Update June 2018: The Rare Forest Project has lost its proposed site and is currently exploring alternatives in Central Maine.
Project Links
https://rareforestproject.wordpress.com/
Dust To Dust: For Ozymandias
SOIL CITY
Dust To Dust: For Ozymandias
Commissioned by St. Louis Science Center. for “Grow“, a new pavilion and permanent agriculture exhibition at SLSC.
Design: Mark Cooley
Fabricated with local salvaged cedar by Scott Wunder @ Wunderwoods, St. Louis.
Green Studio
SoA Green Studio website
2010 – Present
Located on the grounds of the George Mason University’s Art and Design Campus, SoA Green Studio offers students a living studio in which to creatively explore the interdependence of biological and cultural systems. The Green Studio exists, as any working art studio does, in constant flux and develops organically through the relationship artists form with the developing ecology of the site.
SubHerban Roots
Visit us @ www.SubHerbanRoots.com
SubHerban Roots, is a community-based family art project & business established in 2013 that offers homegrown homemade herbal remedies and home-scale permaculture design services to the Northern Virginia and Washington DC communities. SubHerban Roots is an art project, but it is not an ironic business-as-art performance. Rather, our work is a sincere art-of-everyday-life pro-formance. Through this pro-formance, we hope to provide for our family and help others take agency in regard to their personal health and the health of the land on which we all depend.
SubHerban Roots is a family collective project by
Beth Hall, Mark and Celia Cooley
EcoScience+Art
Founded by Mark Cooley and Dr. Changwoo Ahn
2013 – 2016
EcoScience+Art is an initiative and collaboration between the arts and sciences at George Mason University. It is our mission to bring together individuals working across the boundaries of ecosystem science, art, and design fields to share knowledge, expertise, and strategies for creatively engaging in the common pursuit of a sustainable future.
Book of Dangerous Ideas
Urban Forest, DC: Companion Planting
Companion Planting
2009
A graphic by Mark Cooley and Ryan Griffis for Urban Forest, DC.
This piece is an attempt to visualize the necessity of positioning community and human relations (culture) within America’s traditionally rather alienated view of “nature”. It seems that the most progressive urban forest and gardening projects these days begin by rethinking the assumption that “culture” and “nature” are mutually exclusive things as they begin to reincorporate natural elements into urban space and build community bonds around them.
The Urban Forest Project is a unique public arts initiative of Worldstudio, which invited local artists and designers to employ the idea or form of the tree to make a powerful visual statement on street-banners that were then displayed in their community. The tree is a metaphor for sustainability and in that spirit, the banners at the close of each exhibition were recycled into totebags and auctioned off to raise money for a local environmental cause. The Urban Forest project was originally executed in New York’s Times Square in the fall of 2006 and has since travelled to several cities including: New York, San Francisco, Baltimore, Denver, Toledo, Washington, DC and Albuquerque.
Visions From Solitary: Prisoners’ Imaginations Made Real By Activists’ Photographs
“Visions From Solitary: Prisoners’ Imaginations Made Real By Activists’ Photographs”. Pete Brook. PrisonPhotography.org
Deadliest Animal
Deadliest Animal
Photomontage and design by Mark Cooley; research and text by Stephen F. Eisenman.
Produced for: TAMMS Y10 Solitary Confinement Photography Project.
TAMMS Y10 asked prisoners in solitary confinement at notorious Tamms C-MAX prison in Illinois, “If you could have one picture, what would it be?” Artists from across the country responded to the requests. The resulting images were distributed to the prisoners.
Tamms Year Ten is a coalition of prisoners, ex-prisoners, families, artists and other concerned citizens who have come together to protest the inhumane treatment of prisoners at Tamms C-MAX in Illinois. Tamms prisoners never leave their cells except to shower or exercise alone in a concrete pen. Meals are pushed through a slot in the cell door. There are no jobs, communal activities or contact visits. Suicide attempts, self-mutilation, psychosis and serious mental disorders are common at Tamms, and are an expected consequence of long-term isolation.
Article: Visions From Solitary: Prisoners’ Imaginations Made Real By Activists’ Photographs. Prisonphotography.org.
EcoCultures
EcoCultures is an exhibition bringing together current cultural
productions at the intersections of the arts, sciences and the
practice of everyday life to explore the interdependence of our
social and biological systems.
Mason Hall Atrium Gallery | George Mason University, Fairfax VA
September 22 – October 6, 2011
Public Reception – September 22, 6:30 – 8:00pm
Curated by Mark Cooley
| Featuring the work of: | |
| Amy Balkin
The Futurefarmers The Yes Men Beatriz da Costa Temporary Travel Office
|
Beehive Design Collective
Jens Jarisch & Sharon Davis Kim Stringfellow Matthew Friday & Jeff Lovett Sarah Kanouse & Shiloh Krupar |