Scientific concepts paired with awe-striking images tend to stick. Colors and shapes tend to attract more attention than numbers and statistics.
Aware of this, professor Carol Sogard and the students from her Sustainable Design Practice class integrated art and environmental science in the exhibit “Exploring Sustainability.”
Currently on display at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, “Exploring Sustainability” showcases the artwork of the U’s graphic design students and demonstrates what they practiced in Sogard’s conservation-oriented course.
“The goal of the class was to give students an overview of the environmental impact of design and [its] production practice,” Sogard said. “They were looking at it through the lens of a graphic designer.”
Throughout the class, Sogard highlighted ways to make graphic design environmentally friendly. Instead of placing designs onto non-biodegradable formats, which is usually what graphic designers do, the artists worked with recyclable mediums.
The “Wasatch Community Garden’s Urban Garden and Farm Week” compilation displays cardboard cutouts of garden and farm images. Cardboard is a biodegradable and recyclable material, and is not often used in the graphic design printing process.
In addition to using ecologically safe material, the display spouted important facts about the environment.
Next to the cardboard cutout of a beekeeper is a black plaque with white writing that reads, “As a result of colony collapse disorder, nearly one-third of all honeybee colonies in the United States have vanished in the past 50 years.” The plaque then explains the environmental repercussions of disappearing bees. “Bees are essential for the pollination of fruit, flowers, trees, and various other plants. Without pollination, plants couldn’t survive.”
Recycling is not the only concept mentioned from the trifecta of reduce, reuse, recycle. The designers also reclaimed materials to build furniture and fashion art.
“Throughout the class, [students] went to the landfill, to Rocky Mountain Recycling [and] to Xpedx Papers,” Sogart said.
By acquiring products dubbed “unusable,” Sogard and her students reused materials and turned trash into art.
Sogard’s addition to the exhibition is a prime example of turning piles of garbage into useful possessions. “Woven Plastic Table,” as the name implies, is composed of plastic bags weaved into an intricate pattern. From the second-hand table used as the base to the plastic bags, the entire piece is repossessed material.
With recycling and reusing, comes reducing. Probably the most important step of the three Rs, the graphic design students stressed the process of reducing by creating an interactive piece.
Plastered on a wall in the exhibition room is a chalkboard. Next to the board is a message that prompts the UMFA’s visitors to draw and express what they can do to reduce their carbon footprint. On the board are drawings of cars, light bulbs and other objects. Each picture has a message next to it: for example, the note next to the light bulb says, “Remember to turn off.”
Michelle Hogan, a senior in fine arts,  gives museum attendees the chance to witness their impact with “Thread Your Actions.” The work has six wooden boards themed around reducing, reusing and recycling. On the boards, thread spools are vertically lined up and captioned with age groups. Participants can take the color of their age demographic and loop the string around the sustainable and economical things they are doing. This turns the boards into decorated pieces of threaded shapes and woven colors. Though they are aesthetically pleasing, they demonstrate the differences in age demographics and how each group impacts the environment.
“I want the community to be involved in this project, so that we can see what is being done in the way of sustainability,” Hogan said. “There are a lot of different things that people can be doing to live sustainably. I think that it gets a little bit overwhelming for people to get all of the information all at once.”
Kerry O’Grady, director of education and engagement, said the exhibit fits within UMFA’s goals.
“The students wrote about their work in such a way that we get an insider’s perspective to the concerns and decisions of the design process. These are very thoughtful pieces,” O’Grady said. “This exhibition also fits the UMFA’s mission statement brilliantly: The UMFA’s mission is to inspire critical dialogue and illuminate the role of art in our lives. ‘Exploring Sustainability’ does both of those, and it does so from a student perspective.”