By Katherine Brooks, Source: Huffington Post

“The quality of place, the reaction to immediate contact with earth and growing things that have a fugal relationship with mountains and sky, is essential to the integrity of our existence on this planet,” the famous American photographer Ansel Adams wrote in his autobiography. From the romantic painters of the late 18th century to Adams to contemporary figures like Pedro Reyes and Agnes Denes, artists have long had a fascination — and deep respect — for the planet on which we exist.

With the words “global warming” and “climate change” never far from the headlines, artists like Adams and co. are more relevant than ever. Tying together the scientific and creative worlds in acts of beauty and activism, sculptors, painters, photographers and more have the power to make environmentalism a priority and bring green initiatives to the forefront of cultural conversations. Behold, 18 green artists who are making climate change and conservation a priority.

1. Olafur Eliasson’s Icebergs

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For “Your waste of time,” Olafur Eliasson displayed pieces of ice that broke off from Iceland’s largest glacier, Vatnajökull. Exhibited in a refrigerated gallery space powered by solar panels, the ice “sculptures” represented 800 years of Earthly existence, putting human’s physical experience in perspective. “The obvious lesson of Mr. Eliasson’s installation, ‘Your waste of time,’ is that global warming is wreaking havoc on nature,” Ken Johnson wrote in The New York Times last year.

2. David Maisel’s Photographs of Open Pit Mines

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At first glance, David Maisel’s gorgeous photographs seem to celebrate the natural beauty of another planet, but his deep blue swirls and red craters actually depict the aerial appearance of environmentally impacted sites in the United States transformed by water reclamation, logging, military tests and mining. “With the mining sites, I found a subject matter that carried forth my fascination with the undoing of the landscape, in terms of both its formal beauty and its environmental politics,” Maisel writes on his website.

3. Luzinterruptus’ Waste Labyrinth

“We were looking to demonstrate, in a poetic manner, the amount of plastic waste that is consumed daily,” Luzinterruptus explained in a statement. “In addition to focusing attention on the big business of bottling water, which leads to very serious problems in developing countries, whose citizens have watched as their aquifers have been privatized with impunity for the exclusive enrichment of large business owners and ruling classes without scruples.”

4. Amanda Schachter and Alexander Levi’s Harvest Dome

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Architects Amanda Schachter and Alexander Levi‘s massive “Harvest Dome 2.0,” assembled from 450 umbrellas and 128 bottles, once floated around the inlet of Inwood Hill Park in New York City. Deemed a piece of “performance architecture,” the 24 by 18-foot structure further proves the world’s garbage can we reused in many unexpected ways.

5. John Sabraw’s Toxic Sludge Paintings

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Using toxic runoff found in the Ohio River region, artist and professor John Sabraw produces his own DIY pigments — bold yellows and reds that are sourced from the oxidized sludge of abandoned coal mines. Rather than using imported iron oxide from China to make his paint colors, he taps into the water’s heavy metals left over from abandoned coal mines, bringing to light the region’s pollution problem in the process.

“The artist, like the scientist, has a crucial role to perform in our society,” Sabraw explained to HuffPost. “See things differently, act on this vision, report the failures and successes.”

6. Naziha Mestaoui’s Virtual Forests

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Naziha Mestaoui‘s “One Beat One Tree” projects virtual forests onto city spaces, blurring the boundaries between the natural world and advancing technology. The digital trees actually grow in rhythm with a person’s heartbeat, as viewers can connect to the series via a smart phone sensor. And with each virtual plant, a physical one is grown in regions throughout the world, from Europe and Latin America to Africa and Asia. Since its inception two years ago, the project has already sparked the growth of 13,000 trees.

7. Rachel Sussman’s Oldest Things

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Photographer Rachel Sussman has been traveling the globe for the past 10 years, searching for the world’s oldest living things with camera in tow. From the Mojave Desert to the Australian Outback to Greenland’s icy expanses, she captures portraits of organisms capable of lasting for 80,000 years, shining a light on our planet’s resilience in the face of human intervention. “Extreme longevity can lull us into a false sense of permanence,” Sussman wrote for Brain Pickings. “But being old is not the same as being immortal.”

8. Barry Underwood’s Electric Landscapes

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Combining elements of painting, photography, performance, cinema and land art, Barry Underwood renders environmental issues like light pollution and deforestation in electric splendor.”My attempt is to portray environmental issues that are not delivered in a heavy-handed way,” Underwood explained to HuffPost. “Rather in a way that draws attention in a pleasing way, then if contemplated could unfold a message of dissidence or a natural discord.”

9. Paulo Grangeon’s 1,600 Pandas.

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See the rest at: Huffington Post