Chicago students green their habitat.

Years ago, Chicago's Lincoln Park Casting Club members would gather to thread flies and swap lies in a tree-sheltered brick building near Lake Michigan. But for the past 12 years their fieldhouse sat vacant, collecting red algae and huge heating bills.

Last summer, New York artist Mark Dion and a dozen inner-city high school students - the Chicago Urban Ecology Action Group (CUEAG) - cleared out the flycasters' paraphernalia, painted animals on the lockers and turned the building into an "ecological field station." But this center wasn't just about science. It was also collaborative art installation, where the teens effectively blurred the boundaries between art, nature, conservation and social activism.

CUEAG was one of eight public art projects presented last summer at non-gallery sites throughout Chicago, in an ambitious effort to invite inner-city residents to participate in, rather than just view, public art.

"Environmental problems are very much linked to our own problems, and our methods of representing nature," says Dion, 32, who has exhibited his own work internationally. "America's concept of nature is based on wilderness," says Dion, "But that excludes urban people. So we're looking at ways urbanites can construct a meaning of nature for themselves."

CUEAG began in the fall of 1992 when Dion and the students began studying rainforest issues. It culminated in a two-week trip to Belize to visit the rainforest firsthand; grants funneled through Sculpture Chicago funded their journey. There, the group created an educational exhibit for the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary, the world's first reserve for endangered jaguars.

Upon returning, the group applied their knowledge to their habitat. They cleaned trash from vacant lots, planted community gardens and cleared brush to expand native prairies. Scientists, artists and activists came to speak to the students. "We wanted to expose them to a wide variety of thought about nature," says Dion.

Demonstrating creative problem-solving techniques, the youths designed imaginary eco-products, like Earth-friendly condoms, and "Cold Hold - The Hair Spray that Cools Ma Earth." An architecture exhibit at Chicago's Art Institute inspired them to build "Post Modern" birdhouses, which they hung in the Wisconsin woods. The year-long collaboration ended last August, but Dion - now back in New York City - hopes it will serve as a model for future projects.

"I've always been interested in nature from a scientific point of view," says CUEAG's Naomi Beckwith, who'd someday like to research rainforest medicines. "But this program brought out my creative side, too." Contact: Mark Dion, c/o American Fine Arts Company, 22 Wooster Street, New York, NY 10013/[phone].