“Ecological Citizenship and Environmental Art.”  -  Dr. Jason Simus    

By Julie Thibodeaux    

What better venue to talk about environmental art than at The Botanical Research Institute of Texas, located in Fort Worth’s Cultural District, adjacent to the city’s art museum row. It was at BRIT’s new state-of-the-art LEED-certified building, just a block from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, where Dr. Jason Simus took the podium recently to give his presentation on “Ecological Citizenship and Environmental Art.” 

 

Dr. Simus introduced several famous environmental artists who have sparked discussion for what he calls healthy public debate, starting with Robert Smithson who created Spiral Jetty in 1970.

The 1,500-foot-long spiral, made of mud, rocks and salt, juts out from the shore of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. It was a groundbreaking art piece, literally, that helped launch the environmental art movement.

Around the same time, artist Michael Heizer created Double Negative, two 30-foot wide trenches, totaling 1,500 feet, which were bulldozed into the side of a mesa in the Nevada desert.

While many people questioned the validity of these works and criticized them for their destructive effect on the environment, Simus said both of these works draw attention to man’s impact on nature, both positive and negative, and its resulting fleeting or long-lasting effects.

 

According to Simus, these works often stir up controversy because of their impact on public space but promote a necessary dialogue about environmental issues.

“Environmental art promotes ecological citizenship through public participation,”  said Simus.

Simus, who grew up in Fort Worth, combined his love of nature and art in his post-graduate studies at the University of North Texas, where he earned his doctorate in Environmental Aesthetics in 2009 from the Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies.

“My mother was an artist. Growing up, I spent a lot of time outdoors fishing and hunting, although I don’t [hunt] anymore for ethical reasons,” he said.

Today, an adjunct professor at Texas A & M at Commerce, his philosophical interests lie in the study of what constitutes beauty in nature. An offshoot of that topic is the environmental art movement, which started in the late 1960s.

He pointed out the most famous pair of environmental artists, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, a husband and wife team who have created dozens of whimsical monumental public works that are intended to draw attention to the natural beauty in landscapes. For example, in 1970, they created Valley Curtain, which consisted of a 400-meter orange nylon cloth that was hung across a valley in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado between two mountains temporarily. The couple also surrounded 11 islands in Miami’s Biscayne Bay with pink fabric. More recently, in 2005, they created The Gates, which consisted of 7,503 metal gates fitted with saffron vinyl panels, which wove a colorful 23-mile path through Central Park in New York during two weeks in the winter.

While The Gates was extremely popular with the public, Simus cited an example of an environmental art piece that was soundly rejected. Richard Serra’s piece Tilted Arc was a 120-foot-by-12-foot steel wall installed in the middle of the Federal Plaza in New York City in 1981. It was eventually dismantled and removed after a public outcry who saw it as an eyesore and a nuisance to walk around. However, it’s still talked about and lives on in art history books.
According to Simus, while people may disagree on whether they like these public pieces, they serve the purpose of making us see our environments with fresh eyes, stimulate debate on important environmental issues and raise our environmental consciousness.

“The discussion generated by the work is the enduring value of the work,” he said.

All photos courtesy of Dr.Jason Semus



Julie Thibodeaux is a former writer and editor for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Contact her at julie@jthibodeaux.com.