Art Matters – We Can’t Unchop a Tree

By Janet Sellers

Art is not passive documentation; it is a form of creative action. We can use art as a tool for ecological storytelling to foster not only beauty and upliftment, but also awareness and our future well-being.

Maya Lin, designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, powerfully explores this through her project What Is Missing?, which awakens ecological awareness where we feel it most—our own cities and towns. She demonstrates, for example, how quickly beloved green spaces could be destroyed: Central Park, New York—in nine minutes; Hyde Park, London—in four minutes; Ueno Park, Tokyo—in two. Her work asks a vital question: how quickly would we act to stop deforestation if it happened where we live?

Every minute, 90 acres of rainforest are destroyed. Lin’s multimedia and mixed media installations mourn this ecological loss while documenting vanishing species and habitats. Her work doesn’t simply inform—it compels. It helps viewers confront ecological grief, spurs personal responsibility, and brings visibility to losses they may never have seen before. With art as a bridge, people gain awareness—and with awareness, they gain agency.

Through dramatic visuals and fact-based storytelling, Lin’s project builds emotional connection. As she explains: “What Is Missing is my fifth and last memorial. It focuses attention on species and places that have gone extinct or will most likely disappear within our lifetime if we do not act to protect them. The project exists formally as both permanent sculptures and temporary media exhibits; but it also exists virtually—as a website, whatismissing.net, which acts as a nexus for the entire project.”

Ecological art also invites participatory engagement. Mel Chin’s Revival Field (1991) used plants to extract heavy metals from contaminated soil, combining art and science in a living laboratory. This form of “art-as-remediation” transforms passive observation into a call to action, offering imaginative solutions rooted in ecological processes.

Contemporary eco-artists often draw from Indigenous knowledge systems that understand the Earth as animate and interconnected. As Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, “To be native to a place we must learn to speak its language” (Braiding Sweetgrass, 2013). Artists working in this tradition become translators—revealing hidden ecological relationships and restoring cultural memory.

Ecological art is not a retreat into aestheticism but a frontline practice of resilience. It awakens ethical consciousness, mobilizes communities, and asserts the rights of future generations and non-human kin. Far from passive, art acts. Through imaginative intervention and embodied storytelling, art becomes a living force in ecological movements. It offers new ways of seeing and belonging—reminding us that to tell the story of the Earth is not to stand apart from it, but to join its voice.

Here in our area, we have local celebrations and local awareness of our land and of art as living forces. On Aug 3 we’ll complete the Palmer Lake Chautauqua, and the monthly Art Hop is Aug. 22. Our Hummingbird Festival, on Aug. 22-23, centers on the four Colorado hummingbirds through art, talks, and fun. The Hummingbird Festival celebrates the land, pollinators and our community as contributors to our cultural future. It is located at the historic Jackson Ranch, 17435 Rollercoaster Road, Monument.

Janet Sellers is an artist, writer, and speaker creating art for homes, institutions, and public spaces. Contact her at JanetSellers@ocn.me.

For more information on Cultural Creativity see www.culturaladaptations.com

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