Systems connect humans with diverse populations of non-human organisms and the vast worlds they occupy.

People also contrive systems. In addition to systems of governance, health, economics, ethics, and education, humans have developed systems to explain the dynamics of life on Earth.  Over the course of history, these systems have reflected two contrasting approaches. ‘Closed’ systems are self-sustaining and self-governing ; they function without inputs or outputs.. ‘Open’ systems are functionally dependent upon elements or processes that enter the system from outside; they rely upon inputs and outputs in order to perpetuate themselves. 

If a house were a closed system, there would be no pipes connecting to a water supply, no wires feeding electricity from a grid, and no need for a driveway. But houses are open systems. Sunlight streams through the windows, air seeps through the cracks, baking ingredients enter and the contribution to the church bake sale exits.

The word ‘ecology’ is derived from the Greek word ‘ecos.’ meaning home. For much of history, cultures conceived of their earthly home as a closed system  comprised of four primary elements: stone and  air, water and fire. This hallowed image of a closed system reflects the belief the Earth-centeredness of phenomena. Those phenomena that could not be accounted for through direct observation are relegated to the magical involvement of the spirit world. Unobservable events like evaporation and condensation were explained by the creation of water spirits and attended to by rain dances and sacrificial ceremonies.    

In these closed-system cultures, such spirits resided far beyond Earth-bound perceivable realms. They occurred, for example, within the molten core of the earth and the blazing mass of the sun. Throughout the grand course of civilization,human spirits have been stirred by the inscrutability of the underworld and the untouchable brilliance of the sun: goddesses of volcanoes and gods of the sun, Satans ruling the underworld and angelic hosts occupying ethereal realms. 

 Scientific investigation has provided evidence that our earthly home is very much an open system. For example, sunlight enters the system in a non-material form called energy affecting the elements within the system by warming them, causing chemical changes, and producing photosynthesis in plants.  Magma spews from volcanic eruptions creating new land forms and devastating existing eco systems. Shooting stars pierce the atmosphere from deep space causing craters and depositing new rock materials.  Snow balls from space may contribute to our water supply.

Open systems envision the earth as four interactive spheres of activity. They biosphere is 'life. The other three  provide abiotic building blocks and habitat for ‘life’. They include the geosphere, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere.

Closed systems cannot support life.   As a result, open systems pose an alternative to mythic closed-system tales. Ecology awakens consciousness of all the materials and processes that are used to create and maintain living organisms.

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Both the bear and the spirochete need to eat. However, predators like bears devour their prey from the outside, while disease organisms like spirochetes nibble on their victims from the inside. This means that not everyone who attends the ongoing ecological dinner party is having a good time. The imbiber (the bear and the spirochete) enjoy themselves. It is not as much fun for the prey (the salmon and your intestines).

                Disease is a competitive interaction between us and microorganisms. Victory either accrues to the attackers or the attacked. As long as an organism’s immune system is intact, it can coexist with, or defeat its invaders. The symptoms of disease don’t occur until the disease arms race is no longer balanced. Victory goes to the attackers. The host is defeated.

                Two additional facts of significance:

                l. We humans depend upon the microbes that inhabit our bodies to maintain our health.

2. While we are skilled at satisfying our appetites by killing plants and animals without becoming meals for other organisms, we remain vulnerable      to disease.   

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Today's weeding provided a surprise. In all my life's gardening experience, it is unique. I was removing the remains of an univited visitor that arrived in my flowerbed last year. It is an attractive plant that grows tall and stately. The bright green leaves and spikes of delicate white flowers grew to be so lush that I never observed its stem until today. My fingers provided the first hint of an amazing experience. They discerned flat sides and right angles! The stem takes the form of a perfect, right-angled, geometric square!

We live imbedded in spheres.  Our biosphere consists of the troposphere which is nested within the stratosphere, the mesosphere, the thermosphere, and the ionosphere. Spheres abound within the biosphere as well. Bubbles, immune cells, grapes, and a multiplicity of other objects benefit from the sphere’s super efficient means to encompass volume. Yet the contemporary environment is replete with boxes.  Four walls comprise the settings in which we learn, work, sleep, eat, play, and relax.  Four sides comprise the containers for our possessions.  When we die, we are placed inside a box and another box marks our grave. Boom box, mail box, cable box, batter’s box, Unix box. The box has usurped the sphere to become the ubiquitous form that dominates contemporary lives.

Thus, I wondered, why is it that when we are trapped we feel “cornered”, not curved. When we are constricted we are ‘boxed in’, not sphered. When we attempt to escape our predicaments we try "thinking outside the box", not in it. We prefer being “well rounded”, not well angled. When things are going well, you are “on a roll”, not on a plane. These phrases reveal the desire to escape the box. 

The sphere existed eons before humans started constructing shapes. Copernicus exulted in the wondrous properties of spheres. This celebrated 16^th century astronomer explained why the universe was shaped in this manner. “The reason is either that, of all forms, the sphere is the most perfect, needing no joint and being a complete whole, or that it is the most capacious of figures, best suited to enclose and retain all things, or even that all the separate parts of the universe, I mean the sun, moon, planets, and stars, are seen to be this shape, or that wholes strive to be circumscribed by this boundary, as is apparent in drops of water and other fluid bodies when they seek to be self-contained.” 

The sphere’s venerable role in the world’s mythologies, religions, and art may derive from these remarkable features. By possessing only one surface, it alone among all solids is undivided. It is irreducible because it has no parts. It is ultimately efficient because it uses the least surface area to encompass space. It is omnidirectional because it can rotate in all directions. It is the least resistant to friction, the most resistant to pressure, the least vulnerable to damage, and the most uniform. The miracle of life transpires in spheroid seeds, eggs, and wombs. Cosmic eggs are conjured in many cultures as the enchanted sites of the birth of deities and even the origin of the universe. Spheres are signs of life and creation and perfection.

But boxes have special advantages as well.  They offer an efficient means for packing because there is no wasted space between units. Boxes resist forces of change. While they provide strength, they also suffer from rigidity.  

Even abstracted from their role defining objects, shapes convey rich narratives.

     - Spheres adjust to dynamic conditions; boxes resist change.  

     - Spheres establish accord between humans and the non-human environment. Boxes keep the non-human environment at bay. 

And then there is the gorgeous newcomer to my garden that stands proud and erect on a stem constructed of right angles!

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Today I brought home a six-week old lamb. Another goose egg hatched. The new batch of chickens made their first foray outside their pen. Sprouts of every shade of green are peeping in tidy rows, each promising an edible delight. My youngest grandchild took his first step.

Today, the springtime exuberance spilled over into my explorations of a very young art movement. Eco-art is germinating on continents across the globe. They are seeding new visions of life on Earth. But, unlike my garden, this movement is a chaotic welter of undetermined potentiality. Eco-artists do not line up and march in lock-step toward their common goal. There are stragglers, sprinters, drifters, and trekkers. Some follow highways laid by predecessors, while others forge new pathways. While eco-art is emerging as a vital cultural force, there is no manifesto that declares a common motive; no manual that teaches required skills; no guild setting standards of excellence; no resource dispensing relevant themes; no creed revealing sanctioned beliefs and verifiable truths.

Eco-art resembles an unnamed sprout – vital, prospective, possibly life-saving, and definitely mysterious.

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Today I am writing an essay about Tue Greenfort who privides a prime example of this conservationnist approach to studio art practice. The opening paragraph reads:

Tue Greenfort is no lightweight. However, he may qualify for the title of featherweight champion of eco-art. Greenfort’s renown testifies to the possibility of succeeding in the art world by doing very little. His secret is that his ‘little’ is motivated by ethical and material restraint, not laziness.   In describing Greenfort’s work, the adjectives ‘extravagant’ and ‘extraordinary’ modify nouns such as subtlety, delicacy, and encouragement.

His work provides a model worthy of being duplicated and adopted.

The common criteria for choosing art mediums include price, convenience, and workability. Many eco-artists activate their environmental concerns by expanding this list. They also evaluate mediums in terms of the resources and methods used in producing it, supply line costs, the energy costs of working with it, the waste it generates, and so forth. Some not only limit their practices to those mediums that earn the environmental seal of approval, but they use them in a manner that demonstrates renewability and recycling. Or they might model ways to minimize footprints by scavenging derelict materials. Or they might choose an unstable medium that decays in order to honor the Earth’s dynamic transformations. Even methods of accessing and acquiring mediums carry ecological significance. Consider, for instance, the eco messages communicated by the following scenarios: purchasing commercially manufactured mediums; purchasing raw materials that are processed by hand; scavenging free materials; processing free materials from foraged plants, animals, and minerals; cultivating raw materials by growing fibrous plants, raising animals for bone or fur, or mining ores and metals.

The one category of consideration that still seems underrepresented is conservation. Using less, no matter what the medium, broadcasts a primary shift in conduct related to human consumption patterns. 

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