SS: How did you first get interested in sustainable practices?

FW: When I first moved to Chicago, I started a garden on the side lot next to my house. I'd never had a garden, never wanted one. Like many urban people who react to the absence of nature in the city, I became very involved with gardening and eventually it became part of my work, an extension of my prior interests in art and science. Working in the garden helped me become more knowledgeable and more tuned in to natural systems and environmental issues. I had thought I was just going to make a flower garden, but first I had to deal with the soil, which was full of debris. That got me thinking about reclamation. Many years have passed since then, and through the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where I teach, I have had the opportunity to spend time with some sustainable design theorists and was exposed to that discourse on a philosophical level.

SS: Could you talk more specifically about how this affected your practice?

FW: Five years ago I realized I had been looking backward, lamenting a lost purity of nature, paradise lost. This was getting us nowhere; I needed to become more proactive. I became more politicized in general, and that led to a radical change in my work from a more romantic excavation of historical and botanical subjects to a proactive and politicized body of work. I also looked at my own life and realized that I was living a modernist art lifestyle in a big cavernous place with more space than I need. So my husband and I are building a smaller, leaner home and studio that incorporates principles of sustainable design. Actually, it was through searching the web for cistern liners for the house that I found the inflatable objects that will be presented in Beyond Green; some of the same companies that make these objects also make the cistern liners, which we need for water reclamation at our new home.

SS: Could you describe these objects and your project?

FW: The project, Primary Plus, presents examples of a type of monumental, collapsible, industrially produced object that is currently in worldwide use. These brightly colored geometric forms are the embodiment of a new global emergency and disaster response culture and are used by military, corporate, survivalist, and humanitarian organizations for spill containment, fire fighting, and temporary storage of liquids. They're colorcoded for the end-user: typically blue or white for potable water, black for nonpotable water or fuel, tan or khaki for jet fuel and military applications, yellow for high visibility, and orange, the most inexpensive and therefore ubiquitous color, for gray water and disposable contents. I'm bringing a selection of these found objects into the museum where they function in relation to a minimalist sculptural aesthetic, as well as to their intended use in disaster response. Ambivalence is a key term for this project. Things operate at a juncture between understanding them as part of an art-historical iconography and seeing them as functional objects. This slippage between what something is and what it appears to be is very extreme in this case. That interests me. I also find their scale compelling, because it begins to hint at the magnitude of the environmental issues facing us. I'm also interested in places where Enlightenment categories of material culture dissolve and art blends into anonymous design.

SS: Let's talk about the objects in their first lives as functional items. Do you think they're examples of effective, sustainable design?

FW: This is another ambivalence within the project. Toxic spills and industrial "accidents" clearly need remediation, and the ingenious devices designed for this purpose -the objects I'm showing-do an environmental service by helping to sustain beaches and wetlands. However, do sophisticated remediation strategies perpetuate unsustainable practices such as shipping crude oil across the oceans? Does the automobile inscribe the design of these inflatable devices? Are they perhaps both reactionary and sustainable? If so, what are they sustaining? The status of the inflatable tanks used to supply potable water for humanitarian relief is just as ambiguous. In refugee camps and areas of unexpected drought, these devices are a godsend, allowing fast, inexpensive, efficient delivery (by aircraft drops) of drinking water. In the future, will these devices become as familiar as the gas tank? Fresh water, already a crisis in many parts of the world, represents a new global economy built on a strategy of shifting resources that is transient, nomadic, and extra-geographic. Perhaps to see this as dire is nostalgic, sentimental, or provincial. As design and environmental philosophy have moved beyond ecological or green design into the more complex model of sustainability, one central tenet is the need to design proactive systems on the front end, moving out of a reactive mode. Further, sustainability might only be achieved by recognizing the impact of "inscriptive" design, design that produces situations and behaviors that go on to "design" other situations and behaviors that in turn "design" the designers. Sustainable design theorist Tony Fry calls this "ontological circling."1

SS: You've borrowed all of these inflatable objects from the companies that make them. Could you describe the responses when you proposed this project?

FW: The owner of one company, Dr. Fakhimi of Texas Boom, Inc., is an academic who started making these products after working for years as a chemical engineer. Referring primarily to oil spills, he told me, "Engineers helped create this mess and we needed to figure out how to clean it up." When I told him the nature of the exhibit, he said, "They should give you a medal for raising these issues." Clearly he was receptive; he got the project. He did not seem surprised that I see these objects sculpturally and appreciate their high level of craft, which of course is necessary for them to function.