La Paz Community School

Wolfgang Laib

• German conceptual artist working predominantly with natural materials.

• Informed by the purity and simplicity of Eastern philosophies, he employs natural materials, most notably milk, pollen, beeswax, rice and marble.

• His works are more complex than being just about nature and the natural world. They involve ritual, repetition, process, and a demand for contemplation.

• Laib is most well known for his use of large quantities of intense, yellow pollen.

• A slow and deliberate process, the artist collects the pollen during the spring and summer months.

• Working with the natural sequence of the seasons, he harvests the pollen on each tree or flower when it is in bloom, beginning with hazelnut, moving on to dandelion and other flowers, and finally ending with pine.

• Each type of pollen is unique in color and size. Laib exhibits the pollen in a variety of ways, most famously sifted on a stone or concrete floor, creating a field of brilliantly hued pollen.

Ana Mendieta• Ana Mendieta was a Cuban American

performance artist, sculptor, painter and video artist who is best known for her "earth-body" art work.

• Mendieta's work was generally autobiographical and focused on themes including feminism, violence, life, death, place and belonging.

• Mendieta often focused on a spiritual and physical connection with the Earth, most particularly in her "Silueta Series" (1973–1980).

The series involved Mendieta creating female silhouettes in nature - in mud, sand and grass - with natural materials ranging from leaves and twigs to blood, and

making body prints or painting her outline or silhouette onto a wall.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude• Christo and Jeanne-Claude Denat de

Guillebon, were a married couple who created environmental works of art.

• Although their work is visually impressive and often controversial as a result of its scale, the artists have repeatedly denied that their projects contain any deeper meaning than their immediate aesthetic impact.

• The purpose of their art, they contend, is simply to create works of art or joy and beauty and to create new ways of seeing familiar landscapes.

Wrapped Coast • At the end of 1969 Jeanne-Claude and

Christo wrapped the coast of Little Bay, in Sydney, Australia

• 100 workers and 11 volunteers devoted 17,000 work hours to wrap two and a half kilometres of coast and cliffs up to 26 metres high.

• The project required 95,600 m2 of synthetic fabric and 56 km of rope and was the largest single artwork ever made at this time.

Valley Curtain

Running Fence

Surrounding Miami Islands

Walter De Maria, Lighting Field

• The Lightning Field (1977) is a land art work in Catron County, New Mexico, by sculptor Walter De Maria.

• It consists of 400 stainless steel poles with solid, pointed tips, arranged in a rectangular 1 mile × 1 kilometre grid array.