Verdant

Verdant

Massachusetts College of Art and Design

Verdant is an exhibition that deals with the relationship between humans and the natural environment. It showcases the contemporary artists Binh Danh, Paula Hayes, Tim Knowles, and the Workingman Collective. Together, they take an active role in the environment by using living organisms rather than simply capturing images of them. These artists recognize the inevitable interaction between humans and nature but do not cause destruction to the environment; they use techniques that allow plants to continue growing, unharmed. In displaying this exhibit to the public, free of charge, MassArt has entered into a contract to not only supervise the artists’ work but in some cases, to take care of it.

Binh Danh was born in Vietnam in 1977, but moved to the United States shortly afterward. His collection of prints, Military Foliage, reflects Vietnam’s collective memory of the Vietnam War. His prints vary in size and fill a wall of the exhibition space, with a simple bench in front of them. Each print shows a blown up image of a leaf set aside a solid black background. While in the past Danh has placed images of portraits onto these leaves, Military Foliage is much more abstract and shows monochrome camouflage patterns. While this series made in 2010 employ a very simple pattern that leave much up to the observer, it references the relationship between the Vietnamese who used foliage to hide in their environment, which was then bombed by the US military using Agent Orange.

However these are not simply photographs of leaves; the media for each image is chlorophyll print and resin. This technique of chlorophyll printing is one unique to Binh Danh, having stumbled across the idea of using photosynthesis after observing the affect a running garden hose had on a lawn. He places a negative on a leaf, puts it in a contact printing frame, and leaves it in the sun for days or weeks (depending on the piece) leaving the final product completely up to chance. The idea that nature has a role in art is one employed by each artist in Verdant.

For instance, Paula Hayes’ exhibit is not a product of plants used in the process, but plants are the final product. Here she exhibits a series of over fifteen terrariums, laid across a long, white, wooden surface. Each terrarium is shaped differently and ranges in size, approximately a foot in length and half a foot in height. They are transparent, round, and oblong, with an opening at some point in the glass. Inside these hand blown vessels are different living plant species mixed with rocks and bits of gems and crystals.

Paula Hayes knows that an owner of her piece not only will have a relationship with it, but also must. Her artwork cannot be left unattended for great lengths of time, for it is as living as its owner. The Workingman Collective takes a similar approach in its piece Swing. This steel swing set is 108" x 110" x 115" in dimension and uses fir, powdercoat, clay pots, and the assorted household plants that fill them. An evolving group of people in itself, The Workingman Collective invites its audience to be one of many that will sit on the swing and engage in this piece of art. The swing is supported by red steel poles that have pots jutting off of them at different lengths and heights. The plants used are meant to be recognizable to the participant, and remind him or her that nature does not need to be separated from our everyday routine. Plants can be a part of any home, a message that Paula Hayes communicates in her terrariums. However, the Workingman Collective goes farther than the personal space of one’s home and brings the idea of art in public spaces to the forefront through something as interactive as a swing.

Tim Knowles’ series, Tree Drawings, are large pieces of blank paper with ink patterns. He spent time in the Arnold Arboretum (Jamaica Plain, Boston) and had the trees participate in the artistic process: he attached pens to the tips of branches and allowed them to splay ink onto the set-up stands of paper. In this way the trees become the artist, expressing an “emotion” or action tied to a natural element: wind. Beside these prints are occasional C-print photographs of these trees in action with the work.

Knowles’ work, the product of a collaboration quite different from Swing, causes the onlooker to wonder why nature does not usually speak for itself. Knowles allows the object he studies to tell its own story, rather than explicitly impose a meaning of his own. This theme of nature as a storyteller is one employed by each artist. Pieces such as Swing invite the participant to ask, why don’t we see more art like this in urban settings?

In areas of San Francisco, strangers have illegally thrown simple wooden swings across the branches of trees that border sidewalks. For a few days passerby use them, until officials take down the swings. Are these strangers, and the artists in Verdant, pleading for society to reconnect to the land? These works of art do not merely capture an image, they force the artists to engage with their environment. In the instances of the terrariums and Swing, the observer must also engage with the environment through caring for plants. In an age when the natural environment faces daily degradation, these artists call for art that limits its negative impact on the earth. While some of the artists may still use chemicals and dyes, their impact is minimal compared to human creations that are wholly estranged from nature. Verdant, exhibited January 30^th-March 10^th, ,2012, will live on beyond the space provided by MassArt through the caretaking of individuals and the minds of the viewers who must now reconsider how society relates to its environment.