A Request to my Artist Friends: Please try to reduce your Ecological Foot Prints

[Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa]

( Written for and Posted on various artists' fora but this could be relevant to people belonging to various other fields too!)

Recently I have watched several videos on various websites, networks and You Tube in which artists showed how they create their works of art. Some were even "trying to teach" others through their videos. But what alarmed me the most while watching them was some of the artists were wasting colors and other art materials! Shall I tell you how? Okay.

When they want to create different patterns first some of the artists use watery solutions (or washes of water colours and acrylics) that run down the papers or canvases and fall on the floors below. Then they repeat this procedure several times with other colors until they get different colour patterns and shades. They are  painting the floors too along with the canvases! Some wipe off some of the colours painted on the canvases with sponges, blotting and toilet papers to get artistic patterns and designes and throw them away into dust bins or wash them away in sinks! Some use spray paints which paints easels, tables & everything around the canvases!  (I too use spray paint but try not to use it on the edges of the canvas).

Yes, everybody is an "expert" on the internet. Most of the artists want to share with or "teach" others their methods. But I feel most of them are not good teachers! They are showing the world how to waste art materials.

I know as artists you might support your fellow artists and say it is necessary to waste some of the art materials in order to create good works. But to a person like me who is from the field of science and who don't waste even a single drop (if I can say that) of color, it is horrifying to see all that material that is going waste in the art world. Yes, I am very stingy! You have to be one if you are a good environmentalist!

Friends, have you heard about "Ecological Foot Print" and "Carbon Foot Print" ?

The " Ecological Foot Print" is a measure of human demand on Earth's ecosystems.  It compares human demand with planet Earth's ecological capacity to regenerate. It represents the amount of Biologically productive land and sea area needed to regenerate the resources a human population consumes and to absorb and render harmless the corresponding waste. Everything we do has consequences.  Today humanity's total ecological foot print was estimated at 1.5 planet Earths - in other words - humanity uses ecological services 1.5 times as fast as Earth can renew them! It now takes the Earth one year six months to regenerate what we use in a year! We maintain this overshot by liquidating the Earth's resources. Overshoot is vastly under-estimated threat to human well-being and the health of the planet and the one that is not adequately addressed. We need a collective action in support of the world, where the humanity lives within the Earth's bounds.

A "Carbon Foot Print" is a measure of the amount of Carbon dioxide produced by a person, organization or state in a given time. The measure of greenhouse gases that are produced by the activity of a person, a family etc. The impact of a certain activity on the emission of CO2 to the atmosphere. Your lifestyle or use of a particular product or service impacts CO2  production. The papers, the canvases you use for pastels, water colours, oils &acrylics, the paints, the easels, brushes everything you use for creating art works have effect on greenhouse gas productions - which in turn affect our environment. Therefore, using them judiciously and in a proper way is very important for the well being of our planet.

People who waste art materials might not have realized the consequences of their acts. So they do it so carelessly. But for a person like me who can see like a movie on a screen before my eyes what impact all that waste on the environment we live in have, it is really shocking and scary! Therefore, I want to bring this picture before your eyes too. I don't intend to criticize anybody, I only want to paint the truth before the art world so that artists would  realize and appreciate my efforts to save this beautiful planet  Earth.

My Ecological Foot Print is as low as 5.02. If everybody has such a low EFP, we would need only 0.3 Earths! Our planet would be green forever!

So may I ask all my artist friends to come with me into a ecologically balanced beautiful world that would be as wonderful as your art works?

(I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own - Andy Warhol)