Art and creativity can help with achieving a sustainable future. It can lead to innovations and designs that can be useful in adopting the circular economy model. Moreover, art can inspire our society to move away from the usual make-use-dispose concept while still adding beauty and joy to everyone’s life.
As someone who appreciates art and wants to remain conscious and save the planet, the most crucial issue is how to create art without creating any negative impact on the environment. Some of the current art practices and materials are toxic and harmful to the planet and our health. Therefore making the right decision is essential when selecting the materials, surfaces and paints for any project. Reusing canvases and materials and recycling everyday items to create artwork is cost-effective and can create social awareness for all while at the same time benefiting the environment. Sustainable practices also add uniqueness to artwork and make the whole process even more creative. Therefore, sustainable art projects can provide a potential solution, and art can be used as a medium to address ecological and social issues.
Types of sustainable art can vary depending upon the idea and materials used in creating it. We know that art and design institutions play an essential role in raising awareness of sustainable practices and adopting sustainable materials. However, self-taught artists, including myself, may feel lost and want to learn and explore more on this subject.
Types of Sustainable Art
For a better understanding of this subject, I am highlighting various forms of sustainable art mentioned by the invaluable.
It can help a lot in choosing the materials for your next artwork and making it more sustainable.
Ecological Art
Ecological art focuses on restoration and advocating on ethics, social injustice and civic responsibilities. It is a more functional form of art that raises awareness on social or political issues related to the natural and urban environment. It focuses on addressing and fixing those issues.
Art and Upcycling
Creating a piece of art by reusing previously considered unwanted trash, and prolonging its usefulness, is known as upcycling. Using materials that will otherwise go to landfills and creating something unique can reduce the amount of waste and address the issue of increasing plastic trash polluting both the ocean and land. Upcycling is steadily growing and gaining more attention by artists, who are always looking for different materials to create something new and distinctive.
Renewable Energy Art
Renewable energy art is a new genre that incorporates renewable energy into the design or utilises renewable energy like solar panels, wind, and other geothermal resources to operate kinetic aspects of the sculpture. Renewable energy art makes renewable energy sources a more familiar subject in a very creative way.
An excellent example of this type of art is the ‘Solar Art Panel’ initiative, which invited artists from all over the world to paint on solar panels to raise funds for the Little Sun Foundation.
Renewable energy sculptures connect the viewers to the earth’s natural resources and how natural resources can harness the energy and create something beautiful.
Land Art
Land art is another medium that emphasises the beauty of nature and is also known as island art or eco-art, earth art and earthworks. In land art, the earth itself is sculpted to create structures in the landscape using natural materials such as stones, twigs or salt crystals. This art is created directly in the landscape.
Closed-Loop Fashion
Closed-loop fashion creates a piece of clothing that can be broken down after its life cycle and transformed into recycled fibre, yarn or fabric. These recycled materials are made available to manufacturing industries, thus making clothing and fashion more sustainable and environmentally friendly.
As our society is becoming more aware of the urgency to move to a circular economy and adopt sustainable practices, the popularity of sustainable artworks is also growing.
We can use sustainable art to create a bridge that can connect both science and design to create better and innovative solutions to achieve a more sustainable future for everyone.
Stumbled Thoughts 