Arts Benicia / Creative Work Fund

Monday, March 2, 2015

Hats 'n Dogs

A Beautiful day with a well-attended talk and walk marked the introduction of the work to the community. Dogs (well-managed, mind you) abounded, and everyone save your correspondent seemed too wear appropriate ultraviolet protection. A variety of cookies were displayed, to your correspondent's delight. Mark gave an excellent talk on the purpose of the work, both environmentally and artistically, and then answered a barrage of questions. At one point, as you will see, a small scale figure was introduced to show what a full-scale natural water-treatment device might look like in practice.

After the talk, Mark led a walk through the wetlands that separate the green from the Carquinez Strait - the very wetlands we are trying tho protect with "devices" like the one Mark has created. Your correspondent has a bad leg, so all you will see here are pictures of people departing and shortly arriving from the walk - we have a small wetland, after all.

Your correspondent is happy and somewhat bewildered by the fact that this sensitive wetland is one of the dismayingly few places in Benicia where doge are allowed off leash. My vote - more places for dogs off-leash, fewer of these places to be in environmentally sensitive areas like our wetlands - Not that I don't take advantage of the allowance with our own dogs occasionally.

All in all, a lovely display of the extraordinary visibility of Mr. Brest van Kempen's works in practice - environmental art of the best kind - attention-grabbing for the passerby and informative once the attention has been grabbed. I can only recommend that Arts Benicia station a docent with the work to explain it and engage the passersby. I think that with docents, we could both better explain Mark's work to the passerby and use Mark's work as a tool to enroll people in Arts Benicia.

People gather well ahead of time

Piece full of water

Onlookers (notice photographer)

Informal explanation with solar tower

Notice the grasses already growing

Other photographers #1

Mark describes purpose

Small person #1

Larnie and Bodil #1

Mark explains #2

I still can't believe the beauty of this town

The solar tower #2

Other photographers #2

Mark Explains #3

Small people #2

Handsome dog #1

Photographer with awkward camera #1

Handsome dog #2

Big hat #1

Larnie introduces Mark to crowd

Handsome dog #3

Mark holds forth to crowd

Official placement of small figure to give scale for full-scale project

crowd and Mt Diablo in distance

Larnie with exotic video camera

Crowd looks on to Mark's description of project

Large and small figures

Explaining the project

Small figure is Dutch - how appropriate!

Da mayor describes how this work fits in to what the town is doing

Crowd leaves for tour of wetland

Handsome dogs #4 and #5

Crowd disappears on tour

Sunday, February 22, 2015

Information

We finally had a meeting where people who knew what they were talking about talked about the relationship between art and environment - specifically, how art can be used as a tool for improving or at least staving off the decline of the environment.

Panelist Thomas Azwell covered Bioattenuation: the ways in which the environment itself maintains a steady state and cleans itself. He also spoke about how we can help the world to clean itself up, and the ways in which art can help this process along.

Panelist Marisha Farnsworth describes how community involvement can be used to identify sites and help keep things clean, pointing out that there are a myriad of site currently unrecognized that can be used as sites for cleaning things up...

Panelist Mark Brest van Kempen describes, of course, our own Raingarden sculpture, with a tour of past environmental art and his own previous projects, including Berkeley's own free space sculpture.

Most of the pictures here were taken by Peg Jackson, but I assume responsibility for all errors of attribution or captioning...