Armory Center for the Arts

The Armory Center for the Arts is a community arts center that provides innovative approaches to creating, exploring and presenting the visual arts to youths and adults. In addition to contemporary art exhibitions and performances, the Armory also offers studio art classes and educational outreach programs to more than fifty schools and community sites.

Responding to Nature
Clearcutting, oil spills, polluted water, loss of farmland, overgrazed pastures and overused fields… these are a few of the issues artists have examined during the past 35 years. Artists have responded to the environment with projects for natural restoration and photographic examinations. Recently, environmental artists are investigating the relationship between nature and technology through engineering, science and sociology, using organic matter, sound and video.

ReGenerations: Environmental Art in California presents 14 artists’ interpretations of the past, present and future human impact on California’s natural environments. Newton and Helen Harrison attempt to effect ecological change with detailed restoration plans for environments such as Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco. Mark Brest van Kempen imagines a new domestic appliance which can simultaneously wash clothes, conserve and filter water. Artists challenge us to reexamine our relationship to nature and imagine how we can positively impact our surroundings. Additional artists include Kim Abeles, Betty Beaumont, Tony Bellaver, John Humble, Patricia Johanson, Sant Khalsa, Stacy Levy, David Maisel, Daniel McCormick, Richard Misrach, Matthew Moore, Allan Sekula, Alyson Shotz, and Tao Urban.

When Nature Speaks to You
Look around. Observe your surroundings-the air, water, parks where you play. What do these places tell your senses? Are they dirty, polluted, harmful, pretty, clean, inviting?

In the Armory’s Community Room Gallery you can record your observations to local natural environments and photographs of locations throughout Southern California. Write or draw your ideas. Become a part of the discussion. Submissions will be on view during The Tender Land festival. You can also document your reactions at home and bring or mail them to the Armory. This project is presented in partnership with the City of Pasadena, Department of Public Works.

A Link to our Partners
For further exploration of these topics visit the exhibition Flowing Water, Fruitful Valley at the Pasadena Museum of History. To see a photographic examination of local urban development, visit the Pasadena Museum of California Art.