Sam Bower
Friday, January 8, 2010 
Linden Tree presentation: January 13th (at) 7pm
REBUILDING A SUSTAINABLE CULTURE
Throughout history, human communities have found ways to live within the carrying capacity of the places they lived. What we now think of as art, was deeply integrated into their architecture, resource management and spiritual connections to the Earth. Since the 1960's, contemporary artists have begun addressing the needs of communities and ecosystems directly through the arts, pioneering a reintegration of aesthetics, restoration science, spirituality, urban development and green planning. To create a more sustainable human population, the arts, beauty and metaphor need to be profoundly engaged at all levels. Art can inspire creative problem solving, connect our civic infrastructure and ideas to local culture and history and engage people in a vision of an efficient and more beautiful world. As this field grows and evolves, the arts and infrastructure required to support this work need to evolve with it.
What would a 21st century sustainable culture look like? What would it need to flourish?
Sam Bower is the Founding Executive Director of greenmuseum.org, an online museum of environmental art, launched in 2001. He is also Co-Founder (with Anne Veh) of Generative Partners a consulting firm for green architects and builders that specializes in a systems approach to art. He has consulted with cities, foundations, universities and organizations such as Amercians for the Arts, NASA, the Alliance for Artists Communities, the Daniel Langlois Foundation, and the Government of France. Public speaking engagements include keynote, featured speaker and panel discussions throughout the United States and internationally.
Prior to this, Sam created environmental art for 8 years as part of a San Francisco Bay Area collaborative art group known as Meadowsweet Dairy. He helped found Cellspace, a nonprofit community art space in San Francisco, and Co-Directed Crucible Steel Gallery. Sam has worked as a solo artist, puppeteer, and web designer, and in advertising, events planning, and the environmental nonprofit sector in the US and Ecuador. He has served on the Board and as an Advisor to various art and environment-related nonprofits and art projects. His current passion is for free open source eco-art projects and is working on a book project related to sustainable culture.
For more information, visit greenmuseum.org and generativepartners.com
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