Climate Art Beat®
Spring Calendar 2023
We are pleased to highlight these 14 “must see” live and online climate art events.
Curated Online Art Exhibition
Courtney Mattison, Our Changing Seas IV (2019). Glazed stoneware and porcelain. Dimensions: 11’ x 17’ x 2’. Photograph by Courtney Mattison. ©2019 Courtney Mattison. Courtesy of the artist.
Craft Speaks: Voices for a Sustainable Future
Craft Speaks features work from 30 pioneering artists who guide us to envision and embrace a sustainable future. Their vision and talent offer fresh hope and new insights to a world in need of solutions to environmental challenges.
Honolulu, Hawai’i
Rebecca Louise Law, Life in Death. Floral and botanical material. ©2022 Rebecca Louise Law. Courtesy of the Honolulu Museum of Art. Photo: Charles Emerson.
To celebrate Hawaii’s deep connection to its flowers, the museum is showcasing an immersive botanical installation by the internationally acclaimed artist Rebecca Louise Law. Titled Awakening, the installation occupies two light-filled galleries of the museum. The public was invited to contribute and help string flowers, so the installation combines the artist’s own recycled botanical materials with local floral specimens and found materials. Together, artist and public crafted a dazzling invitation to reflect on nature’s beauty and fragility.
Now through Sept. 10, 2023
Cardiff, Wales
Andrea Haffner, Dome Sculpture, 2023. Found natural objects encased in resin. ©Andrea Haffner 2023. Courtesy of the Makers Guild in Wales.
In the 16th & 17th century, “cabinets of curiosity” or “wonder rooms” displayed collections of natural objects to inspire awe of the natural world. Verity Pulford, curator of Uncommon Beauty: Objects of Curiosity and Wonder, crafted a contemporary version of these collections, inviting 26 artists to create an intriguing narrative of a natural object. Working with materials and form, the artists produced a treasure trove of exquisite works beckoning us to slow down, look closely and allow the wonders of nature to take their rightful place in our lives.
Now through May 29, 2023
Starting May 30, only online
Winona, MN
Courtney Mattison, Our Changing Seas 111, 2014. Ceramic sculpture. Installation view. ©Courtney Mattison 2014. Courtesy of Arthur Evans, Tang Museum.
Sculptor and marine biologist Courtney Mattison has dedicated her career to creating art that calls attention to the environmental threats facing our ocean. Courtney Mattison: Undercurrent displays her intricate, large-scale, hand-crafted ceramic sculptures. The sculptures enable viewers – many of whom have never seen a coral reef – to appreciate the reefs’ delicate, fragile beauty. At the same time, by contrasting colorful, healthy reefs with bleached, dying ones, Mattison underscores how human-caused climate change impairs ocean life.
Now through Sept. 3, 2023
Winona, MN
Liz Sexton, Long-Spined Porcupinefish Mask, 2019. Photograph. © Liz Sexton, 2019. Paper-mâche, cloth, wire, skewer sticks and acrylic paint. Photography by Ben Toht in collaboration with Liz Sexton.
Liz Sexton: Out of Water showcases the artist’s large paper mâche masks of fish, birds, and mammals. Accompanying the sculptures are photographs and videos of humans wearing the masks in both urban and natural settings. By blurring the line between the animal kingdom and human life, Sexton highlights how humans are displacing animals from their natural habitat, forcing them to live in our human world.
Now through Sept. 3, 2023
Long Island City, Queens, NY
Daniel Lind-Ramos, Baño de María (Bain-marie/The Cleansing). 2018-2022. Assemblage:127 x 120 x 48 inches. ©Daniel Lind-Ramos. Photo: Steven Paneccasio. Courtesy of MoMA PS1.
The works featured in Daniel Lind-Ramos: El Viejo Griot (“The Old Storyteller”) honor the traditions and histories of Afro-descendant communities in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean and around the globe. Using found and gifted objects of personal, communal and regional significance – debris, decorative objects, and everyday tools – Lind-Ramos produces meticulously detailed story-telling assemblages. Some works reveal fast disappearing local traditions (e.g., agriculture, fishing); others are landmark sculptures recording Hurricane Maria’s devastation of Puerto Rico. By providing context for understanding Hurricane Maria, its climate-change fueled intensity, its devastating impact, and its lingering humanitarian consequences, Lind-Ramos has truly crafted “una historia de todos nosotros” (“a story of all of us”).
Now through Sept. 4, 2023
Grand Rapids, MI
Fashion + Nature. Exhibit assemblage. Installation view. ©Grand Rapids Public Museum 2023. Courtesy of the Grand Rapids Public Museum.
Fashion + Nature explores how nature has both influenced, and been impacted by, fashion. The exhibition explores three themes. It surveys historical fashion trends, showing the varied ways materials, colors, patterns, and shapes in nature have inspired clothing styles and accessories. It examines the fashion industry’s impact on the environment, human lives, and the global economy. And it highlights innovations that empower producers, designers and consumers to reduce the fashion industry’s harmful environmental impacts. Interactive components allow visitors to “try on” fashion pieces virtually, test their environmental knowledge (e.g., how much water is consumed in various fashion-related activities?), and become more sustainability-conscious consumers.
Open Now
Easton, PA
Diane Burko, Summer Heat 1 & 2, 2020. Mixed media on canvas. ©Diane Burko 2020. Courtesy of the Nurture Nature Center.
Risky Beauty: Aesthetics and Climate Change focuses on the work of seven Philadelphia area artists who harness the power of art to engage audiences on climate change. Dr. Cynthia Haveson Veloric curated the exhibition to “challenge viewers to consider how their aesthetic experience of nature might change” in light of the climate crisis and its impact on their personal environments. An additional installation, Disrupted Forest, displays a “forest” which Lehigh University students created from recycled materials. The “forest” calls attention to the harm that plastic waste and deforestation cause to avian species and their fragile habitats.
Now through June 26, 2023
Blacksburg, VA
Erin Jane Nelson, Little Armoured One, 2020. Pigment print, found photograph, lichen, sunflower husk, metal and EcoPoxy on glazed stoneware. © Erin Jane Nelson 2020. Courtesy of the Moss Arts Center.
Through a range of media, including painting, sculpture, photography and performance, I’ll Be Your Mirror… features work from eight artists who invite us to contemplate our hidden relationships with our community and our Earth. The exhibition calls us to assess our impact on the world and to reflect on how we could contribute to a sustainable, equitable future.
June 8 – Sept. 1, 2023
Portland, OR
Caitlin Blaisdell, Photo of Kaxhatjaa X’óow/Herring Protectors, 2019. ©Caitlin Blaisdell 2019. Courtesy of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.
Center for Native Arts & Cultures
Protection: Adaptation and Resistance explores the innovative, diverse ways Indigenous Alaskan artists are drawing upon traditional arts and teachings to address contemporary challenges. Amidst a pandemic, climate crisis and ongoing human rights assaults, the exhibition takes a powerful, uplifting look at how to endure and grow toward a resilient future by tapping the wisdom of the past. Relating to and caring for the Earth is a major theme. Melissa Shaginoff’s screen print on moose hide, How to be a Good Guest, reminds us: “This land is not a new or wild place. It is an ancient and gently cared for relative.” And the collaboratively created robes of the Herring Protectors highlight the need to build a community committed to sustaining our ecosystem.
Now through Aug. 4, 2023
Washington, DC
Rebecca Rutstein, Blue Dreams, 2023. Video still. ©Rebecca Rutstein 2023. Courtesy of the National Academy of Sciences.
Blue Dreams offers a visually stunning glimpse into the intricate workings of microbial networks in the deep sea. Created by multidisciplinary artist Rebecca Rutstein in collaboration with a team of scientists, this immersive video installation portrays the geological processes at play as microbes, our planet’s smallest yet most vital living systems, interact with the macro world. Rutstein and her team provide a thought-provoking examination of the sublime, resilient, and interconnected microbial networks and their dramatic global impact.
Now through Sept. 15, 2023
New York, NY
Marilla Palmer, Flowers of Intoxication, 2023. Watercolor, pressed flowers, fabric, glitter, sequin, holographic vinyl, Durabrite prints on Arches paper. ©Marilla Palmer 2023. Courtesy of Kathryn Markel Fine Arts.
Orchids of the Anthropocene features Marilla Palmer’s exquisite, multimedia floral creations showcasing “the absolute gorgeousness of the natural world around us.” Yet Palmer’s work, while celebrating the natural world, also reminds us of the delicate balance between nature and human creation. The exhibition’s title refers to the Anthropocene – the current geological age marked by significant human impact on the environment. By spotlighting the beauty of nature, Palmer captures the sensitive equilibrium we must now navigate in the midst of this complex relationship.
Now through June 17, 2023
Curated Online Art Exhibition
James Balog, Eastern White Pine, Lenox, Massachusetts, October 2002. Photograph. ©2002 James Balog Photography/Earth Vision Institute. Courtesy of the artist.
Honoring the Future: Honoring Trees
Honoring Trees features the work of 14 leading contemporary artists. Collectively, these works invite us to reflect on the splendor of trees, the challenges climate change and human stresses pose to trees, and the opportunity to respond with creativity and courage. The accompanying Educator’s Guide offers links to free, easily accessible videos, articles and other STEAM resources for use in art, science, history, social studies, language arts and civics classes.
Online Art Exhibition
Carolyn Peirce, Asian Elephant, Recycled paper collage ©2020 Carolyn Peirce. Courtesy of the artist.
Honoring the Future: We, The Ark
We, The Ark features Carolyn Peirce’s playful, yet powerful, recycled paper collages of vulnerable and endangered animals. This online exhibition beckons us to rebalance our broken relationship with nature – in short, to revolutionize how we care for our Earth. An accompanying Educator’s Guide offers free online STEAM resources for teachers of middle through high school students.