Posts Tagged "environment"

Rebirth of Gaea: A Visual Love Letter

Posted by RZ on Apr 1, 2013

Artist Jesse Michael Newman calls the “REBIRTH of GAEA” “A visual love letter for my daughter.”

“This video provides a layer-by-layer deconstruction of “Flowing Meditation,” a small part of REBIRTH of GAEA.”

See an excerpt from the video on vimeo.com/36092192

“REBIRTH of GAEA is an epic visual tapestry delicately interweaving reflections on the environment and spirituality through the rich imagery of Greek Mythology. My daughter Emma has had a deep connection to the environment for as long as I can remember. As she grew older and became enchanted with Greek Mythology, I decided to show my support for her interests by creating REBIRTH of GAEA, depicting her as the Goddess of Earth.”

As Newman immersed himself in Greek Mythology, his eyes were opened to a seemingly endless supply of wonderfully vivid inspiration. The scope of the project slowly evolved from a few-week-exploration into an all-encompassing creative undertaking spanning six years so far. Since the project began, Emma welcomed two younger siblings who dovetailed perfectly as other figures in the piece: her brother as EROS (The God of Love) and her sister as the NEBULAIC EMBRYO (the Birth of the Universe).

Newman hadn’t originally considered that Rebirth of Gaea would be seen outside of his daughter’s bedroom and was caught off-guard when some close friends wanted to purchase a print. They encouraged him to show it publicly, which he did for the first time in 2012. Ultimately, he aims to continue transforming the passion he has for his children into a way of life, with his artistic expressions allowing his love for them to echo long after he is gone.

The incredible music, “You’re Too Late Satan” by Worm Is Green, is available on iTunes and Amazon.

Above Artwork: “Chaos” by Jesse Newman

“Before all things came CHAOS, the vacant and infinite spacewhich existed previous to the creation of the world and from which all gods and men arose Anthropomorphized by Newman using his wife as a model, the universal energy forms the mind of the cosmos.”

Some of the highlights of his career that he notes on his website are:

—– Accepted into permanent collections of the MOMA and Whitney Museums
—– Academy Award short list, Best of Show at SIGGRAPH, Official selection for Cannes, Sundance and LA Film Festivals (ONE RAT SHORT – lead flame artist)
—– Best Visual Effects by AICP (MMs Kaleidoscope – lead flame artist)
—– BDA Gold for SciFi “If” and Paramount’s “Unexplained Mysteries”
—– Feature Film work includes FLUBBER and ARMAGEDDON — nominated for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects
—– BFA in DESIGN, UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

New York-based artist JESSE MICHAEL NEWMAN has built a career as a visual effects artist on award-winning projects including many films. Since turning his focus to his personal art and premiering at the International Art Expo in March 2012, he has been recognized by Art Business News as a Top 50 Emerging Artist and his art is now in private collections on four continents.

Location: New York, NY

http://www.jessenewman.com/gaea/
Website: http://www.facebook.com/Rebirth.of.Gaea
http://www.whoscreative.com/jessenewman

 

 

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Jubilee Woods: The Last Tree Planted Today

Posted by RZ on Mar 27, 2013

Jubilee Woods: 6 Million New Trees – thanks to all those who helped plant them.
Today The Princess Royal planted the last of the 6 million trees
that the Woodland Trust set as its target for the Jubilee Woods Project.
The Princess Royal is the patron of the Jubilee Woods Project.

Last February, the Queen planted twin symbolic oaks at Sandringham, to launch the Jubilee Woods Project which was organised by the Woodland Trust to coincide with the year of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

6 Million trees have been planted for the project, to create 12,000 acres of new woodland – an area three times the size of all London’s Royal Parks.

400 Jubilee Woods of more than an acre in size were created, and 3,500 communities and 40,000 schools were given free packs of trees, including Royal Oak Saplings.

Millions of people, including the Queen and members of the Royal Family took part in the project, generously donating time and money.

The amount of support from the public is a reflection of their concern for the environment – and their love for trees, a sentiment passionately displayed a year earlier when immense public protest stopped the government’s attempts to sell off the national forests to private developers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/28/england-forest-sell-off-q-and-a

Judi Dench plants a tree for the Woodland Trust’s Jubilee Woods project

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Msg from Earth: You’re Amazing

Posted by RZ on Dec 27, 2012

Msg from Earth: You’re Amazing

For All Those Who Stood Up for the Health of the Planet and its Inhabitants

Via its Warriors at Greenpeace:

“You are incredible. Thanks for everything you’ve done in 2012. Let’s do it again in 2013.”

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Love Thy Nature: A Film About Who We Are

Posted by RZ on Dec 3, 2012

A film in the making by award-winning documentary film maker Sylvie Rokab 
who says of it “this is the film I was born to make,”

“As far as we know, only our planet gives birth to life
and among all species on earth ours is the most gifted

But have our gifts taken us too far away from what sustains us?

Take a journey through the new era of human evolution
where our hearts and minds are inspired by the wonders of nature…”

The film is currently on Kickstarter and has 10 days to go to reach its required funding

Love Thy Nature demonstrates how communion with the natural world transforms us as individuals and communities.

And that transformation encourages us to not only restore our ecosystems, but also to embrace our role as a species of double-wisdom: as stewards of our planet, including our human family.

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Olympics 2012 Greenwash Gold Awards

Posted by Mariposa on Aug 13, 2012

Olympic Values
When I think about what the modern day Olympic Games stand for and promote, the first thing that comes to mind is a worldwide celebration of sporting excellence and a coming together of communities and countries from around the globe.

Sporting events such as the Olympics have a very unique and special place on the world stage, as it is a time when people forget their differences for a few short weeks and focus all their energy into a single united event. This is a time when the entire world’s media attention is pinpointed on one place, and in 2012 that attention was directed at the UK.

Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the Modern Olympic Movement saw in the Games an ideal opportunity to develop a set of universal principles – or Values – that could be applied to education and to society as a whole, as well as to sport itself.

These Values, as they appear on the London2012 website are:

• respect – fair play; knowing one’s own limits; and taking care of one’s health and the environment
• excellence – how to give the best of oneself, on the field of play or in life; taking part; and progressing according to one’s own objectives
• friendship – how, through sport, to understand each other despite any differences

Environmentally Friendly and Ethically Aware
As far as sporting events are concerned, the event has been hugely successful, but sadly the organisation, funding, and ethical issues which have been raised leave us with one hell of a nasty taste in our mouths.

The London 2012 organising committee announced to the world that they were going to be putting on an environmentally friendly and ethically aware event, in spite of this, it seems as if pound signs were flashing in front of their eyes when they decided which partners and sponsors to sign up with.

You might have thought that with the whole world looking and younger generations watching the event with impressionable eyes that they would have been very selective in who they chose to partner with; however, looking down the list of sponsors, it appears that both environment and ethics quickly fell to the wayside.

The Best of the Bunch?
When we dig a little deeper into who exactly the Olympic sponsors are, what we discover is quite simply disgusting. A number of companies have been highlighted by the Greenwash Gold 2012 Blog, which held a vote for readers to decide upon the worst offending sponsors. Rio Tinto ended up with the gold medal for their participation in the games, which is rather ironic as they were actually the providers of the Olympic medals!

Above: The Greenwash Gold Award Ceremony in Trafalgar Square

Rio Tinto
Rio Tinto are a huge British based company who have worldwide operations in different mining and extraction processes and their company image is certainly not one to be proud of!

The local people in the surrounding areas of many of the mines and quarries have been battling against Rio Tinto for a number of years due to the large scale pollution problems they have afflicted. One example of this is their mine in Utah, which is said to be responsible for over 30% of the air pollution in the area. Incidentally the air quality is so poor that over 1,000 people die each year as a result of this pollution.

The Utah facility is one of the locations that the metal for the Olympic medals actually came from, which just goes to show how much the Olympic Committee care about their green credentials! There are numerous other cases from all over the world, where Rio Tinto have shown less regard for the health of the local people and environment than they have for their profits.

BP 
Another company which was in the running for the Greenwash Gold award was the huge oil company BP. Now surely it would not have taken much detective work to find out that BP are actually one of the most environmentally destructive companies on Earth, yet this point obviously seemed irrelevant to the members of the Organising committee who were cashing in on the sponsorship deal.

What sort of exampling are we setting for the rest of the world when companies such as these are being advertised at a supposedly ‘environmentally aware’ event? BP are involved in the extraction of limited natural resources from the Earth and they make billions of pounds each year from the destruction and pollution of our planet; yet they are plastered all over billboards, products, venues, and media programs, being praised as positive Olympic partners.

They even went as far as to shut down their solar power department recently as it was deemed to be unprofitable. What sort of ethical and environmental message is that sending out? Amazingly, to top it all off, BP were actually given the Sustainability Partner award by the organisers of the games!

DOW Chemical Company
The third company that were being considered for the gold medal for the Greenwash Gold Award were the DOW Chemical Company. Dow has one of the worst customer relations and environmental track records of any company out there, and it seems almost unbelievable that the Olympic Games would want to associate themselves with business like this.

From chemical spillages to air and water pollution, to merging with even more controversial companies than themselves, it seems difficult to see any reason why the games would want to be involved with them……..except for a big pay cheque!

Morality Vs Money
It seems as if money reigns supreme in almost all aspects of society and that even an event which is supposed to be a showcase of sporting talent, ends up being another billboard opportunity for the destructive mega companies of the world.

With huge amounts of people from all over the globe watching, it could have been a great opportunity for the organising committee to highlight some positive, environmentally sound and ethically conscious businesses. They claimed to be striving towards these values, yet when you look down the long list of questionable sponsors it seems as if morality and positive image took a backseat to the large wallets of the multinational giants.

http://www.youtube.com/user/GreenwashGold

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