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A man in a lavender shirt walks down the hall on the second floor of Bell Memorial Union. He, much like a lot of other people, is going about his day with little awareness of his surroundings. Resource depletion, environmental anarchy and the lack of self-awareness run rampant while he steadily walks by dozens of other predisposed students too busy to understand bigger issues.
Some artists are attempting to create that understanding.
If the aforementioned man in the purple shirt would have looked around him, he might have been introduced to the new benign buzzword in environmental activism: sustainability.
For some, the term is more of a bumper sticker - a slogan almost - than a way of life. To others, it is an opportunity for longevity and ingenuity for the sake of humanity and art.
A group of students donning the latter mindset have constructed various pieces to showcase multiple emotions, including compassion and even fear. Fear of a blank planet and lost resources, culminating in a world where the chance for awareness is a distant memory.
Along the walls of the BMU second-floor lounge are various forms of art. Some are made of bronze casting, some are more avant-garde, and there is even a poem on display. A winner was determined Nov. 7, yet the piece is nowhere to be found. Ribbons of "honorable mentions" and third and second places are hung, but no definitive winner is present.
The bronze piece was awarded second place and its creator, Tiffany Ridenour, has dubbed her piece "Shared Vitality." It's a small fist, almost childlike, but certainly balled, with a tree growing nearly a foot above it. It screams of the relationship between man and earth.
Third place was given to Lexi Bakkar's creative piece "Salmon Landfill." A wire frame creates the shape of a salmon, while Taco Bell bags and other pieces of litter found scattered around Bidwell Park are stuffed inside. The use of real-life items sets it apart from the rest and gives students something to relate to.
"By reaching inside of a garbage can, she really shows us reality," said senior David Hugens.
The environmental science major enjoyed the piece, but wasn't impressed with the rest, he said.
"It really felt like people submitted what they thought the judges wanted to see, not what sustainability actually was," Hugens said. "I don't really see sustainability in these pieces."
A few of the honorable mentions swayed to the more artistic side, which may have impacted the message in a negative way.
A large, perforated recycling symbol, triangular and painted with various steps of the recycling process is one of the larger works in the exhibit.
"This piece showcases consumption in the U.S., bringing attention to the problems we face as well as highlighting one solution: recycling, " said creator Rachel Duryee of her piece titled "In the United States Every 5 Minutes."
Another creation of note is a globe against the back wall made with various labels taken from sports drinks and water bottles.
Sydney Hollis created the piece, titled "Patchwork World." Her piece explains how the world needs to be made into a better place, one step at a time, she said.
Art is obviously in the eye of the beholder, and what one person sees when they look at a wire-frame fish might not be what another sees. But if the point was to raise awareness and drive a certain message home, it would seem to reason that the less abstract the art the better.
Only a week removed from the This Way to Sustainability conference, some students have their eyes and ears open to new possibilities in helping move the planet further away from annihilation.
Jesse Seilhan can be reached at jseilhan@theorion.com
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