{"id":1318373,"date":"2020-02-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-22T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/?p=993875"},"modified":"2020-02-22T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-22T07:00:00","slug":"in-imagine-climate-artists-get-creative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/in-imagine-climate-artists-get-creative\/","title":{"rendered":"In \u2018Imagine Climate,\u2019 artists get creative"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Artist Kelly Peters, left, holds her billboard as Chris Erickson stabilizes the other side during installation outside of The Collective in Snowmass for CORE\u2019s 2nd annual Imagine Climate project on Friday, Feb. 21, 2020. The piece was made using AIRink from Graviky Labs. The ink in the special pens is made from raw tailpipe carbon soot.<\/strong>
Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

When art and technology converge in the quest for climate change solutions, the conversation expands and potential for action increases. At least that\u2019s what the partners in \u201cImagine Climate\u201d want to demonstrate.<\/p>\n

The Community Office for Resource Efficiency (CORE) kicks off its second annual<\/a> month-long exploration of climate art and innovation Tuesday and Wednesday, with back-to-back launch parties. They\u2019ll unveil this year\u2019s centerpiece of \u201cImagine Climate,\u201d the \u201cClimate Billboard Project,\u201d an innovative public art collaboration with valley artists and Boston-based tech start-up Graviky Labs. Artists were commissioned to create 8-foot-square billboards using Graviky\u2019s AIR-INK, a rich black ink converted from the soot of tailpipe emissions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis art is made from carbon emissions\u201d is printed on each of the four artists\u2019 billboards, on display for the month at locations valleywide: Kate Howe at Aspen Art Museum, Chris Erickson at Basalt Lions Park stage, Brian Colley at The Launchpad in Carbondale and Kelly Peters at The Collective in Snowmass Village.<\/p>\n

\u201cSequestering carbon through art is the ultimate upcycling,\u201d said Lara Whitley, CORE\u2019s brand and creative strategy director, who said she was thrilled to find the ideal partner in Graviky Labs and its founder, Anirudh Sharma.<\/p>\n

For his part, Sharma did not hesitate when asked to collaborate with CORE on \u201cImagine Climate.\u201d Large-scale street art, product labels and even credit card print made with AIR-INK has reached millions of people in Hong Kong, India, Singapore and Germany. \u201cImagine Climate\u201d is its first project in the U.S., the world leader in historic carbon emissions. Sharma is coming to the valley to speak at both Climate Billboard launch events.<\/p>\n

AIR-INK started as a way \u201cto treat carbon as a waste management problem,\u201d said Sharma, who was motivated by the health issues caused by air pollution in his native India and incubated the project while studying at MIT\u2019s Media Lab.<\/p>\n

It took off through artists.<\/p>\n

\u201cArt crosses cultural boundaries; it was art that spread the message,\u201d said Sharma, who has built a global network of AIR-INK users in just a few short years. \u201cI\u2019ve been doing this a long time as a researcher, but we also have the political side and this is a powerful way to bring people together.\u201d<\/p>\n

That fits neatly with the mission of CORE, a nonprofit that helps Roaring Fork Valley residents and businesses save energy and cut carbon emissions \u2014 often through creative solutions and collaboration \u2014 and its goal with \u201cImagine Climate\u201d of catalyzing new climate conversations and actions. During the inaugural \u201cImagine Climate\u201d last winter, Whitley found, CORE staff were having deeper, more engaged conversations with more people than they usually do at the standard events where they set up tables and hand out brochures.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to bring solutions and hope in addition to inspiring action,\u201d Whitley said. \u201cAnd we\u2019re bringing more people into the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

At \u201cengagement stations\u201d at \u201cImagine Climate\u201d 2019, CORE collected 81 postcards from participants who pledged to take 115 actions related to energy efficiency or renewable energy. If they followed through, that amounts to 261 metric tons of avoided carbon emissions.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s \u201cImagine Climate\u201d increases the programming \u2014 adding music, literature and a mental health conversation \u2014 and thus ups the engagement goals to 300 conversations, 200 pledges and offsetting 370 metric tons of carbon.<\/p>\n

\u201cArt is uniquely equipped to open us up to new possibilities; we\u2019re able to imagine solutions for big problems,\u201d Whitley said. \u201cThe arts have a way of harnessing emotions in a way science cannot, and when you put the two together, watch out.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Carbondale-based artist Chris Erickson<\/a>, being asked by The Art Base to work on the \u201cClimate Billboard Project\u201d was serendipitous. His previous work in his \u201cmolecules\u201d series couldn\u2019t be more well-suited for \u201cImagine Climate.\u201d The series addresses the implications of industrialization and climate change, attributing human qualities to molecules and depicting the consequences we\u2019ve chosen in a lighthearted manner.<\/p>\n

Now, with his artwork displayed on an 8-foot-by-8-foot billboard in ink created from captured carbon, \u201cit\u2019s bringing awareness to the crisis on our hands with our carbon emissions, but more instructively it\u2019s shedding light on how there are in fact solutions and different ways of tackling the crisis,\u201d Erickson said. \u201c(Climate change) can feel overwhelming and daunting, but there\u2019s some brilliant minds working on this. We\u2019re pretty ingenious creatures.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artist Kelly Peters, left, holds her billboard as Chris Erickson stabilizes the other side during installation outside of The Collective in Snowmass for CORE\u2019s 2nd annual Imagine Climate project on Friday, Feb. 21, 2020. The piece was made using AIRink from Graviky Labs. The ink in the special pens is made from raw tailpipe carbon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1318373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-30 01:30:20","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1318373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318373\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1318373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1318373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1318373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}