This past weekend I was reminded of Earth Day (which is today, April 22) on the flight home from Minneapolis. An article in the airline’s magazine highlighted a conversation between Earth Day co-founder Denis Hayes and actress Daryl Hannah.

I hadn’t known that Daryl Hannah is such a “green” activist. She owns homes with solar power and organic gardens and drives a car that is powered by recycled French fry oil. She even has a video blog on sustainable solutions. Her list of environmental-related activities goes on…

The cynic in me thought of all the famous artists who tackle these big issues – environment, AIDS, orphans, hunger – and get the accolades. Well, good for them, but what about other artists that are not in the spotlight? What are they doing to raise awareness of Earth Day?

I live in a city that is known to be green conscious (at least for East Coast standards), and as the chair of the Arts and Humanities Commission, I hear solicitations from the community on ways to intersect our arts initiatives with raising environmental consciousness. So I know other artists are concerned about these issues as well.

I poked around online and found some “green” efforts by other artists and organizations to note:

A group of artists in Anchorage, Alaska are hosting a workshop at their studio that teaches participants how to make “beautiful functional items” from things they would otherwise throw away.

Do you have another great initiative to highlight? If so, post it here. I’d love to know how artists are helping society “see green”!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 3:08 pm by Lucinda M. Dugger and is filed under creators, education, events, international. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.