'Endangered' exhibition shows imperiled Earth through artist's eyes - The San Diego Union-Tribune

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With a fleet of plastic jellyfish and “smog” paintings of world leaders, the exhibit “Endangered: Exploring California’s Changing Ecosystems” offers an artists’ eye view of the natural world and the perils it faces.

The exhibit, which opened earlier this month at the California Center For the Arts, featured a wide range of techniques, from pen-and-ink sketches and large-scale landscapes, to pop-art takes on ecological crisis. Along with traditional sculpture and painting were mixed media pieces that used the very materials threatening the environment to create artwork.

“I really believe in the power of art to create awareness and spark change,” Guest Curator Danielle Deery said, adding that the endangered animals serve as metaphors for the risk to humans.

In the “Endangered” exhibition, a darkly comic painting of Barbie at the Salton Sea shows the iconic doll lounging in a pink recliner at the blighted water body. Another piece displays paper milk cartons depicting endangered amphibians in the style of missing child ads.

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A parallel exhibit, “Finding Heaven in Hellhole Canyon,” offers an idyllic counterpoint, with paintings of sun-dappled landscapes and local wildlife that contrast with the dystopian warnings of “Endangered.”

The “Endangered” exhibit is organized in three sections: air and land, displayed together in one gallery, and a separate room with an installation representing water.

In her oil painting, “Sunbathe Barbie at Bombay Beach,” painter Jen Trute depicts a clash of consumer culture and environmental decay. The blond-tressed doll, wearing a lime bikini, reclines in a plastic beach chair and matching end table, oblivious to the pollution around her.

A bubble-gum pink truck is parked behind her, mirrored by a dilapidated Airstream trailer submerged in acid green water. The sea, as in reality, is briming with wildlife, and ecological distress. A pelican flies by, dragging a plastic bag, while a shorebird is entangled by plastic beer can rings, and a kangaroo rat struggles in a discarded yogurt cup. Look closely at Barbie’s accessories and you’ll see some wryly ominous touches: a bottle of SPF 700 sunscreen and a pink, portable TV screen, televising a mushroom cloud.

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Artist Ruth Wallen also nods to popular culture, with her exhibit on endangered species. A pair of paper cartons advertise “organic milk,” and reference missing children ads; pictures of the critically endangered mountain yellow-legged frog and threatened Yosemite toad are printed on their sides, with the message “Have you seen me?”

In a separate work she creates a photographic collage of an old growth grove, shot during periods of rain and drought, health and decline, juxtaposing the timescales in a single image to show the phases of the forest.

The artists’ work not only depicts scientific topics through colorfully disturbing images, but also draws directly from researchers’ data and collections. Wallen treks along with foresters for her tree montages and taps their data sets for another project, not included at the exhibit, on the effects of climate change on tree rings.

Wildlife artist Stacie Birky Green displayed portraits of birds, including a series on extinct or critically endangered species -- from the northern spotted owl to the southwestern willow flycatcher -- drawn on hand-made paper she manufactures from her junk mail. Another series depicts birds on tiles made from scrap guitar wood.

And a final display includes skulls and eggs, also sculpted from junk mail, and inspired by her lengthy study of bird collections at the San Diego Natural History Museum. She became interested in birds around 2009, she said, after recognizing their role as proverbial canaries in the global coal mine.

“We’re all connected, so what happens to the birds is eventually going to come down to us,” she said.

Mixed media artist Kim Abeles takes upcycling to a new level, using smog itself as pigment for stenciled images on a sets of dinnerware in her “Smog Collectors” series. Abeles creates an intricate stencil of the design she wishes to depict, and then leaves the plates on her rooftop for measured periods of time. After a month or so, airborne particulates settle into the spaces of the stencil, forming images that she fixes with a non-toxic setting spray developed by 19th century French painter Edward Degas.

The images on display included portraits of presidents and prime ministers, from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin to Theresa May, accompanied by their quotes on environmental issues.

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“We live in the contradiction that the dangers are out there, beyond, and that we are safe in our homes,” Abeles stated on her website. “Since the worst in our air can’t be seen, Smog Collectors are both literal and metaphoric depictions of the current conditions of our life source.”

Artist Deb Solan also gathers pollutants in the form of used grocery bags, to create ethereal jellyfish and call attention to the plight of marine life. A flotilla of the creatures float from the ceiling in the installation devoted to water, along with video and ocean sound effects.

In a student art display lining a hallway, Mission Hills High School senior Laura Antonio took a similar tack, with a watercolor painting"Pelican in Dismay,” depicting the bird with a piece of netting filled with real trash attached to its beak. The trash, Antonio wrote, was collected from debris stuffed in her backpack.

“Without knowing it, like the bird, I am carrying plastic substances which sooner or later greatly affect my local area,” she wrote.

sd-me-endangered-art

Oil paintings of local landscapes by artist Cathy Carey, in the exhibition “Finding Heaven in Hellhole Canyon” at the California Center for the Arts: Canyon Consultation (right), Canyon Companions (bottom), Living in Paradise (top)

(Karli Cadel Photography)

While the “Endangered” exhibition highlights the harm inflicted on the environment, the “Hellhole Canyon” exhibition, despite its sinister name, offers a reassuring look at the natural world, focused on the Valley Center preserve.

In a series of vivid expressionist landscapes, painter Cathy Carey portrays rolling hills and blooming agave under azure skies. And Julian-based painter Joe Garcia captured a bobcat brazenly staring down the viewer, along with a roadrunner at rest.

“The art in “Finding Heaven in Hellhole Canyon” encourages introspection, revealing the complex and symbiotic relationship between humans and land,” the exhibition description stated.

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The museum is located at the California Center for the Arts, at 340 N Escondido Boulevard, in Escondido. It is open Tues-Sat from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. The exhibitions run through March 8.



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