July 2011 – Vicissitudes – by Jason deCaires Taylor

Vicissitudes depicts 26 children of diverse ethnic backgrounds holding hands in a circle, representing unity and optimism. The piece took six months to make and weighs around fifteen tons.

Vicissitudes...ever changing art...by Jason deCaires Taylor

2011 Environmental Art wall calendar

As the sculptures are colonized by marine life, their human faces erode and become home to a colorful set of new inhabitants. The artist invites this process, allowing the sculptures to “engage with a vision of the
possibilities of a sustainable future, portraying human intervention as positive and affirmative.
“What I’m most interested in is the idea of change and process,” he explains. “It’s meant to mirror our lives. In the same way that children are meant to absorb their surroundings as they grow up, these under­water children will also be heavily influenced – they’ll take on the patina of their environment as they grow and change over time.”

2012 Environmental Art Wall Calendar

http://www.underwatersculpture.com/pages/gallery/vicissitudes.html

Environmental Art

As one of the most exciting art movements of our time, environmental art celebrates our connection to the natural world through beauty, science, metaphor and ecological restoration. It encompasses a surprising landscape of approaches from ephemeral “art in nature” sculpture designed to last only a few hours before returning to the earth, to community-based “eco-art” installations which clean up polluted watersheds and promote public understanding of local and global environmental issues.

On the cover:
VICISSITUDES by Jason de Caires Taylor
British sculptor and diver Jason de Caires Taylor brought creativity to his passion for the sea to create the world’s first underwater sculpture park of the coast of Granada, in the West Indies. Just one of several installations, “Vicissitudes” is a circle formed by the cement casts of 26 Grenadan children holding hands, that also functions as an artificial reef that provides habitat for marine life. “We’re just a moment in this chain, and nature is so powerful and incredible.” The artist adds, “you just have to be awed by it.” With nearly 60 percent of the world’s coral reefs under threat by climate change and human activity, the artist helps us care and movingly highlights our responsibility to future generations.

The Environmental Art 2011 wall calendar features fifteen projects drawn from the global archives of greenmuseum.org, a

One of the most exciting art movements of our time.

not-for-profit online museum of environmental art. They provide a sampling of some of the latest developments in this field to stimulate the imagination and promote the role of art in the creation of a more sustainable world culture.