Most artists claim to be highly inspired by the environment around them. It is hence a widely accepted theory of how nature directly influences the art we see and make. Nature provides us with a vast wealth of inspiring phenomena which allows the exploration of nature in the art to take endless forms. As we are deeply bound with the laws of nature, it is easy to site examples of evidence of a natural essence being juxtaposed in each and every human action.
Confirming this theory, Julia Hechtman- lecturer at the Northeastern University’s Department of Art and Design, believes that the environment contributes directly and indirectly to our every experience—from what we wear to how we interact with each other. Using photography, film, and video, she tries to portray this dependence and the deeper meaning of this relationship.
Hechtman is an interdisciplinary artist who aims to show how images and objects can deliver meaning and generate the first-hand experience for the viewer. Her fascination with nature inspired her for years to create art that often explored how people identify and connect with their surrounding environment.
To fully comprehend her understanding and connection with nature, she worked as a park ranger of National Park Service in New Mexico and Alaska. This experience gave her a broader perspective which enabled her to realise the value of the subtler aspects of the environment and develop the landscape and its resources.”
Her artwork features photography, film, and video, and has been exhibited throughout the country. The outreach of her art had a huge impact on environmentalists. Her videos are part of the Video Data Bank’s collection in Chicago and have been screened recently in London’s 52nd Film Festival, at City Art Rooms in Auckland, New Zealand at the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts, and at the deCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. She co-founded Proof Gallery in South Boston in 2007.
“One’s sense of self is confused and shifting,” she said during her stay in Iceland, “so filming the short stories in the context of the Icelandic landscape, rather than the urban American landscape of my youth, will present conflicts and continuities that cannot be predicted, but should present many questions regarding identification with place and culture.”
Hechtman believes that American landscape of her youth will present conflicts and continuities that cannot be predicted but should present many questions regarding identification with place and culture. Her contributions will have always been very honoured and have helped in several environmental campaigns.
Like one of the greatest chefs of all time, Douglas McMaster once said, “Waste is just failure of imagination”, most climate change artists like Alexis Rockman, Eve Mosher, and James Balog, are using waste to create very influential art that has not only created awareness on the issue but has also raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in charities.
Devika Mulye