image: Charnel Ground © Millicent Young 2022. Charred cedar, adobe, horse hair, clay on board. 16 x 108 x 24 inches

Saturday, May 7 to Saturday, June 4, 2022

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 7, 3–5pm

Closing Reception: Saturday, June 4, 4–6pm

Gallery Hours: Friday, Saturday and Sunday from Noon to 6pm

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

Organized and Produced by ecoartspace