Tuesday, October 8, 2019

As Above, So Below

We are so pleased and soooo darn proud to announce that our beach plastic is in Baltimore, yes, Baltimore, that Baltimore —  gracing the entrance corridor at the American Visionary Art Museum, October 5, 2019 until September 6, 2020 in a must-see exhibition, The Secret Life of Earth: Alive! Awake! (And possibly really Angry!)

And if that title of the show is not enough to get you to go then maybe Trump's tweets will encourage you to visit this fine American city that has its maritime history on display in the Inner Harbor and one of the premier bio-medical research centers on the planet — how about Johns Hopkins University. Plus, it is home to the Lethal Ladies of Baltimore from Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women. We would just love, love for Trump to be in the same room with them. They would show him a thing or two.

AVAM Director Rebecca Hoffberger describes the what/where of our installation:
“As our entry floor dramatically ramps and curves upward, the whole of the ceiling assembly will be the most dramatic and beautiful welcome for all our visitors. Beach plastic garlands will be strung, bowed, horizontally. In between we will hang, also from the ceiling, a beach chair and table dangling at a crazy angle, along with as many objects of interest. Next to that will be my essay on plastic punctuated by the small global plastic toys and items that made their way from afar to your park land beach. Behind our front desk, will be displayed on an 86” tv monitor, the dramatic wind and water, neon colored-temperature coded, real-time, Goddard Space Flight Institute-generated, glorious images of the actual world oceans swirling and continuously interacting as well as their world wind interactive - hypnotic and far better than any giant lava lamp!” 

With that in mind we shipped off a big box- yes BIG box packed full of plastic. 







We have been flying high watching from afar as our a freight load of “stuff” that we sent to Baltimore was being installed. We knew that the visionary AVAM team would make us look good and did they ever. When friend Arlene saw the pics she exclaimed, It’s as if the sky sprouted Miro!!! That blue — so deep blue as the sky or deep blue as the ocean is the perfect setting for As Above, So Below.






We are thrilled that the reporter from the Baltimore Sun in her review Is Climate Change Art? picked our work as a ”must-see.” We never imagined that when we started picking up plastic — doing what we call “planetary housekeeping” — that our collection would be “news.” Her description of “the adult equivalent of an infant’s crib mobile” is apt. The bold, bright colors against the blue, the soft breeze from the HVAC, do create an effect that we hope will captivate visitors so they stop and stare at the strange and the familiar and come to the question — was that once mine?