Buster Simpson: Art in Service to Ecology

	Buster Simpson

Merging his concern for the environment with an acute sense of three-dimensional form, artist Buster Simpson makes sculptures that enhance and explain, rather than merely decorate, the landscape. Seattle-based Simpson, who shows internationally, recently completed Beckoning Cistern, an aluminum and steel structure that collects water from the roof of a downtown Seattle building. Diverted from the usual route to a treatment plant, the grey water passes through the sculpture—which resembles a semi-abstract hand—and is oxygenated as it follows a path along the natural downhill slope, irrigating native plantings as it flows. Supported by the efforts of a design team of architects and engineers, Beckoning Cistern is a pilot for a larger project to reintegrate the city and its watershed.

 

Cydlifiad (Confluences) by Buster Simpson

“Cydlifiad (Confluences)” by Buster Simpson, is a 2003 installation of 20 galvanized pails at the National Botanic Garden of Wales. Each bucket, painted by garden visitors, bears the name of a stream that forms the region's watershed. Juxtaposing the man-made with the natural invokes the “overlay of the built environment and its man-made confluences,” according to Simpson

—Dee Axelrod