community theater productions of plays by David Mamet and David Ives, and as Pozzo in Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.” He performed in the The Center for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck’s production of Eve Ensler’s “A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer” and wrote his first ever words and images monologue “The Signs in our Lives” and performed it at the Hudson Literary Festival in 2014 and 2015. It was followed by “Swipe Right (Looking for Love in the Digital Era)” in 2017 and “Kill the Head (Losing my Self in a Zombie Movie)”, about his months working as a stand in and photo double for Bill Murray. In 2021, he wrote and performed “The Definition of Pornography”, which debuted at 11 Jane Street Art and Performance Space concurrent with his “PORNWEAVINGSEXHIBITION” of visual art. He has also appeared in numerous feature films, mostly playing a shrink or a professor.
He’s the co-founder of FISHtheMOUSEmedia, a developer of educational apps for iOS, where his “Animal Alphabet” app was widely acclaimed and honored with a prestigious Gold award from the Parents’ Choice Foundation.
He serves on the board of directors of two 501(c)3 organizations, CultureConnect and GoodJTDeeds and s the father of 3 wonderful kids, all of whom are especially talented at seeing the world around them with appreciative eyes and a grateful heart.
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