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3.17.2011

Cosign Projects Presents: Leeza Meksin, House Coat (Preview)

foxyform.com

House Coat

NEW YORK ARTIST DRESSES BENTON PARK HOUSE IN SPANDEX OUTFIT



COSIGN PROJECTS of ST. LOUIS PRESENTS
HOUSE COAT BY LEEZA MEKSIN
March 18, 2011 – April 18, 2011

This monumental installation opens at 4 p.m. on Friday, March 18, 2011,
and will continue into the evening as a house party, free and open to the public.

New York artist Leeza Meksin presents HOUSE COAT a site-specific installation for a two-story row house in Benton Park West. At the invitation of Cosign Projects, this interdisciplinary artist brings to St. Louis her unique combination of sculpture, performance, and public art with an opening on March 18. HOUSE COAT is a massive fabric outfit constructed from hundreds of yards of white spandex custom-printed with large gold chains. Set amidst the red brick of South City Saint Louis, Meksin’s installation seeks to invite conversations about differences and similarities between our buildings and our bodies. Not coincidentally, the artist’s personal background as a Jewish exile from Russia relates the pattern of gold chains to freedom and slavery, while evoking pop-cultural motifs of bling and fabulousness.

Working within the tradition of such installation artists as Christo and Jeanne-Claude, this project is part of the artist's ongoing exploration of the visual potential of stretch fabrics. The costumed house explores the gendered terrain between textiles and architecture, evoking the hyper-fitted garments worn by entertainers, drag queens, and super heroes.

Leeza Meksin has been working closely with other artists, friends and family members to realize this project. The creative team includes: Lauren Adams & Jake Peterson, Cosign Projects; Andrea Betai & Ceci Davis, Graphic Design; Laura Divergilio & Andrea Fama, Planning and Development; Victoria Lewis, Pattern Pulse; Kathryn Lofton, Fabrication; Meesha Meksin, Installation; Scotty of Scott’s Contracting, Safety and Common Sense; and Anya Meksin who will be documenting the project via photo and video.

This exhibition is made possible by generous support from over one hundred financial backers via the online funding platform Kickstarter. Once the installation is complete, Meksin will be making a variety of spandex items for all the supporters who made House Coat possible.

‘HOUSE COAT’ will be on display through April 18, and possibly longer, depending upon the weather.

Elizaveta (Leeza) Meksin is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist who makes installations, paintings, sculptures, films and multiples. Meksin was born and raised in Moscow, Russia, and educated in the United States. She received a Joint BA/MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Chicago before continuing on to a BFA from SAIC and an MFA in Painting from the Yale School of Art. She is the recipient of the Robert Schoelkopf Fellowship and the Yale Collaborative Project Grant, and has exhibited her work throughout the US. Recent venues include the Abington Arts Center, Regina Rex, and Columbia College. She has worked as a Production Designer on independent films in New York and has been awarded a grant from the Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundation to co-direct a documentary film about women struggling with drugs in Ukraine (BALKA). In 2010 she was chosen to participate in the Chashama Artist Studio Program in Brooklyn. Currently Meksin teaches at Tyler School of Art, Temple University and The New York Art Studio in Manhattan.

Initiated in 2009, Cosign Projects of St. Louis supports projects by emerging artists. Cosign has invited nine installations from a variety of artists residing in California, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Colorado, and Missouri. The gallery’s model includes presenting artworks that differ from typical gallery or museum projects, such as signs, banners, and other work visible from the street. HOUSE COAT is Cosign’s largest project to date, and will be a capstone project that culminates the gallery’s mission to present socially relevant contemporary work that engages political history and local communities. Cosign is curated by Lauren F. Adams, artist and assistant professor of painting at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.

To learn more about the project, please visit our website:
http://www.cosignprojects.net

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3.04.2011

Fellow Missourians Thanks for signing letter to support Renewable Energy in MO



On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 8:35 AM, Erin Noble <enoble@moenviron.org> wrote:
2009 Renew MO Logo

Prop C - Missouri Renewable Energy Standard

Update and Next Steps

 

Thank you for signing the letter urging Governor Nixon calling on him to veto SCR1 which undercut Prop C - the Missouri Renewable Energy Standard.  With your help Renew Missouri, The Union of Concerned Scientists, and Environment Missouri delivered 1568 signatures to Governor Nixon.   

 

The Governor's office responded on February 16 with a letter to the General Assembly.  It says that while the Governor strongly supports renewable energy in Missouri, he will not veto SCR1 because of a technicality that makes the veto moot.

 

Therefore, the General Assembly has officially removed the "sold to Missouri" provision from Prop C costing Missouri thousands of jobs, millions in economic development, and cleaner air, that results from home-grown, renewable energy.   

 

But, we are not giving up yet.  There is still the opportunity to reinstate the "sold to Missouri provision" by the end of this legislative session (May 12).    

 

Representative Jason Holsman, chairman of the new "House Committee on Renewable Energy", has introduced a bill (HB 613) which is a great start towards achieving these goals.   

 

To successfully reinstate the RES this session, surely the easiest of all the options, we again need your help.


Please tell your legislator to support HB613.  Tell them the Missouri Renewable Electricity Standard must: 

  • Require renewable electricity be sold to Missouri customers to ensure local renewable energy development and job creation 
  • Sets renewable energy target at 15% by 2021 or greater 
  • Include a $2/watt rebate for solar installations.

    Remind them the RES will help diversify Missouri's electric portfolio away from an over-reliance on coal, and thereby protect consumers from the rising costs of coal.

Find your legislators here, email or call your State Senator and State Representative by Monday, and email that you took action.

 

Thank you for supporting renewable energy in Missouri!

 

-Renew Missouri

    

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Missouri Coalition for the Environment | 6267 Delmar Blvd., Ste. 2E | St. Louis | MO | 63130



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Scott's Contracting
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3.03.2011

Nuclear is not the Answer-Dan Rather

For everyone who says nuclear waste is not harmful-- Lets put the Nuclear Waste in your Back Yard.
­

English: Nuclear waste consists of the waste products of processes involving nuclear reactions. It is most commonly associated with nuclear reactors.

[1]As for the Costs Graphs Show- Nuclear Energy is not needed for Clean Energy Production­-Renewable Energy Head-to-He­ad with Nuclear for Clean Energy Production­.[Last July we wrote about the North Carolina study that showed solar power to be cheaper than power promised by planned nuclear constructi­on in that state]

[2]Cost estimates for new nuclear plants have risen dramatically since the much-heralded "nuclear renaissanc­e" began during the past decade, says Blackburn. "Projects first announced with costs in the $2 billion range per reactor have seen several revisions as detailed planning proceeds and numerous design and engineerin­g problems have emerged. The latest price estimates are in the $10 billion range per reactor."

" Nuclear Energy is not Clean Energy for the simple fact of the hazardous waste that is left over". Scotty

Energy Generated by the Sun via Solar Panels for Electricit­y produces NO WASTE- Just Clean Energy.

For the Billions Spent in Nuclear Plant Constructi­on- the $ would buy an Astronomical Number of Solar Panels that produce clean Energy. There are even Solar Panel Manufactur­ing Facilities in the USA- who employ American Workers.


Mr Rather is mistaken on Nuclear Energy, for the simple fact that there is WASTE and It is HAZARDOUS. The states that did except it at one time don't want any more. see my blogs for additional info

On with the Article by Mr Dan Rathers- via: HuffingtonPost.com 


Nuclear Reactors

Dan Rather Dan Rather
For many Americans, the words "nuclear power" still conjure up images of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, fears of meltdowns or radioactive leaks. Those reactor failures helped drive the U.S. nuclear industry into dormancy in the late 1970s.

But there's an increasingly urgent need in this country for a clean, carbon-free energy source. And to nuclear advocates, the answer lies not in burning dirty coal but with old-fashioned atomic fission. America was the first to harness the awesome power of atoms for peaceful purposes (and not so peaceful purposes.) As for safety concerns? We toured a research reactor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and director Dr. David Moncton told us the significance of Three Mile Island has been misunderstood. "What happened there was the nuclear equivalent of landing on the Hudson," Moncton said. An accident all right, but one that was brought under control before anyone was harmed. As for the deadly explosion at Chernobyl, Moncton told us our reactors are designed with a completely different technology that would make such an accident here impossible.

But even nuclear supporters concede that nuclear power remains hobbled by its price tag and the unanswered question of what to do with all that leftover radioactive waste that nuclear power generates. So what if there was a way to build nuclear power plants that were smaller, more affordable, and that even solved -- or at least greatly reduced -- the waste issue? I recently met entrepreneurs and scientists with radical ideas to do just that.
Dr. Eric Loewen oversees advanced reactor designs at GE-Hitachi, in Wilmington, NC. He's peddling a new nuclear reactor called the PRISM that actually runs on the waste generated by current reactors. The technology exists to recycle spent fuel, he says, it's the political will that's lacking.

The PRISM has a rich pedigree that dates back to the early 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan launched a little-known research project in the Idaho desert. We traveled out to the Arco Desert and toured a moth-balled reactor with retired scientist Dr. Charles Till, where Till spent ten years and hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to prove that recycling nuclear fuel could work. Till told us the government pulled the plug on the project before it was 100% proven. It was a mistake, according to Till and Loewen. "They were completely wrong," Loewen told me.

While Loewen wants to recycle nuclear fuel, there's a brother-sister team that want to make nuclear more affordable, by shrinking it. John "Grizz" Deal and his sister Deborah Blackwell have a "hot tub" sized reactor, one they envision can be factory-produced and then transported by truck or rail wherever needed. Each reactor provides enough electricity for 20,000 homes. Perfect, they say for the developing world, small towns, or even military installations.

But these visionaries are getting ahead of themselves, according to Dr. Ernest Moniz, a renowned physics professor at MIT and a member of President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. "I feel like I'm a technology Luddite or something in saying this," Moniz told me, "For the next ten, twenty years, if we're going to build nuclear power, it's going to be fundamentally based around what you see and the so-called generation III+ reactors." In other words, more traditional, large nuclear power plants, financed with government help.

Whether the government is on the right path is a point of contention, but on one point, everyone I interviewed agrees. Nuclear power is the solution, they say, and it's time to get going. Their next challenge is winning over skeptics, who thought the horrors of Chernobyl killed the nuclear option a long time ago.

Dan Rather Reports airs Tuesdays on HDNet at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET. This episode is also available on iTunes.

Here is some info on Nuclear Waste Courtesy of Wiki.com

Category:Nuclear waste

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository
English: Nuclear waste consists of the waste products of processes involving nuclear reactions. It is most commonly associated with nuclear reactors.

 

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