The Art Thread

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Fist and Faith
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Post by Fist and Faith »

Never heard of that. Good poem!
All lies and jest
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest
-Paul Simon
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Vraith
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Post by Vraith »

Linna Heartlistener wrote: He says: "no one creates in isolation; every creative act is influenced by others."
Yea. And not just in art...and not just within artistic fields.
Was just reading some stuff...
Did you know that scientists [the better than average ones, anyway] are way more likely to do some art on the side compared to regular folk?
And the smarter the more...
Nobel winners in science, in addition to doing science, are more than 10 times as likely to be writers [not research writers---creative writers] and more than 20 times as likely to be musicians or dancers?
I don't think anyone has studied the opposite, but I wish someone would...my anecdotal experience is that the reverse is also true, artists paying attention to science.
[[Wasn't surprised by the fact, really. I WAS surprised by the size of the number.]]

Fist, you think that piece was good as poetry?
The idea is something I agree with.
It's good enough material to be converted to song lyrics like it was...
But no, not good poetry IMO.

oh, peter, related to something you said a bit ago...
when I'm writing, I like to listen to music...[[instrumental, obviously]]...but I like to mix it up---I'll listen to a different style when I'm reading/rewriting/editing than I do when I'm writing the first time.

I wonder what would happen for you if you did that with art...
say, scoping out some abstract expressionist work underscored with, oh...baroque, then prog-rock, then...oh, new age? or something like Cage
?
[spoiler]Sig-man, Libtard, Stupid piece of shit. change your text color to brown. Mr. Reliable, bullshit-slinging liarFucker-user.[/spoiler]
the difference between evidence and sources: whether they come from the horse's mouth or a horse's ass.
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
the hyperbole is a beauty...for we are then allowed to say a little more than the truth...and language is more efficient when it goes beyond reality than when it stops short of it.
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Fist and Faith
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Post by Fist and Faith »

By and large, poetry is lost on me. Robin Williams' explanation for poetry in DPS is great, but other mediums work much better for me. I have no ability to judge whether or not that is "good poetry". But it gave me a very good visual of the scene, and said something important.


All that being said, imo, the once and future Watcher, Variol Farseer's Elixir is a great poem.
All lies and jest
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest
-Paul Simon
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Vraith
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Post by Vraith »

Fist and Faith wrote: All that being said, imo, the once and future Watcher, Variol Farseer's Elixir is a great poem.
That's really much better.
It isn't to my taste/preferences...but it has a pretty strong voice, a large number of strong images, and the end rhyming couplet work is wow...
[spoiler]Sig-man, Libtard, Stupid piece of shit. change your text color to brown. Mr. Reliable, bullshit-slinging liarFucker-user.[/spoiler]
the difference between evidence and sources: whether they come from the horse's mouth or a horse's ass.
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
the hyperbole is a beauty...for we are then allowed to say a little more than the truth...and language is more efficient when it goes beyond reality than when it stops short of it.
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Linna Heartbooger
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Post by Linna Heartbooger »

Fist and Faith wrote:Never heard of that. Good poem!
Woot! Glad to hear it's appreciated!

I didn't post a Youtube link to the song, because I wasn't sure if the site I found had permission from whoever had the Intellectual Property rights...
...and I am a relatively-ignorant prude about I.P. rights.
:oops:

Now you've made me curious about Dead Poets' Society, Fist!
I identify with you about being no judge of poetry.
I can go it "one worse," though, and confess I am musically illiterate and therefore "no judge of music."
vraith wrote:But no, not good poetry IMO.
Then here's a question... assuming it's not a good poem...
Would it be possible to take the poem's themes and ideas, heavily re-work it into a GOOD poem, and give credit in such a way that it's NOT plagiarism? :biggrin:

Did you know that scientists [the better than average ones, anyway] are way more likely to do some art on the side compared to regular folk? nope; actually didn't know that...
wonder if a lot of their art is sort of... not great and they know it... so they don't talk about it much.
because if you just consistently dabble at art...

The likelihood of being a musician though, I sure was aware of!
But I view it as multi-causal.
There's the "it helps train your brain" explanation, but..
I'm also aware of cultures where parents force their kids to train in music at a young age to train their minds... and those same parents encourage their kids to go into scientific fields.
AND those same cultures have filiality values that go beyond the level that our culture in general values filial loyalty.


Edits: 1. fixed something minor & obv. in first part of post.
2. Added part responding to vraith. So I wouldn't double-post - yeah!
"People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.
They don't take long looks at anything, because they lack the courage.
The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience, and the novel, of course, is a way to have experience."
-Flannery O'Connor

"In spite of much that militates against quietness there are people who still read books. They are the people who keep me going."
-Elisabeth Elliot, Preface, "A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael"
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Fist and Faith
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Post by Fist and Faith »

DPS is, IMO, an excellent movie.
All lies and jest
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest
-Paul Simon
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Vraith
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Post by Vraith »

Linna Heartlistener wrote: Would it be possible to take the poem's themes and ideas, heavily re-work it into a GOOD poem, and give credit in such a way that it's NOT plagiarism? :biggrin:
Absolutely. Many ways [including just putting in a footnote "inspired/based on blah by soandso]
Poetry [and all the arts...but usually it's easier to see in written works, poetry especially] does it all the time. Re-working, remaking, expanding/expounding upon, disagreeing with...
In a way, making it into a song was doing that.
It's practically a Rule or Law---if ya got a mediocre poem, just make sure it rhymes, repeat some parts, and set it to music. Boom. [[it's easy to make fun of things that do that...folk music, country music...but "high Art" does it too---did you ever read the words/story for opera? "I think that I shall never see//a poem lovely as a tree" brilliant by comparison with some of that]]

Fist: I like the movie, too.
[spoiler]Sig-man, Libtard, Stupid piece of shit. change your text color to brown. Mr. Reliable, bullshit-slinging liarFucker-user.[/spoiler]
the difference between evidence and sources: whether they come from the horse's mouth or a horse's ass.
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
the hyperbole is a beauty...for we are then allowed to say a little more than the truth...and language is more efficient when it goes beyond reality than when it stops short of it.
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Post by Wosbald »

+JMJ+

Ed Ruscha, the most famous Catholic artist few Catholics know [In-Depth]
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Detail of "Evil" by Ed Ruscha, screenprint on wood veneer, 1973, 19 7/8" x 30 1/8", featured in "Ed Ruscha: OKLA," running Feb. 18 to July 5, 2021 at Oklahoma Contemporary (Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian)



2021 brings first solo exhibit in Oklahoma where Ruscha grew up


If Ed Ruscha's name is unfamiliar, you're in extensive company. Since 2015, Google searches for obsolete mimeographs have outpaced those for the Catholic-born octogenarian, whom museums practically venerate, from the London Tate to Los Angeles' Broad. For those who extol price tags, a 1964 Ruscha oil painting sold in Nov. 2019 for nearly $52.5 million.

If you've reached the Museum of Modern Art's 404 error page, you've seen Ruscha's "OOF" (1962) — blocky, yellow letters against a deep blue field.


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"OOF" by Ed Ruscha, oil on canvas, 1962 (reworked 1963), 71 1/2" x 67" (MoMA Collection)


Everyone understands the word "oof," though it's nonsensical, according to independent scholar and curator Alexandra Schwartz, who finds the work amusing. "It sums up how he takes verbal language and turns it into something visual in a way that you don't expect," she said.

The unexpected emerges also in the Oklahoma Contemporary show Schwartz co-curated, "Ed Ruscha: OKLA" (running Feb. 18 to July 5, 2021), Ruscha's first solo exhibit in the state where he grew up. Most exhibits about Ruscha ("roo-SHAY") center on his adopted home, since 1956, of Los Angeles, so mining Oklahoma's impact on him is rarer. Exceptions include the University of Oklahoma Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art's "OK/LA" (through March 7, 2021), and "Out of Oklahoma: Contemporary Artists from Ruscha to Andoe" (2007-08​) at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art and the Bartlesville, Oklahoma-based Price Tower Arts Center, within the only skyscraper Frank Lloyd Wright made.

Even less common, Oklahoma Contemporary addresses Ruscha's Catholicism. Of 70 exhibited works, 10 appear in a section named for one of them, "51% Angel, 49% Devil" (1984). The others are: "Amen" (2008-09), "Angel" (2006), "Evil" (1973), "Heaven" (1988), "Hell" (1988), "Miracle" (1999), two works titled "Sin" (1970, 2002) and "The Holy Bible" (2003).

Catholic ceremony and visual icons have affected him subtly and appear occasionally in his work, but there are no direct references to the Catholic Church, according to responses the museum provided from Ruscha. "I am a confirmed atheist today, but the church helped me get where I am."

But Schwartz and Jeremiah Matthew Davis, Oklahoma Contemporary's artistic director, think the Catholicism of Ruscha's youth continues to impact his life and work. "You can still see the elements of that religion informing his day-to-day thinking whether or not he describes himself as a practicing Catholic," Davis said. "Catholicism is still with him."


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"Sin" by Ed Ruscha, screen print on paper, 1970, 19" x 26 1/2" (UBS Art Collection/Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian)


The author of two Ruscha books, Leave Any Information at the Signal: Writings, Interviews, Bits, Pages (2002) and Ed Ruscha's Los Angeles (2010), Schwartz thinks Catholicism was an important part of his artistic development. "I think it's clear through his work that he thinks about good and evil, and what is the nature of goodness," she said. In his Miami-Dade Public Library rotunda design, Ruscha features the "Hamlet" quote, "Words without thoughts never to heaven go." This reflects his love of books but also, to Schwartz, how deeply spirituality infuses his oeuvre.

Other works, including a short film, address miracles. Rays of light in the Getty's wall-sized "Picture Without Words" (1997) echo "Miracle" (1975). Schwartz recalls Ruscha discussing Renaissance altarpieces as inspiration. "It seems to me that he's making a connection between that kind of religious painting and the size and scale of an altarpiece in a Venetian church with that of the painting at the Getty," she said.

Schwartz also thinks Ruscha's Catholic upbringing played a role in his recent painting of a tattered American flag, "Our Flag" (2017), which the Brooklyn Museum displayed while serving as a polling station. Ruscha had long avoided political statements, but he came to see "this very dark turn in American life" as "some kind of battle between good and evil," Schwartz believes.

"There's something that seems quite embedded in his early life and Catholic upbringing, thinking, and the observations and critiques he makes," she said. "He felt the need to make political statements, because he sees it as so dire, or he did."


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Left: "Heaven" by Ed Ruscha, edition 5/25, soap ground aquatint, 1988, 54” x 40 3/8"; Right: "Hell" by Ed Ruscha, edition 5/25, soap ground aquatint, 1988, 54" x 40 7/16" (Courtesy of Ed Ruscha Studio)


"After the 2016 election, all I could see was black skies and vulgarity ahead of us," Ruscha wrote to NCR in December. "I could see the tyranny of fascism coming. Now we have a shred of hope to look forward to in 2021."

Schwartz recalls Ruscha really wanting to include a photo of himself at his first Communion on April 8, 1945, in her book. "There's got to be a reason for that," she said. In a Smithsonian Archives of American Art oral history, Ruscha noted he couldn't be an altar boy or join the Holy Name Society, since his dad was divorced. The latter never missed Mass but didn't take Communion.

"I liked the ritual; I liked the incense. I liked the priest's vestments … there was a deep mysterious thing that affected me," Ruscha said in the oral history. "Then I learned more about the church, and it became more hypocritical, to the point where I just had to say 'adios.' "

[…]


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"Figure It On Out" by Ed Ruscha, acrylic on canvas, 2007, 60" x 60" (Courtesy of Ed Ruscha Studio)


[…]

[Chicago-based career museum director and curator] Richard Townsend hadn't known that Ruscha was Roman Catholic and is glad that aspect of the latter's life is being studied. He sees spirituality in Ruscha's art. "Whether you're looking at the galleons on the sea or a flat horizon line or a turbulent sky or an alpine mountain, it's wondrous. And that's spiritual," Townsend said.


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"Oklahoma E" by Ed Ruscha, pencil, colored pencil, charcoal on tracing paper, 1962, 17” x 14" (UBS Art Collection/Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian)


But Townsend thinks that viewers who read Catholic references into Ruscha's works in one gallery of the Oklahoma Contemporary show will find, in other rooms, different words, often secular, set against the same backgrounds.

"The religious dimension is there if you wish," Townsend said. "When he says 'Amen,' it's like 'Unit.' It's very tempting to say, 'Ah.' But let's look at this with eyes wide open. They're just words. But that spiritual sense that comes through in the wonderment of these blasted landscapes and low horizons and his use of city lights that go on forever, they are religious. Or I should say, they are spiritual."

To Davis, the new exhibit can demonstrate to those who think contemporary art is constitutionally opposed to religion that the two needn't be mutually-antithetical. "I would love for us to put to bed the false narrative that somehow contemporary religion and contemporary art can't reconcile, or are inherently diametrically opposed," he said.


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Post by Wosbald »

+JMJ+

Finding God in the art and work of Corita Kent
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Sr. Corita Kent's 1964 work "The Juiciest Tomato of All" is seen at the Theological College in Washington Feb. 17. An art exhibit of her serigraphs, titled "Beauty and the Priest: Preaching with the Artwork of Corita Kent," was on display there through March 3. (CNS/Tyler Orsburn)


Artists are like theologians, but more fun. I loved my art history classes as a college student, not only because of the incredible beauty that would flash across the screen from old-fashioned slide projectors, but because art and architecture helped me better understand theology and spirituality. Our human experience of the ever-evolving mystery of God was made clearer for me through Gothic paintings and cathedrals than the pages of the Summa Theologica. In our own time, artists such as Sr. Corita Kent creatively reveal the inner workings of the Second Vatican Council as it continues to emerge.


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A photo of Sr. Corita Kent is seen at the Theological College in Washington Feb. 17. An art exhibit of her serigraphs, titled "Beauty and the Priest: Preaching with the Artwork of Corita Kent," was on display there through March 3. (CNS/Tyler Orsburn)


Which is why 40-plus years later, having spent 11 of those years teaching art history myself, I have fallen in love again for the first time with Sr. Corita Kent, the sassy pop art nun from Los Angeles whose work and fame got her on the cover of Newsweek magazine as an exemplar of "The nun: going modern."

She wasn't just a thorn in the side of Cardinal Archbishop James McIntyre of Los Angeles, she was a whole crown's worth of thorns for the poor guy. He struggled with some of the reforms of Vatican II, such as laypeople speaking English at Mass, and nuns wearing earrings and having thoughts of their very own. Corita, a mature, free-thinking spirit, gave her bishop no small measure of agita, and he gladly returned the favor.

Sister Mary Corita of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary was already a renowned art teacher in Los Angeles when Pop Art and Vatican II each burst on the scene in the early '60s. After seeing Andy Warhol's now iconic Campbell's Soup silkscreens, she was inspired to take religious subjects to a new level, one which merged the sacred and the secular into one, non-dualistic entity. Corita boldly illuminated the incarnate presence of God in our consumeristic, materialistic, fame-obsessed plastic world. She was a woman with Vatican II spunk, a regular Hildegard of Bingen on the streets of Hollywood who used her prolific gifts to speak truth to power and promote peace, justice and Catholic social teaching in the midst of civil rights and the Vietnam War.


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Sr. Corita Kent's 1967 work "Stop the Bombing" is seen Feb. 17 at the Theological College in Washington. (CNS/Tyler Orsburn)


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Sr. Corita Kent's 1965 work "Enriched Bread" is seen Feb 17 at the Theological College in Washington. (CNS/Tyler Orsburn)


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Sr. Corita Kent's 1964 work "For Eleanor," is seen Feb. 17 at the Theological College in Washington. (CNS photo/Tyler Orsburn)


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Sr. Corita Kent's 1964 work "That They May Have Life" is seen Feb. 17 at the Theological College in Washington. (CNS/Tyler Orsburn)


All of a sudden in that swinging decade, God popped up in new guises, no longer locked in a tabernacle to which only a priest had access. And just as Warhol breathed new life into ordinary cans of soup, Corita took the logos and advertising slogans of Wonder Bread to reveal a fresh, modern look at the true Wonder Bread, the Eucharist. "All that is seen and unseen," words heard at Mass in English for the first time, freshly exposed the sacramental nature of ordinary life. "God's not dead he's bread," she famously wrote on one of my favorite prints, pointing out the timeless beauty and power of the Eucharist as something more powerful than a mere weapon of reward and punishment or Sunday obligation.

Recently, in the space of one week, I made two pilgrimages to Theological College in Washington to visit an exhibit of signed, original prints by Corita Kent. It was organized by my friend and rector of the seminary, Fr. Dominic Ciriaco, who was promoting Corita's art as an inspirational source for homilies and preaching. On my first visit, I spent one whole morning completely alone with Corita, a cup of coffee, my prayer journal, and sketchbook. Pure heaven!


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"The Only Rule Is Work," a watercolor and pen and ink work by Mickey McGrath (Provided by Mickey McGrath)


On the wall facing me was a print with the word "TOMATO" in bright red color. Written on it in smaller letters, it states that "Mary Mother is the juiciest tomato of them all," referring to an ad campaign for tomato sauce at the time she created it. Once again, she linked the sacred and the profane in ways that proved appalling to more linear-thinking churchy types. It is the very image that broke the straw of the cardinal's back whose angry response ultimately led to Corita's departure from the convent and the dissolution of the community of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Los Angeles.


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"Wondrous Bread from Heaven," a digital image by Mickey McGrath (Provided by Mickey McGrath)


On my second visit a week later, I traveled with three pilgrim/friends: a nun and two priests, two of whom are Franciscans, all three of whom are huge Corita fans. There we sat at Theological College in a spacious room with high Gothic windows while clerically clad seminarians passed by in the hallway. And while it wasn't exactly the setting I would have ever expected in a million years to finally encounter Corita Kent in person, it was the ideal setting because it exposed through beauty so many parallels between her tumultuous times of church reform and our own.


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"Pop Body of Christ," a digital image by Mickey McGrath (Provided by Mickey McGrath)


I thought of Jesuit Fr. Greg Boyle, another Los Angeles mystic with pop art spirit, who writes: "The point of the Incarnation is that Jesus is one of us in the ordinary." I am sure "G-Dog" and Corita would get on famously — along with Daniel Berrigan, who was both Corita's friend and Greg Boyle's confrere. He once said, "The great revolutionary virtue is endurance."

And I'd better invite Dorothy Day to this gathering of spirits because she, like Corita, loved Daniel Berrigan. Last but not least on the guest list of my imaginary heavenly banquet is none other than Cardinal James McIntyre because he was a devoted and generous supporter of Dorothy Day's! Who knew? What an interesting dinner party it would be with Wonder Bread on the menu.


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Laudato Si' / Integral Ecology

Post by Wosbald »

+JMJ+

An NYC art exhibit shows the beauty and blight of Earth's climate today
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Kaleidoscope of Coralscapes: Memento Mori" by Lois Bender (Photo by Jim McDermott)


In mid-December, 13 artists concerned about the global climate crisis staged a five-day pop-up art exhibition and conversation series at the Ceres Gallery in New York City. The exhibit, titled "Mayday! EAARTH," was the fifth exhibition that Marcia Annenberg has curated on the environment.

Annenberg's introduction as she took me around the exhibition was peppered with frightening facts about the state of our planet: one-third of Pakistan underwater this summer while other rivers around the world are drying up; the terrifying speed of storm surges today, like at Fort Meyers, Florida, during Hurricane Ian in September; deforestation in and around the Amazon rainforest is releasing the carbon stored in those trees' roots into the air, transforming what was a carbon sink area into a massive carbon source.

Many of the other artists I spoke to had their own horrifying details to add about traumas done to our planet that drive their passion to create environmentally themed work.

"From the time I graduated from high school in the 1970s to now, a quarter of American birds have gone extinct," Noreen Dresser told me.


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"Rushing c22" by Noreen Dean Dresser (Photo by Jim McDermott)


The world's frogs are not far behind, Kathy Levine noted as we stood before a set of delicately-sculpted frogs on recycled paper made to look like wood. "Thirty percent of all frogs around the world are actually facing extinction," she shared. "They're one of the biggest groups of animals being affected. They're disappearing before our very eyes."

Susan Hoffmann Fishman's oil paintings offered a series of aerial views of the landscape around Siberia and the Dead Sea, where melting permafrost and sinking sea levels — a result of human overuse of the sea's water — are each causing numerous sinkholes. (There are 7,000 around the Dead Sea alone, Hoffman told me.) She painted the landscape around the Siberian holes in greens and oranges, as though the land itself is riven with pain.

Ann R. Shapiro's work seemed to express her own pain — consisting of digitized drawings, paintings and photographs which together depict a shadowy lobster boat against a nightmarish background of furious, unreal colors. "The more you read, the angrier I'm getting. Don't people understand what's happening? Don't we get it?" she asked. "We'll always have a landscape, no matter how high the water rises, how hot it gets. But what kind of world are you getting into?"


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"Raging Climate 5, Ominous" by Ann R. Shapiro (Photo by Jim McDermott)


In addition to the eerily apocalyptic color palettes, a number of pieces involved the use of overlapping perspectives. Fishman's work gave an aerial view, yet within it certain areas were radically expanded.

Similarly, architect and artist Lisa Reindorf presented what looked to be a cityscape from above as sea levels rise. But as you stared at the work, the water pouring in from the left side of the image also looked like a wave crashing down. The crisis we're in is so dramatic, even the laws of physics seem to be collapsing.

But there was unexpected shelter to be found among this work, as well. Lois Bender's wall of undersea coral stencils glowed in brilliant reds and blues, greens and pinks and purples. And Bender's own commentary on the corals was equally radiant. "It was just fascinating to learn about the forms — there's the fan form, the bubble form, the brain form," she listed them, laughing with delight.

"The coral animal looks like a plant, like a vegetable because they stay put. But they're animals," she said with wonder.

I pointed out how unexpected it is to find hopeful work in an art exhibit about our climate emergency. "I wanted to show the beauty before it can become blight," Bender said.

"The irony is that sometimes disasters are beautiful. Corals fluoresce before they go white and die. That's the purple," she explained, pointing to one panel. "I wanted to do the corals in beautiful color. Maybe that'll inspire people to save it."

Angela Manno, who paints gorgeous icons of at-risk animal and plant species, sees her work portraying such things as sea turtles, birds and microscopic zooplankton as having a palliative quality, as well. "When we talk about all this destruction, how can you wrap your mind around it except to say that it is pathological?" she asked.

When you're doing icons, she explained, the process of creation gives the images themselves a far greater voice in that ongoing struggle. "As opposed to Western art, where the artist imposes themselves on the canvas," she explained, "here the images are supposed to impose themselves on you. The beauty of the colors, the meaning, the symbolism — it was very healing to me."


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Icons of a sea angel, left, and a firefly by Angela Manno (Photo by Jim McDermott)


When it comes to how to talk about climate change, said Danielle Eubank, who has traveled the world painting images of the world's water sources, "we're always asking, 'Is it the carrot or the stick?' Do you show people how beautiful things are, or do you say, 'Hey look guys, we're bleeding?' "

Dresser agreed, saying, "People cannot imagine or engage with ecological disaster. It's too much information." The artist's challenge, she said, is to find that "tipping point" that gets the audience over that hump.

In one of her two paintings, a tiny bird's nest floats vertically upon a canvas that appears almost like water. It reminded me of the reed basket Moses' mother placed him in before she sent him down the Nile, hoping he would find a home before he drowned. Here, there is no chick in the nest, no sign of life. It seems another ominous sign of the doom upon us.

But Dresser was more drawn to the wonder of the nest itself. "This is from Wisconsin. These parents, they built this from horse hair. That's real horse hair." she explained. You could hear the admiration in her voice, one artist inspired by two others.

This piece is not about disaster, she said, "It's just a way to get people to focus on that little tiny miracle. That's all I want them to get."


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