Produce a creative visual (or multisensory) response to one of the course texts and an issue in sustainable development engaged by the text. Select the text to which you respond and present your response to the class on the assigned days. The response could be something you find that was created by someone else, such as a photograph or a sculpture, or it could be something you create, such as a drawing. The response must be accompanied by a brief written explanation (1 page) of the points of contact between the text and the particular artistic representation.
Below are a few notable examples from past semesters:
“A Crankie about Hope” by Cassidy Quillen (Fall 2015)
“Ceremony” Morgan DePue (Fall 2015)
“Earthseed: The Books of the Living,” an illustrated book by Alex Payne (Fall 2018)
“Silent Spring,” an original song by Hannah Cullen (Fall 2019)
“Ode to those who hadn’t done it” by Cody Hudgins (Fall 2019)
“An animation based on Parable of the Sower” by Noah Altman (Fall 2019)
“Fleeing LA” by Urijah Morrison (Fall 2019)
“Parable of the Sower” by Lillie Persinger (Fall 2019)
“Anthropogenia” and “Storytelling” by Lauren Hinson (Fall 2020)
SD 3800 Voices in Sustainable Development 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QCQ9mxXr1copGKkX8s3YupxssrWb9ZtL70YcoKjXsJw/edit?usp=sharing
Document with poetry trio included at bottom. Some train-of-thought and drafting included too.
David Bass
(finished product on pages 6-9)
For my creative response, I chose to make a collage about Tayo’s healing journey in Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko. For the purpose of this collage, I wanted to focus on the nature-based components of his whaling journey. The left side of the collage is meant to represent Tayo’s mindset before his healing journey and the right side is meant to represent his mind after its completion. Many different components of my collage connect directly to the text. So, first I will go over the different parts of the left side. The image of the dry earth represents the lack of rain that Tayo blames himself for. This dry, unhealthy land could also stand for the sickness within the Laguna Pueblo land, contaminated by the presence and doings of white people and, by association, the sickness of Tayo’s people. Also on the left side is two images of Los Alamos, the small town in the middle of the desert where the atom bomb was created by the US military, Robert Oppenheimer, and his team. Not only does Los Alamos disturb Laguna Pueblo land, but its uranium mines (uranium is needed for the atomic bomb) are seen as evil by Tayo. The final “battle” takes place in a uranium mine. It is also where we see tayo conclude his final ceremony. There is also an image of Japanese soldiers, which Tayo experienced a lot of PTSD-induced dreams/hallucinations about. Not only does he associate the soldiers with the trauma of the war, but he associates them with the death of his Uncle Josiah. The Japanese soldiers also bring up feelings of guilt and inadequacy for Tayo, as he could not bring himself to kill them. Furthermore, on the left side there is also an image of a dead spotted cow. The cows in Ceremony were originally purchased by Tayo’s Uncle Josiah, so they also serve as a representation of Tayo’s mixed heritage. That being said, the dead cow stands for both Tayo’s disconnection with his heritage and the malicious theft of the cattle on behalf of the white ranchers. There is also an image of loggers and fallen trees, as the loggers have caused major destruction to the Mount Taylor area. They chased out many of the animals in the area and hired white ranchers to hunt down Mountain Lions, an animal which Tayo had great respect for. Finally, the English text scattered around the left side of the collage is meant to represent the ineffectiveness of the white man’s medicine of Tayo. Under the care of white doctors, Tayo feels numb and describes himself as “white smoke”. However, all of this bad is transformed into something beautiful by the end of the book.
Now time to talk about the far more hopeful right side of the collage! On the right side, the cattle are alive and well! This stands for Tayo not only succeeding in getting back his Uncle Josiah’s spotted cattle, but feeling more connected with his heritage. In finding the cattle, Tayo takes a huge step in completing his healing journey. An image of Mount Taylor is in the bottom right corner of the collage, which is where Tayo finds the cattle. While Mount Taylor is not in the Laguna Pueblo reservation, it is very close by and very important to the people. There is also an image of a Mountain Lion which, as I mentioned before, was very respected by Tayo. At first, he feared the creatures, then realized what brilliant hunters they were. I also included paw prints in the collage, as Tayo follows them as a way of guidance. In the upper right corner, there is rain, which serves not only to end the drought, but marks significant points in Tayo’s healing story. There are also trees, alive and well. The felt hearts in the corner represent the support Tayo has in his life, whether that be from Ts’eh, or from Betonie, or from his grandmother. Finally, there is an image of an interpretation of a she-elk. I’m not sure if this is the way the Laguna Pueblo people envision her, but I wanted to include her, as the painting of her on the stone played a crucial role in completing Tayo’s healing journey. With that, I think that’s all the components of my collage! I had a great time making it and it was a pleasure to make art about such a special, profound, and beautiful story.
Heather Adamsky
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1z53EUBQry2ubOvp9LpAN0Nl23CPCi9t6TnpcoA9ZLGM/edit?usp=sharing
-Adam Blutreich
“Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old must cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war” (Thoreau pg 206). This specific quote and Thoreau’s chapter “Solitude” in Walden inspired the creation of my junk journal. Before reading Walden, I considered myself to be a sustainable and unwasteful person. I did not buy anything unless I absolutely needed it, and if possible, I would thrift for it. The only money I would spend was on groceries, and it was the bare minimum of fresh vegetables, tofu, eggs, gas, and rent. For the most part that was it, unless I was doing something with my friends. And, I thought that was okay as a Sustainable Development student. That was until I read Walden and realized, according to Thoreau, I was being a bad environmentally friendly person. That was the biggest inspiration when creating a junk journal, was to see how much extra stuff I was purchasing and consuming in a world where I claim to be anti-capitalist. I still hang out with my friends all of the time, and enjoy their presence; not to say I do not love my alone time in nature because I do, but I also love being around and conversing with people, in my opinion that is one of the reasons humans were put on this Earth. I also have my entire apartment room covered top to bottom in posters, tapestries, and random items I have found in my day to day life, something sure to upset Thoreau if he saw it today, especially when he says “Our life is frittered away by detail. […] Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity” (Thoreau pg 173). Through creating my junk journal, I have found that yes I need to stop consuming so much when I preach sustainability so adamantly, but also in some ways junk and a little extraness can be truly beautiful. Consistently when reading Walden I was considering how it would work in modern day, 2026. As much as I would love to run to the middle of the forest and build my own self-sustaining garden and home, I cannot see that to be possible in a world that relies so much on the trading of goods, services, and human connection. I believe that the closest example in this life was from the Zero Waste Man we saw in class, but still, he said it was virtually impossible to commit zero waste for a lifetime, and in a lot of his journey he relied on his friends and his wife to inspire him to keep going. That example was something that I am inspired to follow, yet living with intentions on social and environmental aspects is something I want to take away from Thoreau.
-Brynne Dieterle
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1176qTBwmxJ59cRw33ag2bu0LAosgMr4tJiUey3LJosQ/edit?usp=sharing
Phoebe Sorensen- Vest inspired by Ceremony
https://docs.google.com/document/d/10wr07khRMZ5Qb54ni46PFCSt3jkurX-G_9g24pw6TmQ/edit?usp=sharing
This image represents the moment Tayo enters Betonie’s home in Ceremony and begins to understand that the space holds much more than ordinary clutter. Leslie Marmon Silko describes the room as being filled with “cardboard boxes that filled the big room,” with some broken and “sagging over with old clothing and rags spilling out.” These details were included in the drawing through the stacked boxes, loose papers, trunks, and scattered belongings that surround Tayo. Rather than creating an empty or neat room, the image reflects the layered and crowded feeling of Betoine’s cabin as described through the text. The circular opening in the roof also comes directly from the novel, where Betonie points Tayo toward a goatskin on the floor “below the sky hole.” In the image, light enters through this opening to symbolize spiritual insight, healing, and a connection between the physical and spiritual worlds.
The objects placed throughout the cabin reveal Betonie’s character as a medicine man who understands that tradition must adapt to survive. Silko writes of boxes filled with “the antennas of dry roots and reddish willow twigs tied in neat bundles,” as well as shopping bags packed with “bouquets of dried sage.” These ceremonial plants were included in the image because they show Betonie’s knowledge of healing practices and the importance of the natural world. At the same time, the room contains modern objects such as Coke bottles, newspapers, telephone books, and calendars. The calendars are especially important as the text places emphasis on the “layers of old calendars, the sequences of years confused and lost,” with names from “St. Louis, Seattle, New York, Oakland.” These details show that Betonie’s wisdom is not frozen in the past. He gathers knowledge across places and generations, integrating and blending older ceremonial practices with the realities of the modern world.
At first, Tayo wants to dismiss the room as “an old man’s rubbish, debris that had fallen out of the years.” However, he quickly realizes that “the boxes and trunks, the bundles and stacks were plainly part of the pattern.” This line is one of the most important points of contact between the text and the image. The cabin may appear chaotic at first glance, but everything has meaning and purpose. That same idea reflects Betonie himself. He is unconventional, mysterious, and different from the traditional expectations others may have of a healer, yet his wisdom comes from understanding patterns others cannot see.
Tayo is shown seated quietly in the center of the room as this moment marks a turning point in the novel. By entering Betonie’s home, he begins to see that healing cannot come only from returning to the past unchanged. Instead, healing comes through adaptation, memory, and balance between worlds. Betonie’s cabin becomes a visual symbol of resilience and cultural survival, showing that the ceremony remains alive when it is allowed to grow with changing times.
Merrick Semple
This collage aims to respond to Thoreau’s thoughts in Walden on industrialization and material accumulation representing progress, suggesting instead that true progress lies in simplicity, ecological connection, and a shift away from overconsumption. Through the imagery of nature overtaking abandoned industrial objects, I wanted to reflect the idea that what we consider “progress” is temporary, while natural systems are enduring, and ultimately outlast human development. I used visual symbols where nature is intertwined, like the railroad tracks, which Thoreau points out as a disruptive form of industrialization, a telephone embedded in a tree trunk, a shopping cart submerged in a pond, and traffic lights consumed by ivy, to illustrate this tension between human-built systems and ecological processes. These industrial objects are often treated as symbols of advancement and power, but in the context of the image they are shown as fragile, abandoned, and short-lived. Nature does not actively destroy them; instead, it slowly absorbs and reclaims them. This exemplifies just how insignificant human creation can be, where ecological systems outlast human definitions of progress. I also added a stone statue with plants growing out of its head to show the way human thought and nature overlap. It’s meant to suggest that human identity isn’t really separate from the environment, but something that grows out of it and is shaped by it. The hand in the center adds a different kind of dimension with the red branching veins inside it resembling roots which connect human bodies to the same patterns you see in nature. The glowing figure in the top of the center reflects Thoreau’s transcendentalism in Walden, especially his ideas of self-reliance. It’s about a different way of seeing and living: one that isn’t based on constant accumulation or depending on outside systems, but on thinking for yourself, paying attention, and being more intentional with how you move through the world. Instead of defining progress as more growth or consumption, it points toward a kind of self-awareness that values simplicity, reflection, and a closer relationship with nature. Overall, the college is aiming to question the idea of “progress” as something material or purely positive. Instead, it depends on how we define value, time, and our relationship to the environment. By showing industrial objects slowly being taken over by nature, the piece aims to suggest that ecological systems are what actually last, while human systems are temporary in comparison.
– Tori Ewert
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1-0bhswoE5x9hs91w8kDruoQ1WQuHxNb0RbW43EQUxN0/edit?slide=id.p#slide=id.p
For my creative response project, I decided to make a zine inspired by the “Bean-Field” chapter in Henry David Thoreau’s celebrated transcendentalist novel, Walden, or, Life in the Woods.
When I saw the in-class example of Alex Payne’s illustrated Earthseed: The Books of the Living project, I knew I wanted to make illustrations to go along with a favorite text from class. The Peel occasionally hosts zine-making workshops and has a free zine library outside of the newsroom, so when I passed it the week our project was introduced, everything fell into place and I knew how I wanted my project to come together.
Given their anti-capitalist and nonconformist origins, I think zines are an especially appropriate medium to explore when reinterpreting and re-presenting Thoreau’s work. Zines have historically been used in punk and anarchist movements to share tangible work and ideas beyond the restrictions and regulations of publishing agencies. Perhaps most clearly evident in the “Economy” chapter of Walden, Thoreau believed in deriving happiness and fulfillment from presence, simplicity and what some today might refer to as “slow living.”
Thoreau’s experiment as a whole was an inherently anticapitalist endeavor because of his non-reliance on material comforts and rejection of consumer society. His Bean-Field chapter, however, reveals a deeper disregard for materialism and labor for the sake of financial gain that transcends his early puzzlings over conformist culture. What I found most interesting – some might say radical — in this chapter was Thoreau’s quest to farm beans for an entire summer with no intention of actually making a significant profit from his labor. This is anti-capitalist because Thoreau is exploring the value of labor beyond money.
In “Bean-Field” Thoreau chronicles his summer spent hoeing a small field of beans barefoot from 5 to noon each day. During this time, Thoreau gripes about woodchucks, listens to his surroundings, watches birds and imagines himself in fantastical roles relative to his work, like a musician or merciless warrior. He derives pleasure from his experience raising beans and ends up selling his harvest to buy rice at the end of the summer, letting on that he doesn’t like beans very much.
As readers, we learn that the bits and pieces of observations Thoreau weaves throughout “Bean-Field” are not actually about raising beans. Thoreau decided he didn’t want to raise beans again following that summer and acknowledges that many parts of his farming process were unconventional. While capitalist farming systems would traditionally deem crop loss to woodchucks, insects and frost as failures, Thoreau recognizes the interconnectedness of nature and his place in it, understanding that in natural systems, there are no real failures.
Experience was Thoreau’s “instant and immeasurable crop” — one that cannot be bought or sold in a market. Thoreau’s experience raising beans seemed to have taught him how to raise qualities like patience and mindfulness within himself, compelling him to further cultivate other traits like sincerity, truth and innocence in the future.
My zine, “Advice on Raising Beans” isn’t about raising beans, either. While it might not be my prettiest work, it certainly taught me a thing or two about my capacity for creative projects. That’s probably what this project was about, too. Learning how to interpret literary work through alternative creative means, regardless of the end result. (Regardless of how many beans you harvest in the end.)
Allison Lehan 🙂
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xTfgKMF714tznf1o7kiDXZLqvRYxXDCZ/view?usp=sharing
I was inspired by Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower to create a video collage exploring how many of Butler’s “science fiction” ideas are already present in modern society. My visual response explores the connections of fiction and reality by focusing on themes of privatization, rising inequality, and environmental crisis.
One of the most direct points of contact between the book and the video is the privatization of basic services. In Parable of the Sower, access to safety, water, and fire services is determined by wealth as gated communities and private protection replace public systems. This theme connected to the 2025 Palisade wildfires in California, where news that celebrities bought private fire services to protect just their properties circulated headlines. Another huge connection was gated neighborhoods paralleled to the growing houselessness crisis. This wealth gap is especially apparent in Southern California today, where the book begins. In Parable of the Sower, water is a scarce resource that people have to fight over, and access is largely limited to the wealthy. I thought about the book’s relationship to the ongoing lack of clean water in cities like Flint, Michigan. These examples show how survival is increasingly uneven and how it is shaped by economic status rather than universal access. By collaging these clips with one another, the video highlights that what Butler presents as this dystopian future is already somewhat taking place today.
I decided to include a section of the video on control and labor. When reading about Olivar, I immediately thought of Elon Musk’s push to encourage sleeping in office spaces or the demand to work extended hours, where the company becomes your livelihood and daily existence.
One choice I made for my edit was saving Butler’s voice for the end of the video. Instead of layering her words over earlier the clips, I wanted the visuals to stand on their own first. When her voice comes in at the end, it feels more like she is reflecting on everything we just saw. Her statement that we “can do better” but might not really influenced the format and process of the final video. Overall, Parable of the Sower isn’t just imagining the future, but helping recognize the present and whether or not society is willing to change the direction it’s heading.
-Ianna Pfeifer
For my creative response presentation, I decided to use a sculpture created by an unknown person that was located off-trail near the blue ridge parkway. The sculpture draws significance and context from the text, Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko. The sculpture in the woods represents a temporary sculpture composed of materials found in the environment with the addition of rose pedals. The sculpture is located on a peninsula, found in the heart of the stream. The sculpture is heart-shaped and is meant to represent the heart of the environment. Ceremony helped me draw clues of context for the location, shape, and composition of the sculpture. In Ceremony, Tayo encounters many physical rituals and ceremonies such as multicolored sculptures and sand sculptures that are also temporary. The point of making temporary sculptures is to allow the environment to consume the materials and retain their composition. This heart-like sculpture I encountered was very on par with the text. The sculpture calls back to the old ways of indigenous healing and a physical appreciation of the environment through craftsmanship. Each piece of the sculpture has significance to the environment. The moss and lichen are old and slow growing plants which indicate that this sculpture is a traditional piece. The rock outline suggests that the rock or mountain is the backbone of the environment. The red pedals indicate or suggest that the environment has a human-like element to it such as a heart or fiery emotion. The red pedals are not native to the specific location. However, they may suggest that the environment holds something that is not surface level or can be seen by the eye. The location of the sculpture is important because it rests near water, which suggests that it is a peaceful offering. The location is also important because in most cultures, the river is what harbors life and is what can be seen as the “heart” of the environment. In addition, the sculpture sits at a location where it can easily be washed away, which provokes the thought that it is meant to be washed away. The fragileness of this sculpture relates to the fragileness of rituals in the text and Tayo’s struggles. These physical elements found in the environment embody a spiritual connection to the wild by building an offering to the environment, acknowledging its existence and giving. Tayo’s central crisis is his PTSD caused by the second world war, which he battles across the text. He is led in the way he must go by physical objects assembled by indigenous healers like Betonie. The sculptures created show Tayo that the old ways still provide. Some temporary sculptures in the text and the sculpture I will present represent a fragile and temporary offering which are meant to wash away with time. However, a theme that continues to arise in the text is not the physical proof that is left over time, but the stories that continue to exist after. This sculpture will wash away, but the witnesses will remember and nature will take claim. In the text, Laguna’s landscape is imagined as a place shaped by rock over time and the rituals that take place honor the landscape so nature can heal. My sculpture’s components consist of the very elements from the mountains that surround it, which directly correlates to the rituals in Ceremony.
Henry Hudgins
Kacie Shumate
In her novel Ceremony, Leslie Silko perfectly captures the varieties of destruction caused by war through the main character Tayo”s, a half Pueblo veteran, journey of freeing himself from the trauma of war’s violence and the United States government’s manipulation of Native men. Millions of men and women—many being the ones the government oppresses—have dedicated their lives to our beloved country only to be put on the front lines of danger with the intent to kill others for the great causes decided by the few. In my art piece We Want You that is motivated by Ceremony, I wanted to illustrate the gruesome reality of war that is ignored through the fabricated motivation rooted in patriotism to get men to fight for the good of “all.”
For my art medium I used oil pastels and repurposed an old National Geographic magazine that contained an article about Dwight D. Eisenhower and World War 2 which is the time period Ceremony was set in and/or reflected back on. In the magazine picture the patriots were originally walking through a body of water during war. To show the gruesome reality of war, I painted the water red to depict the blood of their comrades and “enemies” so they are walking through a sea of blood to fight for America. Though I don’t know the race of the soldiers in the photograph, I hope that the observer can look at the soldiers and imagine them to be Tayo and his friends.
I used the quote “Now I know you boys love America as much as we do, but this is your big chance to show it!” from when the Army recruiter was trying to get Tayo and Rocky to join the Army. I felt it was a perfect quote to use because the recruiter called them “you boys” pointing out that they are a different race than him and other soldiers and he also said it’s their time to “show it” which I find ironic. The statement as a whole is used as an “uplifting” pep talk, pushing the propaganda of war on Tayo and Rocky.
When I first encountered Lauren in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, what struck me most was the fact that her greatest gift was something the world treated as a curse. Lauren lives with hyperempathy, a condition that causes her to physically feel the pain of those around her. In a brutal, collapsing world, that is considered weakness. A liability. Something to hide. And yet it is her empathy that allows her to see clearly when everyone else is looking away, to hold community together when everything is falling apart. I kept thinking about Lauren while writing this poem. How many times have women been told that feeling too much, caring too deeply, makes them unfit to lead? How many times has empathy been weaponized against us as proof that we are irrational, that we cannot be trusted with hard decisions? Butler answers that with Lauren’s entire existence. She does not survive despite her empathy, she survives because of it. In a world ravaged by greed, by extraction, by the refusal to consider consequences, it is the girl who feels everything who sees the way forward. That is what I am trying to convey in this poem. The intuition, the care, the grief we carry for this earth, that is not just us being emotional. That is wisdom. And it is long past time we stopped apologizing for it.
There is a quote that has stayed with me since I first came across Thomas Sankara’s words on women and liberation. He did not speak about women’s inclusion the way so many leaders do, carefully, diplomatically, as though it were a generous accommodation. He spoke about it as a matter of revolutionary necessity. He believed, and argued plainly, that no struggle for freedom is complete if women are not at the center of it, not waiting at the edges, not added as an afterthought, but inside the work, shaping it, leading it. Writing this poem, I kept returning to the image of women around the world already doing the labor of environmental survival, walking for water, planting in exhausted soil, protecting land with their bodies, while being excluded from the rooms where decisions about that same land are made. Sankara saw that contradiction clearly. He understood that the same systems which exploit the earth exploit women, that these are not separate injustices but the same. In the poem, I tried to make that connection felt, not just understood. Because I think we have had enough of being told to wait, to be patient, that our time is coming. Sankara said women must be part of liberation. I would go further to say that, he believed, as I do, without women, there is no liberation for people or the earth.
Kayleigh Rolison
My tapestry is a visual interpretation of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, representing prominent images and symbols from his experience living in nature. Each square reflects an important element from the text and connects to Thoreau’s central message about simplicity and living deliberately. I also chose to construct the tapestry from materials already available to me or my friends, without purchasing anything new. I wanted to reflect Thoreau’s philosophy of minimalism and his belief that people should avoid unnecessary consumption and instead make use of what is already available.
The center square in my tapestry is the cabin on Walden Pond. The cabin symbolizes self-sufficiency and his attempt to strip life down to its essentials. It reflects his belief that people can live more meaningful lives by removing distractions and focusing on nature and basic needs. One corner square includes pea plants, which connect to Thoreau’s ideas about gardening and working the land. In Walden, he often describes growing his own food as a way to live independently and observe the natural world closely. The pea plants symbolize growth, patience, and the rewards of labor. The snake in my tapestry represents Thoreau’s observations of wildlife and his belief that nature should not be feared but understood. In the book, he famously describes encountering a snake and reflecting on its peaceful existence as part of the natural world. The snake symbolizes instinct, survival, and the idea that humans are not separate from nature but part of it. The apple symbolizes simplicity and the basic necessities of life. Thoreau often emphasizes how little is actually needed to be content. It represents nourishment and the idea that even the most ordinary things in nature can be enough when life is stripped of excess. Thoreua also had an affinity for apples, and even wrote a love letter to wild apples as a species. The bird represents freedom and perspective. Birds appear throughout Walden as symbols of independence and natural harmony. They move freely through the world without material burdens, which reflects Thoreau’s ideal of living lightly and without unnecessary possessions.
By creating it entirely from reused materials, I also tried to embody Thoreau’s values. Just as he built his life at Walden Pond with few resources and rejected unnecessary consumption, I used what was already available rather than buying new supplies. This process made the project itself a reflection of the book’s themes, not just the finished product.
Cameron Pleasants
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q2HtCMXHOEVvWeMgBfEdxHEwSFB1r0rcQEcvkxO–4o/edit?usp=sharing
My painting is a creative response to the film Pumzi and its exploration of environmental collapse, resource exhaustion, and the fragile relationship between human survival and ecological systems. Within this film, the world outside has become uninhabitable due to extreme water scarcity and environmental degradation, forcing human life into controlled, artificial systems where resources are strictly rationed. What stood out to me most was not only the physical absence of nature but the way survival itself becomes detached from living systems that make it possible.
In my painting, I translated that tension into a single central figure whose body I wrapped and slowly consumed by roots that are extended upwards into a large, thriving tree. The roots are both protective and invasive. Suggesting a connection, but also a sacrifice, this reflects one of the central ideas I took from Pumzi: that sustainability is not just about preservation within an abstract sense but about who or what is being asked to bear the cost of survival. In the film, people live within a highly controlled environment where resources such as water are measured and restricted, showing how environmental collapse does not affect everyone equally and how systems of survival often are dependent on sacrifice, control, and loss of autonomy.
The figure in my painting represents that sacrifice. The body becoming part of the root systems reflects how humans are not separate from the environment, even when systems of modern survival try to make that separation feel real. At the same time, the upward growth of the tree suggests regeneration and continuity. The tree depends on the body just as the body depends on the exosystem. The connection is not romantic; it is complicated and often uncomfortable. This raises the question of whether sustainability can exist without some form of loss or transformation of the human body and identity.
The issues of sustainable development I am engaging with are resource scarcity and ecological collapse, especially how environmental systems break down under overuse and how humans respond to that breakdown. Pumzi presents a future where water is so limited that even dreaming of soil and plants becomes an act of resistance. My painting responds to that by focusing on the physical merging of huma and environment, suggesting that survival may require a rethinking of separation altogether.
Overall, the painting is meant to sit in tension between care and extraction, life and sacrifice, and ask what it means to “sustain” something when survival itself becomes dependent on being absorbed back into the natural systems that humans have tried to control or escape.
Sarah martin