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Visual Reflections: A
Printmaker Collective
“The challenge is immense.” The
phrase lingers in my mind as I slowly circumnavigate the room, reading stories
of environmental restoration and seeing artists’ representations of those
stories. The “challenge” refers to what artist Douglas Bosley offers as a “call
to arms.” Bosley teamed up with Kingsley Dixon, an ecologist in Australia, via
the twenty-first century technology of Skype. In an exhibit label the artist outlined
the specific challenge:
“For two decades, a million
acres of western Australian land were cleared per year. Kingsley Dixon’s
mission is to restore a million of those acres…. The challenge is
immense. The land is essentially wasteland. …Nevertheless, Dixon’s group
and many others are building the science and the solutions to make this dream
possible.”
Bosley’s lithograph of ghostly
flowers and a monumental “1M” rising from a barren landscape attempts to
express that million acre challenge.
For Yvette Pino, founder of Bench Press Events and organizer
of this project, the challenge was to bring together fine artists and
ecologists like Bosley and Dixon to stimulate dialogue and collaboration. The
success of her effort is displayed along the gallery walls.
The challenge for Bosley, as for each of the 12 artists in
the project, was to create an image inspired by conversations and, in some
cases, interactions with the collaborating ecologist.
The prosaic title of the exhibit, “Visual Reflections: A Printmaker
Collective,” doesn’t begin to describe the complexity of the project that led
to these prints hanging on the gallery walls. The theme of ecology is expressed
directly in the premise of the project. Pino invited twelve fine art
printmakers from around the U.S. to collaborate with twelve ecologists from as
far away as Australia and China.
An untitled woodcut by Colorado artist Kim Hindman
superimposes terrestrial and aquatic life forms on a map of New York harbor.
The spatially ambiguous composition emphasizes the ragged edges of the famous estuary.
A text panel identifies restoration of seawalls and the water’s edge as the
specialty of ecologist Dr. Marcha Johnson, Hindman’s collaborator.
The colorful, boldly abstract patterning in “Return, Take Over,”
a serigraph by Wisconsin artist Katie Garth, might be mistaken as merely
decorative. But the conceptual rigor in the work as well as the interdependence
of printmaker and ecologist are hinted at in the accompanying narrative. In the
artist’s words, “John [Reiger] explained several restoration strategies… each
using varying levels of intervention. Mentally, I juxtaposed the initial
disturbance…with its subsequent restoration. Both altered the landscape, but
with opposite intentions…. ‘Return, Take Over’ depicts the cohabitation of
growth and decay in order to represent this duality in human disruption.”
A densely detailed and somber mezzotint of a subtly surreal
scene hangs in a far corner of the gallery. Leaves sprout from oddly geometric rocks.
Fantastical creatures seemingly made from splinters of wood and stone march like
crustaceans—or scorpions—through a hard, crystalline landscape. The mood is
dark, foreboding. The title, “LD.4334.1409,” which may refer to scientific
enumeration, adds obfuscation to mystery.
The ominous mood comes as a surprise after viewing the rest
of the exhibit. While diverse in other ways, the overall tone of the show is
bright, upbeat. This is perhaps the greater surprise. Sunny optimism is not
necessarily to be expected in an art exhibit about ecology in a time when
climate change seems to be trending inexorably towards climate chaos. But while
the haunting mezzotint with the enigmatic title may be more consistent with
such a vision, don’t come to this exhibit looking for stereotypes.
In fact, don’t go looking for this exhibit in a traditional
art gallery. The challenge for the uninitiated is to locate the exhibition
space. The flagship branch of the
Urban Ecology Center at Riverside Park has
had arts programming as one of its missions since its inception. The lower
level Community Room of the Center was designed with art exhibitions in mind.
The austere white cube of traditional gallery spaces, however, is another
stereotype to dismiss here. Viewing the art may involve maneuvering around a
room set up for the educational games that regularly bring hundreds of
schoolchildren to the center to learn about the natural world.
That those children may enjoy seeing on the walls serious
art geared for an adult audience is not a bonus. It’s a deliberate strategy to
establish interconnecting experiences. Ecology and a culture
of scientific inquiry pervade everything the center does. The positive tone of
this exhibit may be a consequence of that kind of sensibility.
Optimism also may be a motivating attitude for the
ecologists. All specialize in the forward-thinking field of environmental restoration.
The impetus for the project was the 2013 World Conference of the Society for
Ecological Restoration (SER), which was held in Madison, WI. All of the
ecologists chosen for the project are SER members and the prints were first
displayed last year at the Conference in Madison.
Several of the artists went beyond the use of imagery to
express ecological principles in their work. For example, artist Heather
Buechler teamed up with ecologist Debbie Mauer, who both reside in Illinois.
After hiking together in prairie preserves and discussing the balance of
nature, they harvested big bluestem and panic grass from one of the sites.
Their collaboration continued into the studio where they processed the grasses
into handmade paper pulp “to create a paper that is tied to the place that
inspired it.” The image Buechler printed on the handmade paper, entitled
“Diversity in Small Parcels,” is a complex layering of grass stems, the
watershed of the Illinois River, and a silhouette of Lake Michigan.
Several of the prints were even framed in unfinished wood
recovered from discarded industrial palettes. The recycling effort is intended
to resonate with scientific methodologies; it also takes the concept of the cycle
of nature beyond metaphor.
“Visual Reflections: A Printmaker Collective,” is on display
through June. The Urban Ecology Center is located at 1500 East Park Place, next
to Riverside Park. Hours are on its
website.
One final challenge: if you arrive at this unique gallery
when no one else is there you may have to grope along the wall to find the
light switch. At the Urban Ecology Center no energy is wasted. Creative energy,
however, is continually being generated.
An edited version of
this review first appeared in Art City.
