Picasso painted Guernica to express his dismay about the ravages of the Spanish Civil War. Woodie Guthrie sang the great American folk song This Land is Your Land just a couple years later. And Steven Spielberg, who once said, "Imagination alone can save the world," directed ET, the timeless story of friendship and tolerance. There are as many ways to express your feelings about the climate as your imagination permits. For many of us, we do best through song, photographs, painting, poetry, rap, videos, sculptures, plays or other expressions of art. Think about how you and your family might express yourselves. For inspiration, click on the map to explore some of the climate expressions around America. Let us know about global warming activities in your community that are artistic and inspirational.
Expressions:
- Participate in a public art project: 100 artists have recently produced extraordinary globes with climate messages using a variety of materials to create awareness and provoke discussion about potential solutions to global warming (check it out at CoolGlobes.com). This project, "CoolGlobes: Hot Ideas for a Cooler Planet", is installing the globes along the lakefront in Chicago from June to September 2007. One artist, Eve S. Mosher, is drawing a chalk line along 70 miles of coastal New York neighborhoods demarcating a point 10 feet above sea level, a boundary now used by federal and state agencies and insurance companies to show where waters could rise after a major storm. Her chalk line is not on the beach or marsh land, it's on city streets in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Ten artists in Palo Alto created art for utility's sake by painting murals on utility boxes at various locations in the downtown area. They depict inspirational messages about energy efficiency and renewable energy through each artist's experience.
- Help your kids do a climate art project. As part of the CoolGlobes project, children are encouraged to make their own globes using paper mache. Instructions for this project can be found on their website.
- Do something easy and small (in size, not importance) that you can send around to your friends, classmates, and co-workers. Write a climate haiku (a haiku is a form of Japanese poetry consisting of a 17-syllable verse form comprised of three metrical units of 5, 7, then 5 syllables) - it doesn't have to rhyme! Dr. Bill Chameides who as chief scientist advises the organization Environmental Defense posts weekly haikus.
Here's one he wrote called "Too Warm Winter Haiku."
Apple blossoms bloom
On too-warm winter days, then
Frost, dead. No apples. - Write a blog. Try your hand at a climate blog or include climate topics in your existing blog (even if it is normally about celebrities, baseball, or civil rights). Yes, we know there are many blogs out there, but the one your friends will want to read is the one that you write. That's the one that will share the efforts of your neighborhood, your family, your friends, your church and the information that you find important... and that's the interesting one. And if you talk about how we can solve the climate crisis together, your friends will listen.
- Write a play or skit and record it on video. Make a video of the play to share with your friends or post it on your blog. Also, enter the Alliance for Climate Protection/Current.tv PSA competition.
- Write a song! As Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band sang: It's not what you look like, when you're doin' what you're doin'. It's what you're doin' when you're doin' what you look like you're doin'!
