Sustainability
Round-Table
March 15, 12pm Pacific
As we move into the future, the issue of pigment sustainability becomes an ever-more pressing problem to be resolved. Whether it is mining or other mass extraction methods, the carbon footprint of pigment processing and paint manufacture, or even the footprint of those of us who forage impacts our ability to ensure future generations have the same accessibility to pigments as we do, is in our hands, now.
This round-table discussion is presented by three of the leading pigment sustainability researchers in the pigment world today, Jane Marsching, Dorieke Schreurs and Jonah Hoffman. Each approaches the issues of sustainability from a different point of view and each have worked on creating better ways of using the resources we currently have while exploring ways to create new methods of providing pigments into the future.
It will also explore the cost to the natural environment and humans who are involved (often forced) to extract minerals in dangerous conditions.
Presenters
Image courtesy Dorieke Schreurs
Jane Marsching
Jane says, "
I make opportunities to foster an experience of wonder, to commune with the beings that we live with, and to catalyze an urgent response to the ecological story of our time. Those beings might be ice, molecules of pigment, narwhales, trees, extinct birdsong, salt marshes, humans, soundwaves, the climate, harbors, scientists, carbon, a river, moths, ghosts, soundwaves, spinach, students, cities…"
She is a cofounder and member of Platform2: Art and Activism (2009-2012), an experimental forum about creative practices at the intersection of social issues. She and Andi Sutton worked together from 2013-2020 with many others as part of the collective Plotform on projects that activated engagement in our local communities around climate activism, citizen science, and water ecologies.
At Massachusetts College of Art and Design she is Professor and Director of the Sustainability Minor. She founded the MassArt Resilient Pigment Library in 2021.
Jonah Hoffman
Jonah Hoffman is a research-based painter exploring material history and its connection to colonial and ecological exploitation, focusing on the intersection of art, labour, and power.
His current research investigates and reveals the veiled histories embedded in pigment and technology through cobalt as a colour and a key mineral to make batteries, exploring its beauty, utility, and violence. Through layers of imagery and paintings created with cobalt
blue paint, he reinterprets the visual culture surrounding cobalt production, such as mine photography and pricing graphs, to confront the latent violence within these images. By addressing systemic injustices in an era of ecological collapse, Hoffman's work transforms
complex histories into reflections on the interconnected roles of materiality, states, and individuals within unjust systems.
For more information about cobalt mining in the DRC, this YouTube video is heartbreakingly informative.
Dorieke Schreurs
Doing research, pioneering new approaches, changing mind-sets and perspectives is what Dorieke is involved with as an artist.
She looks for boundaries and tries to cross them. She searches for different ways to use materials, expanding possibilities and, in the process, creating a foundation for sustainable development in the world of colour and the world of art – worlds which strive for synergy with nature and the sciences. Sustainability, climate change, our relationship to the earth we live on and the species we share it with – these are the defining issues of her generation and the generations to come. The art world should take a stand. It has an important role to play. Art about subjects such as climate change, mass extinction, and wasteful consumption doesn’t have to be doom and gloom. Dorieke has found that real, meaningful change stems from positivity. Her art is about trying to bridge that gap of consciousness, about reconnecting, reviving that sense of wonder and care for all that surrounds us.
The focus on sustainability and cradle-to-cradle processes as an artist, means that her work is becoming more and more intertwined with other disciplines in the creative industry and beyond. This is a natural evolution and one she cherishes deeply because she has seen and experienced first-hand how working (and growing) together creates the perfect circumstances for innovation and change.
This has also led to the fact that her own work can be fully integrated into the cycle of nature if necessary or desirable...however, they can also be preserved for centuries. She uses a completely natural but labour-intensive and specialist way of working, which works fine for her, but not as a solution for large scale impact in the creative field.
So in order to generate impact on a large scale, it is necessary to find an alternative to the most commonly used and most polluting paint product in the creative field. In order to facilitate a sector-wide sustainable change, it is necessary to expand/translate her research into a product with ready-made and large-scale production potential, a bio-based variant of this most commonly used and most polluting paint, being acrylic paint (a.k.a. fluid plastic)
The ultimate goal is to be able to contribute to the transition into a more sustainable creative field, in which the use of non-polluting, non- toxic, materials made from renewable resources, is accessible to anyone.
Her role as an artist is to create something and at the same time defy the status quo. To trigger something, to change perspectives, make people look differently at things, materials, their surroundings, nature, their behaviour. She tries to make room for dialogue, for asking questions and wondering. Her work celebrates the relationship between human and nature…work made of soil, earth, nature… she is nature, we are nature, earth, soil, it is the origin and destination of all, everything is connected. Be Humble.