: http://picasaweb.google.com/107591913951253938376/Columbiachoice?feat=email#

More images and images of the art will be up soon.

Thanks Postcrypt Gallery

Columbia University Green Umbrella

Greensborough House and all the amazing individuals who made this happen!

“I believe art is about beauty, but I also believe art is about ugly too. I believe art can be a color matching wallpaper to fit ones interior design and I believe it can be a tool to change the world’s direction.”  – Bill Watson

Eco-Expression: Art for Sustainability

These artworks have been chosen to represent a variety of approaches to thinking about our relationship to the environment and its preservation.

Bill McKibben, founder of an international environmentalist movement called 350.org, wrote an essay entitled “What the warming world needs now is art, sweet art,” in which he bemoans the lack of artistic reaction to climate change:

“… if the scientists are right, we’re living through the biggest thing that’s happened since human civilization emerged. One species, ours, has by itself in the course of a couple of generations managed to powerfully raise the temperature of an entire planet, to knock its most basic systems out of kilter. But oddly, though we know about it, we don’t know about it. It hasn’t registered in our gut; it isn’t part of our culture. Where are the books? The poems? The plays? The g***d*****  operas?”

As McKibben has acknowledged, visual artists are now approaching environmental issues in a variety of powerful ways.  Some of their works are disturbing, while others are comedic or awe inspiring.  Some work to persuade the audience through reason, while some are wild expressions of passion and exploration, more the stuff of dreams and madness.  Both approaches have resulted in artworks that scream out of their frames.

We hope you allow yourself to be inspired to action through this  exhibit.

Please send an email (see coniact page) and join our Facebook group to stay in touch.

Artists have generously lent their artwork for a two year period, and this exhibition is potentially available to travel.

All inquiries regarding this exhibition or the art in it can be directed to
Kalman Gacs, Curator of Eco-Expresson, at: (617) 642 7740.

Thank you for your generous support and assistance, without you this  could not have happened.

All the artists, artist agents, and galleries.
Rick Colson, of Eco-Visual and Greenphotoprint.com?
Jerry Ziola, NU Associate Director of Sustainability and Energy Management Carol Rosskam, NU Sustainability Manager
Robert Grier, NU Director of Operations, Curry Student Center
Director of Operations
Nora Oliviera, NU Contract Administrator
NU Chemistry Department,
Prof. Isabel Meirelles, NU Associate Professor and Acting Chair, Art and Design
NU Graphics Department
350.org
Laura Marotta, Assistant Curator
Environmental Art Blog
Art not Oil Gallery
Eco Art Space Blog
Endangered Species Print Project

 

Bringing humor and insight into art about the environment is a challenge met  by the team

of artists working at Squint Opena studios on the Flooded

London series

Harri Kalio with his meticulous recreations of Dodo birds in their environment brings a haunting vision of what might have been.

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The folks from Good 50x70 allowed us to print and include some of their posters,

that have been selected from thousands of submissions.

When Carol Rosskam, Northeastern University Sustainability manager, started organizing  Sustainability Week, she knew she wanted to include art.  She didn’t realize that she would have  world-renown international artists showing next to local artists, NEU alumni and staff.

In the exhibition, “Eco-Expression: Art for Sustainability” artists include graffiti artists Banksy and Shepard Fairey, internationally known artists such as Harri Kallio and Mary Van der Park along with nationally known artists such as Jenny Kendler and Molly Schaffer (creators of the Endangered Species Print Project.  For the project, they create and sell limited edition prints depicting endangered species in the number of copies equal to the number of specimens thought to be alive.).

Rosskam contacted Holland Dieringer, Curator of the Rubin-Frankel Gallery at Boston University’s Hillel House, only three months earlier.  Dieringer had curated an exhibition with a Sustainability theme last March in which Kalman Gacs, an aspiring curator, was a juror.  Dieringer connected the two, and according to Gacs, “it was the perfect opportunity for me.”  He had curated smaller exhibitions on environmental themes at  Massachusetts College of Art, Wellesley College and the Needham Public Library and was looking for a larger venue to showcase environmentally themed art.  He had recently closed a small gallery in Needham that he had founded called “True Gallery,” so he had time to work on a special project.

After an extensive call for art,  the pool of talent featured almost fifty artists.   Between these fifty artists, “Eco-Expression” appears in a large range of styles.   Gacs says he wanted to give a  “survey of the wide range of artistic expression related to environmental degradation.”  More than half of the show could be called “surrealistic.”  In it, are scenes of a flooded London, a contribution of Squint Opera studios, a London-based 3D design firm.   The apocalyptic scenes are at the same time strangely idyllic, reminiscent of Norman Rockwell paintings.    Similarly beautiful are images of Dodo birds seemingly in their natural environment from Harri Kallio.    At first, the photographs look like regular nature photographs, only when we consider the fact that Dodos were extinct before color photography, do we understand that the images may be coming as a warning.   Also notable is a series of posters from  an international poster competition called Good50×70; these are clever and direct calls to action on climate change.   Katherine Haskell’s abstracted animals that seem to meld in and out of the canvas also should not be missed.

The exhibition is unusual in that most of the art was digitally submitted by the artists and  printed.  Most of the printing was done by Rick Colson of EcoVisual Communications, a print company based in Wayland, MA that prides itself in creating graphics with the most sustainable methods available today. The exhibition coincides with an international day of action on climate change coordinated by 350.org on October 24th.

Free and Open to the Public

Curry Student Center
360 Huntington Ave, Boston
exhibition runs through October 28,
(a small selection of the art will be exhibited through November 29)
Reception October 22, 3-6 pm

For more info, call Kalman Gacs 617 642 7740
For more info,  and to preview the art
Go to  http://www.climatechangeartists.org