This digital painting depicts the Southern Great Lakes Ecoregion, within the Interior Plateau & Southern Great Lakes Forests Bioregion, within the Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forest Biome. I chose a suburban setting for this piece because I’ve not yet seen a Solarpunk artwork that features this. I’m aware of the problems with the suburbs, but it seems to me more sustainable to try to adapt them than to demolish them and start over. So instead of lawns I’ve depicted beds of native Indiana plants, including but not limited to:
- Amsonia Tabernaemontana (Eastern Bluestar)
- Spartina Pectinata (Prairie Cordgrass)
- Echinacea Purpurea (Purple Coneflower).
The roofs of the houses are either white to help reflect heat, or green roofs. Some of the houses are equipped with solar panels on the south sides, and one is shown with a greenhouse on that side as well.
While perhaps not explicitly ecologically focused, I have shown there to be more art in this setting than is usually found in american suburbia. The sidewalk has a mural painted with hydrochromic paint, which only appears while it is raining. The houses are painted bright colors (white or greige is considered ‘Normal’ ) and are occasionally decorated with murals.
This particular area is among the cloudiest in the so-called U.S.A. To reflect that, the weather is overcast and it is currently raining.