FRAGILE RAINBOW: TRAVERSING HABITATS

Including more than fifty artists from the New York City region working in painting, sculpture, video and installation, members of ecoartspace, an international platform for artists addressing environmental issues.

The exhibition’s title, “Fragile Rainbow: Traversing Habitats,” found inspiration in the show’s largest artwork, Claire McConaughy’s painting Fragile Rainbow (2021). In her words, McConaughy’s sanguine waterscape addresses “interconnection, loss, transformation, and hope.” Her title is especially relevant for this heterogeneous exhibition of artworks by ecoartspace members based in the New York City region whose paintings, sculptures, photographs, and installations evoke “connection, loss, transformation, and hope.” These artists are especially conscious of our indebtedness to living beings in our midst and human beings’ obligation to appreciate and protect organic and inorganic matter alike.

In recent history, the unsustainable environmental dynamics of Western cultures have intensified with the creation of contemporary cities and urban life. As a result, people have grown increasingly distanced from the land, leaving some 75% of Earth’s terrain substantially degraded. For this exhibition, we invite visitors to acknowledge their relationship with the land in a manner that aims to be more aligned with longstanding Indigenous perspectives that consider the earth, plants and animals family, even within urban settings. When experienced collectively, these artworks can remind us that we are embedded in and must be conscious of our contributions to our habitat. When we walk in the woods, we become part of the forest, yet when we walk on the sidewalk, we are no less walking on land.

To create this sensorial experience, works were selected that amplify habitats’ various voices from birds to bladderwrack, clouds, cochineals, compost, coral reefs, cows, deer, flowers, fungi, human beings, jellyfish, knotweed, lichens, mangroves, metals, minerals, mugworts, mushrooms, plastic, rainbows, rivers, roots, rust, seeds, shells, soil, the sun, rivers, trees, watersheds, and worms. Idyllic landscapes stride landscapes riddled with plants eager to migrate and unpredictable outcomes. Similarly, imagery evoking bleached corals find resolution in a biomorphic sculpture meant to substitute for coral reefs.

Artists:
Elizabeth Albert, M. Annenberg, L.C. Armstrong, Nancy Azara, Jeannine Bardo, Jude Norris – Bebonkwe, Lois Bender, Jean Brennan, Michele Brody, Diane Burko, Pamela Casper, Margaret Cogswell, Elisabeth Condon, Katie De Groot, Kate Dodd, Rosalyn Driscoll, Eliza Evans, Rachel Frank, Alice Garik, Tessa Grundon, andrea haenggi, Mara G. Haseltine, Kristin Jones, Natalya Khorover, Jennifer Kotter, Laurie Lambrecht, Rita Leduc, Stacy Levy, Lenore Malen, Claire McConaughy, Lauren Rosenthal McManus, Emmy Mikelson, Patricia Miranda, Seren Morey, Carol Padberg, Tracy Penn, Aviva Rahmani, Leah Raintree, Laziza Rakhimova, Bonnie Ralston, Lisa Reindorf, Eleni Smolen, Anne-Katrin Spiess, Priscilla Stadler, Linda Stillman, Mary Ann Strandell, Debra Swack, Sandra Taggart, Kate Temple, Deborah Wasserman, Riva Weinstein, Linda Weintraub, Stephen Whisler, Marion Wilson, Chin Chih Yang, Millicent Young

Programs:

Stacy Levy: Tide Flowers
May 5 – June 4, 2022 – Special Event May 15

Tide Flowers is a site-specific water installation that registers the tidal movement on the East River at Domino Park, revealing dramatic fluctuations with brilliantly-colored flowers. Twice a day, this activity connects us to the ocean, the moon, and the daily rhythm that is nature’s own. Be sure to stop by Sunday, May 15, for the Flower Moon Total Solar Eclipse.

be at the shore is all we ask (high-tide), a performance by andrea haenggi and bladderwrack
May 7, 2022, 3-5pm

During the opening reception, performers 20 minutes away at the Marsha P. Johnson State Park will meet and communicate with bladderwrack through dance. They will walk in procession with bladderwrack to the gallery where visitors are invited to “tenderly” take one of the bladderwrack and bring them back to any shore in New York City with help of a guided written prompt. The event will be live-streamed in the gallery.

Walking The Bomb, a performance by Stephen Whisler
May 7 and June 4, 2022, 3-5pm

Walking The Bomb is a performance including a handcrafted wood and sheet metal sculpture, a human scale version of Little Boy, the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Dressed in a dark grey suit with a white shirt, the artist walks the streets towing The Bomb behind him.

Ecology Extended: A Conversation
May 22, 2022, 1-3pm

Ecology Extended is an interdisciplinary collaboration between artist Rita Leduc, ecologist Dr. Rich Blundell and the temperate mountain ecosystem of the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest. Leduc and Blundell will present and extend outward their phenomenological, conversational, relational, and ecological process. After sharing the project’s artistic output to date, they will engage in an open dialogue and conclude by welcoming the public into the conversation.

ABOUT Sue Spaid

Cincinnati-based philosopher Sue Spaid, Ph.D., has been active in the artworld as a collector, curator, art writer, university lecturer, and museum director since 1984. The author of five books on art and ecology, Spaid’s most recent monograph is The Philosophy of Curatorial Practice: Between Work and World (2020), published by Bloomsbury Academic. In 2017, Spaid curated “Ecovention Europe: Art to Transform Ecologies, 1957-2017,” a sixty-year survey of artists’ ecological efforts throughout Europe, accompanied by a book of the same name, published by Hedendaagse Kunst De Domijnen. In 2013, her traveling exhibition “Green Acres: Artists Farming Fields, Greenhouses, and Abandoned Lots,” funded by an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award, concluded its tour at the American University Museum and Arlington Arts Center. While Curator at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (1999-2002), she authored the book Ecovention: Current Art to Transform Ecologies that accompanied the 2002 exhibition she co-curated with Amy Lipton (1956-2020), former east coast curator of ecoartspace. https://suespaid.info

ABOUT ecoartspace

ecoartspace was conceived in 1997 by Patricia Watts in Los Angeles as a venue where visitors could learn about the principles of ecology through immersive environments created by artists. That year she published one of the first websites with a directory of artists addressing environmental issues. In 1999, Watts partnered with east coast curator Amy Lipton (1956-2020), combining forces working from both coasts while operating under the nonprofit umbrella of SEE, the Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs in Los Angeles, a 501c3 fiscal sponsor. 2019 marked 20 years that Watts and Lipton curated art and ecology programs, participating on panels and giving lectures internationally. Combined, they curated over 60 art and ecology exhibitions, many outdoors, collaborating with artists to create site-specific works. They have worked with hundreds of artists from across the country, and internationally. Starting in 2020, ecoartspace became an LLC membership organization based out of Santa Fe, New Mexico. www.ecoartspace.org