Saving Rivers by Turning Toxins Into Art!

How can art help the environment recover from disaster?

We have all heard of the power that art can help to heal people, but can it also work to heal ecosystems? Maybe we underestimate how powerful creativity can be when it is combined with science and a mission.

Rivers and streams across the world face massive amounts of pollution from mining, industry, and improperly treated sewage. Though they are the veins and arteries that carry life-giving water, they are constantly under threat.

In America’s abandoned centers of industry, long deserted mines are leaching toxins into rivers and streams. As they enter the waterways they turn them violent shades of yellow, orange, and red, betraying their contamination.

In a seemingly unlikely collaboration, two professors at Ohio University, Guy Riefler and John Sabraw, are teaming up to combat river pollution and educate people about its impacts. Riefler is a civil engineer and Sabraw is an artist, and their work is just one of the many incredible examples of what can happen when science and art collide!

Here’s Great Big Story with more.

If you’re after more like that, go check out Great Big Story on YouTube. A dive into their content will leave you optimistic and full of new knowledge.

Painting with Toxic Sludge to Change Hearts, Minds, and Rivers.

We need more innovation like this that looks past traditional academic boundaries and sees the potential in the places in between!

Though I love and adore science and art equally, I had never thought of the observation that Sabraw shared,

“Scientist and artists share two critical aspects: curiosity and failure…

The artist, like the scientist, has a crucial role to perform in our society: to see things differently, to act on this vision, and to report on successes and failures to the public.”

What a true statement.

We so often think of science as the antithesis of art, when in actuality they are compliments to one another, each sharing fundamental values.

This remarkable collaboration perfectly illustrates the monumental potential for innovation that is waiting out there as we choose to see the world in terms of its connections and not its differences.

Though we may not all be artists or scientists, the same is true for us as well. When we make an effort to see connection around us and refuse to be defined by one label of interest or identity we are afforded a view of our world filled with potential.

Stay beautiful & keep laughing!

-Liesl

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