One of my favorite things about art/artists in the world today is that beyond any kind of label of "activist", a wide range of image makers and cultural producers are stepping up as artistic public intellectuals and taking a very active role in public discourse about complex themes that cannot be resolved by straight forward politics, science, social science or journalism. They are eschewing the marginality where most artists seem willing to wallow.

 

--Daniel Tucker

The McDaniel Slough Restoration Project, Humboldt Bay, CA

Breaching a 100-year old dike on Humboldt Bay to restore a long-lost wetland (September 26, 2013)

Experimenting with your own life is the most fundamental medium we have.

--Natalie Jeremijenko

The only way in which we can bring our creative resources fully into play is by misjudging the nature of the task, by presenting it to ourselves as more routine, simple, undemanding of genuine creativity than it will turn out to be.

--Malcolm Gladwell

Artists address issues that are dormant, overlooked, or otherwise outside the purview of the public realm.

--Steven Lam

Art is the R&D of culture. It is able to explore all things, in all contexts, crossing boundaries, breaking rules, transecting layers, making connections, new categories, radical theories, house conflicting content, etc. It can enrich our awareness in inconceivable ways, and change the meaning of anything. Not saying it does all the time, but it can. That is its license, and its role, and maybe even its duty. 

--Matt Coolidge

Humboldt Bay Historical Salt Marsh Distribution 

(Image courtesy Aldaron Laird)

Spartina Densiflora removal at the Eureka Slough Unit of the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge

The mouth of the Eureka Slough

An inspiring interview

Irrigated America (image courtesy Steve Rowell)

(Paintings by my student Colin Crawford.)

All cultural production, to a certain extent, is a kind of myth-making. The trick is to do it responsibly, I think.

--Trevor Paglen

"Cultural strategies are as necessary as political strategies."

--Favianna Rodriguez

(Image by Ken Ehrlich)

(image by Aurora Tang)