The Relevance of Landscape in the 21st Century
[view the exhibition program]

Karen Glaser - work viewable at www.karenglaserphotography.com and in the monograph "Mysterious Manatees", 2003. Glaser's photographs taken in Big Cypress National Preserve, a neighbor to the Everglades, represent a geographical location that is both seductive and sickening. In Florida, unique and breathtaking ecosystems live alongside unceasing development. Glaser documents these ecosystems' allure and mystery and considers the complicated puzzle of their continued existence: an existence increasingly vulnerable to urban sprawl.

Larry Schwarm - work viewable at www.larryschwarm.com and in the monograph "On Fire", 2003. Schwarm's photographs taken on the prairies of the Flint Hills in his native Kansas document an essential element in the prairie ecosystem: agricultural burns. Fire benefits the land by destroying invasive plants and trees and encouraging new growth. The metaphor is obvious says the artist, "without destruction there is no rebirth: for every act there is an opposing one." Schwarm's work presents a more optimistic view of our current ecological situation in its representation of the beauty and potential in destruction.

Diane Burko - work viewable at www.dianeburko.com. Burko's on-going series of paintings "Politics of Snow" documents the rapidity of change in natural icons such as the Matterhorn, as well as the shrinking glaciers in America and Iceland, in a series of diptychs of historical visual comparisons that contrast past and present situations of glacial activity.

Leila Daw - work viewable at www.leiladaw.com. Daw's tapestry-like unstretched canvases give us a glimpse into the potential of our experiences, showing us a bird's-eye view of the devastating power of nature. She allows viewers to simultaneously see the landscape on both a micro- and macroscopic level, blending recognizable elements with abstracted ones - a river overtaking a mapped terrain or a volcano's molten lava eradicating a civilization below.

Joy Wulke - work viewable at www.wulkestudio.com. Wulke's sculptures are inspired by the ever-changing natural landscape with concern for its ecological health. In some works she encases natural forms speaking to the increasing delicacy of the world around us and the need for stewardship so we may continue to enjoy nature's wonders into the future not just "underglass."

Joseph Saccio - work viewable at www.kehlerliddell.com. Saccio's sculptures use natural materials (primarily reclaimed wood) joined together in a primitivistic manner, to express personal feelings associated with myth, ritual, loss and rebirth. These works are often brutal in form and meaning but occasionally also suggest the possibility of renewal in the midst of devastation.

Joseph Smolinski - work viewable at www.josephsmolinski.com. Smolinski's work explores our need to mask landscape interventions - for example, cell phone towers disguised as trees. Smolinski creates "Tree Turbines" mimicking the camouflaging technique of cell phone towers. The turbines' rotating trunks convert the kinetic energy of the wind into electricity and provide an ironic solution to the controversy over wind turbines, which despite their growing importance as economic clean energy resources, have been protested by environmentalists for aesthetic reasons.