Earthly expressions

Bryan Boyd can do pull-ups while hanging from the door frame of an open doorway. That's probably about a half an inch of wood to grasp onto, and he can do it using only the two middle fingers of each hand. The senior didn't gain that kind of strength accidentally -- Boyd spends weeks at a time in Kentucky's Red River Gorge, climbing the park's sheer rock cliffs during the day and sleeping in a tent pitched behind a local pizza shop at night. \nMost people wouldn't think living the life of a serious climber would be conducive to creating art, but for Boyd a lifetime of climbing has led to a passion for nature, and he's using that passion to create documentaries that advocate conservation and environmentalism.\n"The ultimate goal is social change," Boyd said. \nHe hopes to work with non-governmental organizations to develop a more creative way to promote environmental awareness. \n"I just want to do as much as I can do," he said.\nBloomington has always been a hot spot for activism, and some students, like Boyd, are finding creative ways to get their messages across. In the case of Boyd and several others, art and ideologies combine both for aesthetic value and to make a powerful point. \nSophomore Sarah Taylor creates art she calls "constructive" by using recycled materials to make abstract creations. Besides being an artist, she's also the national council representative for the Student Environmental Action Coalition, a grassroots organization that campaigns for environmental and social justice, according to the group's Web site. \nTaylor takes materials that would otherwise be thrown away to make her constructive art, converting would-be trash into a resource. Ruined pictures of Niagara Falls, blurred by too much mist, became the background for a collage that formed a picture of an eye. Leftover fabric, clips from magazines, old posters and tree leaves combined to form a quilt that's displayed in her room.\nThere's sophomore Matisse Giddings, another artist with an environmental bend. She uses nature to inspire her art, allowing the message to be slightly more ambiguous.\n"I'll go outside to draw and paint," she said. "I value art in the context of nature."\nHer appreciation for nature is reflected in her approach to her work. She said she views much of the world as sterile and gray, but she sees nature as its opposite and wants her art to be more like nature in its liveliness.\nFor example, she is currently using trash bags to construct one of her sculptures. In this sculpture, she inflates the bags to conjure a softer emotion from her audience than what is typically associated with trash bags. \nThen there's senior Hannah Walsh, who didn't throw away anything for a week. Instead, she carried her trash with her throughout the week to inspire a conscious attitude toward consumerism and how it affects the earth. Her spin on performance art inspired her Web site, www.carryit.org, which encourages others to participate in the same week-long commitment to carry their trash with them.\nEach artist uses nature in his or her own way. Giddings and Taylor stress that being environmentally aware is just part of who they are, so it naturally shows up in their work. Boyd and Walsh take a more direct approach, actively campaigning for their respective causes.\nSince ideology is often part of these four artists' work, proponents of the art-for-art's sake philosophy may take issue with the finished products. That doesn't seem to bother Boyd. He said that in the past 30 years, environmental devastation has been so widespread that the times demand action.\n"Somebody needs to protect these areas," he said of the country's natural resources. \nHe said the natural areas he portrays in his films are important to him and to his way of life.\n"If you can make somebody go, 'Oh, that's cool,' maybe they'll be less likely to build a condo on it," he said.\nAnother aspect of incorporating environmentalism into art is that the art may make an impact outside the artistic community itself, which Walsh said is something she strives to do. \n"It's really important to me that I'm not just making art for other artists," she said. \nTrying to reach as large an audience as possible is a goal of traditional environmentalism. Not coincidentally, it's also often a goal of good art.