Jordan Seaberry | Steven Zevitas Gallery
That Freed Self, 2022, 60” x 60”, watercolor, acrylic, graphite, modeling paste on canvas
Jordan Seaberry
Steven Zevitas Gallery
But Mostly We Waited for Spring, When There Could Be Gardens
09 SePt – 29 Oct 2022Introduction
This exhibition, But Mostly We Waited For Spring, When There Could Be Gardens, brought together a series of new paintings that converged with Works Progress Administration (WPA) photographs as source material and watercolor as the primary medium. The show was designed around the commitment that the US government can, when it chooses, directly support artists not as mere commercial engines or tourism supporters, but as cultural practitioners. The WPA of the New Deal Era and the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) of the 70’s, showed what we all should know: artists are smart people, able to solve big problems, and build social cohesion through cultural practice.
Artists constantly build politics of cooperation in the face of extractive industries, insisting on the importance of cultural tapestries for building new relationships to each other and to the natural world. Each painting in this group is compositionally built on one of the photos created by a WPA photographer, some of the most remarkable photos of our history. The resulting paintings exist in conversation with and compression of that history.
The figures represent a departure from much of my previous work which often involved anonymized, fictional or historical figures. Here, each painting depicts and recontextualizes a person who has built, supported, loved me: an act of labor also often ignored.
Watercolor is deployed here laboriously and gently, on small traditional scales, and unusually large canvases. The surfaces are built through several perfected layers of modeling paste and gesso, power sanded to operate like paper. Harkening to architectural and construction materials, its absorbent surface holds the delicate paint within the history of its labor.
At odds here are not just the materials: watercolor at a large scale, canvas labored into smoothness, but time as well. History is compressed through layer and linearity. The politics are not interpersonal: no figures make eye contact with anyone but the viewer, instead these works investigate a relationship beyond extraction, an anti-progression, a remembrance of the trees and water that predate and outlast the telephone pole and the factory. The rightful inheritance of these figures isn't wealth or land, it’s relationship.”
While this project was built around the compression of history and the conversations with time and place that flow from that, I found myself constantly yearning for a more succinct way to bring my practice into more right relationship with the present condition of our planet. In addition to my life as a painter, I am lucky to serve as the Co-Director of the US Department of Arts and Culture, where I learned about the growing Climate Impact Report movement. Think of us like a performance piece: in the absence of a “real” department of arts and culture, we’re doing what we think that agency should do, supporting who that agency would support if it were a federal office. As with all projects of imagination, we had to will it into being.
I partnered with my Artists Commit CIR Mentor, Jess Gath, with whom I and the USDAC have partnered on activist projects in the past, and was excited to be able to prepare my first Climate Impact Report. Importantly, this report was completed after the exhibition was completed, meaning all of these numbers are in hindsight. I have found it deeply illuminating to look back on a project of this scale and understand how short I fell. The cliche “you manage what you measure” feels deeply true in this way.
She Gather Them and Give Them Back to Me, 2022, 60” x 60”, watercolor, acrylic, graphite, modeling paste on canvas
Carbon Emissions:
Emissions Calculated from Shipping, Travel, & Energy Emissions: 0.500 tCO2e
Carbon Emissions from Travel: 0.19 tCO2e
Carbon Emissions from Shipping: 0.0000 tCO2e
Carbon Emissions from Energy Use: 0.3100 tCO2e
Carbon Emissions from other/misc: 0.01 tCO2e
Emissions Calculation Details
Emissions were calculated in hindsight, tracking primarily energy use and travel. I have learned much about the blindspots I had in my thinking before this report. It was easy to be caught up in the pressure of the exhibition and cut corners, waste supplies, and take shortcuts because there was not a pre-set plan in place.
The report used the GCC Carbon Calculator: https://galleryclimatecoalition.org/carbon-calculator/
Waste Report
This exhibition included a series of paintings, and therefore the vast majority of materials went into their creation and shipment; no pedestals or major floor or wall treatments were involved. The materials to create the pieces included large amounts of lumber, glue, screws and canvas. Preparing the surfaces required modeling paste and gesso (both acrylic polymers). Packing the works required large cardboard sheets and single-use plastic sheeting. These packing items were reused for shipment to collections upon purchase, but after that point, upon transference of sale, they may have been recycled or landfill-bound.
Because this CIR was completed after the exhibition, the strategies employed in the run up to the opening were informal, intuitive, and the deep value of this report has come from seeing the massive blindspots in approaching a climate strategy informally. I am excited to approach the next exhibitions with a more clear-eyed strategy.
Waste - Lumber
47.75 lb
Collective Action
This project made an effort to include a diverse group of participants and subjects in the work itself, as well as creating spaces free of inequity and harm. When possible, artist attempted to support local businesses, though completing this report post-exhibition has highlighted numerous ways to support local communities and businesses more meaningfully in future projects.
The project teams consisted of:
Number of Artists: 1
Number of Studio Partner: 1
Gallery Owner: 1
Gallery Staff: 2
Art Handlers: 2
The Best of Youth, 2022, 37” x 37,” watercolor, acrylic, graphite, modeling paste on canvas
Other Sustainability Notes
As a painter, part of the challenge beyond waste and carbon emission is the sheer amount of material collected, and the ways that my practice supports industrial production. For example, the surfaces of these canvases are thickly laid alternating layers of gesso and modeling paste, sanded with a power sander between each layer, usually up to 7 or 8 times. This constitutes a massive amount of polymer consumed for each canvas, to say nothing of the lumber used to build the stretchers. While the emission number may be low, I am eager to find ways to reduce my practice’s reliance upon industrial manufacturing and other harmful industrial systems.
Additional Thoughts, Takeaways, Reflections
Completing this CIR after the show’s creation and exhibition was a deeply illuminating experience. I have been seriously humbled to see how far I fell from where I would like to be in the way I relate my painting practice to the movement for climate justice. Previously, I would have happily drawn a connective line, but completing this CIR and having the benefit of hindsight, I am able to see just how much work there is to do for me to link those not conceptually, but materially, relationally.
Exhibition Info and Credits
This report was created by the artist Jordan Seaberry, using a template from Artists Commit. But Mostly We Waited for Spring, When There Could Be Gardens was hosted by Steven Zevitas Gallery with support from Steven Zevitas, Elizabeth Morlock and Alexandra Simpson. Friends and family who collaborated as models include Zalyndria Crosby; Charlotte and Julius Palermo; Loralee, James and Camille Seaberry; Jordan Mann; Brienne Colston; and Alex Jackson.
Thanks to Artists Commit mentor Jessica Gath for supporting the creation of the report.
Link to exhibition page:
https://www.stevenzevitasgallery.com/exhibitionsmain/seaberry-butmostlywewaitiedforspring