“Somebody’s crazy, they are draining the swamps and growing rice in the desert. . . .” “What if all of that irrigated farming isn’t necessary?” [1] I first heard Helen and Newton Harrison speak about their work at a lecture at the San Francisco Art Institute, probably in 1977. These questions were part of their Sacramento Meditations, questions they asked us to help them write in blue chalk on the streets of San Francisco.
For me, as a part-time art student, starting my first job after college as an environmental specialist working for the National Park Service, the Harrisons’ approach, distilling in-depth scientific research into art, into metaphor, story, and performative activism, was eye-opening. At the time, their work deeply affirmed my intuition about turning to art to pose the powerful ecological questions of the day. Reviewing this work almost half a century later brings me to...