The Artist as Environmental Activist

Annick Smith, David T. Hanson, Shannon Ramsey, Clark Wolf

Monday, 09 Feb 2009 at 1:00 pm – Sun Room, Memorial Union

The artist is trained to watch, listen, observe, and report, but what are the obligations of artists to act, agitate, and intervene? Artists and environmentalists David Hanson, Shannon Ramsey, Annick Smith and Clark Wolf will discuss how they came to a point of understanding and reconciliation with issues of environment in their work. Writer and photographer David Hanson taught for over a decade at the Rhode Island School of Design in the department of Photography and Landscape Architecture. Shannon Ramsey is the President, CEO and cofounder of Trees Forever, a national non-profit organization based in Marion, Iowa. Annick Smith is a writer, editor, and filmmaker. She coproduced the movie A River Runs through It, and her latest book is The Wide Open: Prose, Poetry, and Photographs of the Prairie. Clark Wolf is the Bioethics Program Director and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Iowa State. The conversation will be moderated by Iowa State associate professor creative writing Stephen Pett. Part of the Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness and the Creative Imagination.

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David T. Hanson has produced works of art pertaining to the environmental impact of man around the nation. Born in Montana, he received a B.A. in literature from Stanford University and a M.F.A. in photography from Rhode Island School of Design. From 1983 to 2000, Hanson taught at RISD in the department of Photography and Landscape Architecture. He has received the John Simon Memorial Foundation Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists awards. He currently lives in Fairfield, Iowa.

Shannon Ramsey is the President, CEO and co-founder of Trees Forever, a national nonprofit organization based in Marion, Iowa. Trees Forever empowers people who want to take an active role in environmental stewardship. Since 1989 Trees Forever has worked with communities ravaged by floods and tornadoes by providing grants to replant trees. They have also developed cutting-edge programs and innovative processes that have helped thousands in Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota plan for and complete thoughtful and effective tree planting projects that will prevent further erosion and flooding.

Annick Smith is a writer, editor, and filmmaker who lives in Montana’s Blackfoot River Valley. Her books include the memoir Homestead; Big Bluestem, Journey into the Tallgrass, written for The Nature Conservancy; the Montana anthology The Last Best Place, coedited with William Kittredge; and the recently published The Wide Open: Prose, Poetry, and Photographs of the Prairie. She was a founding member of the Sundance Film Institute, the executive producer of the feature film Heartland, and a coproducer of Robert Redford’s production of A River Runs Through It.

Clark Wolf is Director of Bioethics at Iowa State University, where he also serves as a member of the Department of Philosophy, and as a faculty member in the Graduate program on sustainable agriculture. Before coming to Iowa State, he taught at the University of Georgia, the University of Colorado at boulder, and at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. Much of Wolf's philosophical work is in the areas of Bioethics and Environmental Ethics, including papers on intergenerational justice, environmental policy, and the use of exhaustible resources over time. Wolf also has a degree from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and regularly performs as a soloist on trombone, ophicleide and double-belled euphonium with bands around the state of Iowa. He is especially interested in the use of the arts to promote awareness of public issues and environmental conservation.

More information and a complete schedule of events for the Fifth Annual Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness, and the Creative Imagination