Xavier Cortada will participate in the “In Deep” exhibit, part of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant project that created environmental interventions, interactions and residencies at Deering Estate at Cutler.
4/11/2014 to 4/13/2014
When: Friday – Sunday, April 11-13, 2014
All events on Friday evening & Saturday after 3:30 pm are FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
Where: Deering Estate at Cutler
16701 SW 72nd Ave
Miami, Florida 33157
United States
Contact: Mary Jo Aagerstoun
mjaagerstoun@ecoartsofla.org
561-881-5658
Above: On June 29, 2008, Miami artist Xavier Cortada plants a green flag at the North Pole to “reclaim it for nature.” Since then, thousands of participants in Florida and elsewhere have planted green flags and native trees to help reduce the polar thaw. This EcoArt reforestation effort is based at Deering Estate, see www.cortadaprojects.org/archives/nativeflags
EcoArt practitioners Margi Glavovic Nothard and Xavier Cortada, both advisors to EcoArt South Florida (EASF: http://ecoartsofla.org) for several years, are demonstrating, at this year’s Deering Estate Festival of the Arts, the range of practice EcoArtists engage. “For the first time at Deering the public will be able to experience a full spectrum of art that engages environmental themes. Deering’s In Deep exhibition, opening April 12th is the culmination of several years of EcoArt South Florida’s consultation with Deering, and joint application for support from the National Endowment for the Arts. We are thrilled that Xavier and Margi are representing EcoArt practice at this first ever event! And we congratulate Assistant Director Jennifer Tisthammer and her staff Kim Yantis and Lucinda Linderman for making this happen.”
Cortada and Glavovic Nothard are among 61 visual artists whose environmentally-themed work is featured in the In Deep exhibition.
Xavier Cortada will be represented by Native Flags, a highly interactive community-engaging EcoArt project aiming to restore Miami-Dade’s Florida native tree canopy through direct involvement of homeowners and local school students in planting trees in front yards and schoolyards. Deering is Native Flags’ permanent home. The Native Flags installation at the Deering In Deep show precedes an all-out Native Flags effort across Miami Dade County in all 336 public schools on Earth Day. In its fifth year, the effort includes onsite installation/signage as well as photo documentation of the Native Flags efforts in Miami-Dade Schools (www.nativeflags.org). Cortada is artist-in-residence at FIU’s College of Architecture + The Arts. He was a founding Board member of EcoArt South Florida.
Margi Glavovic Nothard, Design Principal at an award winning firm in Ft. Lauderdale, is known for her sensitive and highly visible integration of a range of green technologies-as-art into her architectural projects. A recent example of her ecologically sensitive design is the Young at Arts Museum/Broward County Library in Davie. Glavovic Nothard has served as an EASF advisor since 2010. Her project at Deering’s In Deep exhibition is WATER_ GROUND.GREY. BLACK. SALT_DEERING an installation of 120 French 8 ounce square glass bottles filled with water harvested from the Deering site. The bottles are stacked on a simple white table in the center of the main reception room of the Deering mansion. In this work, Glavovic Nothard asks viewers to consider human impact on the water that is so crucial to life.
EcoArt South Florida defines EcoArt as a practice that engages science and activates communities to create aesthetically interesting and scientifically based direct ameliorative interventions into ecologically damaged sites. EcoArtists work with colleagues in environmental science and restoration, engineering, landscape architecture, archeology and many other disciplines, to create works that address stormwater capture and reuse as well as restoration of wetlands, native canopy and habitat as well as highly visible integration into the urban fabric of biophilic and energy technologies as art.
Over the past 7 years since the organization’s founding, a dozen EcoArt projects have been completed. For brief outlines of the projects’ features See: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xslis7dpy6awpcq/EASF_Project_profiles.pdf A video is also available at: http://ecoartsofla.org/film
EASF’s consultation over several years with Deering Estate, which led to this Eco and Environmental Art theme for their 2014 Festival of the Arts, is a key aspect of EASF’s mission to catalyze the mainstreaming of EcoArt into existing institutional frameworks in carefully selected locations. “We are thrilled and edified that the National Endowment for the Arts and the several other Deering partners, including Deering’s own foundation, have recognized the importance of engaging art with science and community engagement to make the causes of environmental degradation visible, as well as suggesting remedies,” said EASF President Aagerstoun. “We look forward to more extensive involvement of EcoArt and EcoArtists with Deering’s ongoing program, as well as with other Miami-Dade public and private sites and institutions.”
EcoArt South Florida utilized the science of Geographical Information Services computerized mapping to identify the best sites for “growing our own” South Florida EcoArtists and EcoArt practice. In 2011, EASF collaborated with Dartmouth College’s Department of Geography to analyze South Florida’s five watersheds utilizing 15 criteria. The resulting maps are at: http://ecoartsofla.org/category/ecoart-hotspots/ Based on this analysis, EcoArt Node locations were pinpointed, and are in various stages of development in Martin, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade, Lee and Monroe Counties. Several new projects in these locations are currently seeking funding.