What equipment do you use?
Martin: Apart from my cameras and tripod, we take a bag for collecting materials, string for making circles and a pocket knife. For the snow sculptures we often have a snow shovel along and of course the ice axes and crampons in the mountains. The sculptures sometimes require some dexterity to make and often a lot of patience, but the real pressure is in the timing: getting the light for the photography. It becomes a very intense process but when it all comes together it's a wonderful feeling.
How did you change from a designer to an environmental artist?
Martin: In 1992 I was focused on communication design for commercial clients who in turn were focused on short term marketing goals for their products, not on long term sustainability.
Although I cared deeply about the way products caused environmental damage, I didn't have a strategy with which to change things. As a designer I was part of the problem, but I was determined to be part of the solution. I focused on learning from nature and those who had studied natural and whole system design.
I read Buckminster Fuller, Victor Papanek, (Design for the Real World); Karl-Henrik Robert (The Natural Step); Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute; Paul Hawken (Ecology of Commerce, Natural Capitalism); Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface; Bill McDonough (Cradle to Cradle); Edwin Datschefski, (Total Beauty of Sustainable Products); Janine Banyus (Biomimicry), and many more.
I learned that the most fundamental difference between our industrial system and that of nature is that ours is linear and nature's is cyclical. I learned that if we continue to take from the earth's crust, make what we need and send it on to the dump or into the atmosphere when we are finished with it, there is no hope of aligning with natural systems.
It seemed to me that while environmentalists spoke of the destruction we were causing they offered no workable strategy for modern society to become sustainable, apart from slowing down, going without or giving up our lifestyle.
But our system is only this way because we designed it this way. If we were to design it to operate totally effectively like nature all waste would become food for something else. Valuable natural capital would be continually reused not lost forever as in our current system.
Over time I have developed a personal philosophy and an artistic visual language with which to communicate my philosophy. With Nature my teacher, my ally and my pallette I try to express the essence of sustainable design in order to inspire change.