Keeping Watch
In partnership with historians, writers, scientist, environmental experts and artists, the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute and College of Arts & Architecture have begun a three-year initiate that profiles natural environmental issues. It is designed to bring a higher profile to engage the public in issues related to plastic waste and recycling, water quality in urban streams, air quality and the value of trees.
Each year’s events will center around Earth Day in April. In 2014, they are ‘Keeping Watch on Plastics’ and future years include Keeping Watch on Creeks, Air and Trees. You can find interesting, artistic components of environmental education in the following exhibits and events to celebrate Earth Day this year:
Is This Yours?
Throughout the streets of Charlotte, NC, there are strategically placed outdoor installations of items that encourage passersby to examine their own trash. In the series titled, Is This Yours, Sculptor Kurt Warnke and photographer Nancy Pierce place towering plastic totems and compelling photographic imagery to bring awareness to pedestrians about the responsibility we all have in proper disposal of the things we use.
Stayin’ Alive
McColl Center Artist-in-Residence, Aurora Robson’s massive installation uses plastic trash, materials that have all been intercepted from local waterways, to illustrate the growing problem of improper waste disposal and effects on local water quality.
Upcoming Events
On May 16, come to a free eco-film screening of “Bag It, The Movie”, followed by a panel discussion on local recycling issues. If the movie has no appeal, perhaps the free ‘clean martinis’ made by local distilleries from local products and some locally sourced hors d’oeuvres, compliments of Slow Food Charlotte, will be enough to bring you out.
On June 13, there will be another ‘Clean Martini Screen’ event on the documentary Growing Cities, and short clips from Jean Paul Ganem. Afterward, a panel discussion on landfills versus recycling should attract some ‘thinking outside the bin’!!
Think Outside The Bin
Think Outside The Bin 