I pay attention to sunsets most clear days of the year, even excusing myself from a meeting if a sunset promises to be especially glorious. I rush home to bask in the sun’s descent among familiar old oak trees that occupy the foreground, and the majestic Catskill Mountains in the distance. Each transition from through dusk from day to night is accompanied by a unique orchestration of chirps, clucks, gusts, breezes, cooling temperatures, ebbing humidity, and clouds aglow with selections from the color spectrum refracted from above and reflected from below.

The steady-state condition of the airplane interior reinforced the eerie quality of the sunset beyond the airplane window. Despite the passage of time, this sun remained poised in a scene that was planar, unwavering, and silent. It was otherworldly, alien to the vibrant multi-sensual experiences of sunsets at home. Then I recalled seeing such views of suspension and isolation before. They prevail in art. Unearthly qualities characterize traditional landscape paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs. Such renderings of landscapes abound with mistaken impressions!

University students enrolled in 2-d and 3-d studio art classes were anticipating my arrival. I was invited to tell them about radical experiments in contemporary art that were inspired by environmental concerns. Watching sunsets in two divergent settings catapulted this theme into an exciting, if controversial, arena. I reached for the journal that contained my lecture notes, found some blank sheets of paper, and started again. This is what I wrote:

The physical world, as it is delineated in most standard art curricula and depicted in many conventional art works, contradicts the physical world as it is defined and studied by ecologists. Artists who have long been dead are still honored for their deceptive modes of presentation. These misleading communications are entrenched in academic curricula, affirmed by common language, and ratified by popular consensus.  The emerging science of ecology has shown that representational art is not representational of the physical environment. It is representational of conventions of deceit, acceptance of distortion, and willing compliance with fiction. Restructuring all these arenas may be the fundamental requirement for achieving culture-wide environmental reform on a scale that matches current environmental challenges.

For example, misleading impressions are reinforced by courses that presume to teach 2-d art forms despite the fact that nothing can exist in the physical world if it only has two dimensions. Height and width are always accompanied by depth. ‘Flat’ actually means that one of these dimensions is substantially smaller than the other two. Volume is a fact of existence. It is inherent in sheets of paper, surfaces of ponds, and computer screens.

Likewise, lines which play such a prominent role in art instruction and art production do not exist in the physical world. A line is an abstraction invented by humans to simplify the task of rendering forms. Even a line of ink has physical substance, just like the trunk of a tree, a strand of hair, and a water hose. Furthermore, utilizing lines to delineate shape is bogus since, in the physical world, lines don't enclose space - edges do, and edges are components of volumes.

While it is true that every ‘thing’ in the physical world has volume, even 3-d art courses perpetuate a deceptive premise. They infer that identifying all three of an object’s dimensions suffices to describe it. It ignores the fact that objects are continually being bombarded by environmental conditions that trigger expansions, contractions, erosions, rusting, melting, dissipating, tumbling, absorption, and countless additional forms of alteration.   Everything that occupies space also transforms through time. On Earth, perpetual permutation applies to location, size, shape, substance, complexity, responsiveness, vulnerability, and so forth. Responsiveness of the object and the intensity of the influence determine if these changes transpire quickly, as when an avalanche tumbles, or slowly, as when bedrock erodes.

Another fallacy perpetuated in conventional college curricula is the deceptive notion that art is made to endure. Art instruction often includes introducing students to archival mediums that resist change, and storage protocols that emulate museum settings by isolating artworks from fluctuating humidity and temperature, sunlight, fungus, bacteria, mice, and human tampering. The underlying message conveyed by these protocols is that art is exempt from participating in the dynamic systems that account for life on Earth. These systems are bad for art. Artists are at liberty to opt out of responsible engagement.

In all these ways the hallowed traditions of art and art education suppress the unique and all-powerful forces that comprise the drama of life on Earth. Today’s vanguard artists are reversing this legacy by inventing ways to confirm the dynamic complexity of eco-systems. They are undertaking respectful partnerships with Earth forces and substances to establish sustainable paradigms for maintaining human populations.  Some artists may choose to design eco life styles, eco value systems,  eco standards of conduct. They may invent strategies for crisis management and aversion. Others may construct eco models of work based on crafting, collaborating, reusing, and sharing. Still others may introduce new forms of delight, celebration, prayer, and exchange.

I glance, once more, out the airplane window. Night has settled in. Uniform blackness extends as far as the eye can see. I perceive my reflection on the glass and think of the scale of perception-shifting that is sufficient to sustain life on Earth. Environmental reform requires a total revamp of the way humans 'see' the world around us. Artists can help lay to rest the old habits of separating dimensions of height, width, and depth. They can make all components of the physical environment contingent on context. They can help visualize that context as a system that is perpetually and unpredictably evolving.

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