Human = Landscape Closing Reception

Saturday, October 24, 2009, 3-6pm
On Saturday, October 24th from 3-6pm, join activists, community members, and artists in Burlington’s City Hall Park and Burlington City Arts’ Firehouse Center on Church Street for a closing reception of the exhibition Human = Landscape featuring speakers, performance, discussions and environmental action.

As part of the current exhibition Human = Landscape at the Firehouse Center, artist and UVM Professor Cameron Davis presented the Dear World Project, an installation at the Firehouse Center for the Visual Arts composed of “small works” from many contributors in the community, who were invited to participate throughout the two month exhibition of Human = Landscape. Each artist was asked to create artwork as a response to www.350.org’s Call to Action, a Non-Governmental Organization initiative working internationally to organize and promote climate awareness and change.

Beginning at 3pm, on the 24th at locations around the city including the University of Vermont’s Ira Allen Chapel and the Firehouse Center, tower bells will be rung 350 times to bring awareness to 350.orgs mission promoting awareness of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and it’s relationship to global warming. Performers will walk in silence from three sites: the UVM campus, Viva Espresso Café, and Magnolia Bistro, to the Firehouse Gallery and City Hall Park handing out the small works created as part of the Dear World Project to onlookers. On the back of each work of art is info about the 350.org day of action. For more information about the global day of action, please visit www.350.org.

Also at 3pm, artists Nancy Dwyer, Ethan Bond-Watts and Rebecca Schwarz from the Human = Landscape exhibition and 350.org guest speakers including ecologist, activist and Middlebury College research scholar Amy Seidl will give talks in the gallery. The procession will culminate in City Hall Park around 4pm, to be followed by a series of speakers on the back plaza of the Firehouse Center and a formal panel discussion entitled Art and Environmental Intervention, featuring artists Cameron Davis, John Anderson,
Patrick Marold and Firehouse Gallery Curator Christopher Thompson.

OCTOBER 24th SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

2pm: Artists and activists gather at various locations and begin walk to Firehouse Center
and City Hall Park

3pm: Tower bells at Ira Allen Chapel, The Firehouse Center and other locations are rung
350 times.

3pm – 6pm: Closing reception at the Firehouse Center for the exhibition Human = Landscape, featuring a cash bar and musical performances.

3pm: Speakers in the Firehouse Gallery:
• Ethan Bond-Watts, Human = Landscape artist
• Nancy Dwyer, Human = Landscape artist
• Rebecca Schwarz, Human = Landscape artist
• Amy Seidl, Ecologist, activist and Middlebury College research scholar

4pm: Speakers on the Firehouse Plaza in City Hall Park:
• Orin Langelle, Global Justice Ecology Project
• Elizabeth Sawin, Program Director, Sustainability Institute
• Jeff Wolfe, CEO, groSolar

4:30pm: Panel Discussion in the Firehouse Center, Art and Environmental Intervention, featuring artists Cameron Davis, John Anderson, Patrick Marold and Firehouse Gallery Curator Christopher Thompson.
Location: Firehouse Center for the Visual Arts
Human=Landscape

Human=Landscape

August 14–October 24, 2009
HUMAN=LANDSCAPE: Aesthetics of a Carbon Constrained Future, an exhibition at the Firehouse Gallery, poses several questions to its Vermont audience: How has our vision of the landscape evolved over-time in response to changing economic realities? What makes a landscape “beautiful” or “ugly”? What might a sustainable-energy rural landscape of 2020 look like?

This exhibition, part of The Energy Project, a parternship between ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center at the Leahy Center for Lake Champlain and BCA, with support from the University of Vermont, seeks to explore the future of the Vermont landscape as it grapples with the aesthetic challenges of a carbon-constrained world.

Anchored by Patrick Marold’s monumental installation of a thousand windmills lit by the wind, and adjacent to Route 89 at Technology Park (click here for directions), the exhibition will include works both in the gallery and beyond that blur the distinction between artist, architect, engineer and scientist. Within the gallery, visitors will experience the beauty and spectacle of alternative energy through kinetic art and sustainable energy technologies. They will witness the potential of wind power and alternative energy thru videos of Andrea Polli’s Queensbridge Wind Power and videos of Theo Jansen’s Strandbeest life-like wind powered sculptures. The Firehouse Center’s second floor will be transformed into a laboratory featuring specially commissioned artists exploring the elements that will shape our landscape in a sustainable-energy future. From practical to fanciful, from high-tech to low-tech, micro-houses, and inflatable dwellings using heat vented from public buildings, visitors will engage with an array of tools for re-imagining our future landscape. Capturing the exhibition’s optimism for the future, the Firehouse’s fourth floor will present unique wind and sustainable energy technology solutions by students from UVM’s school of engineering and global high-school teams participating in the International Challenge project. Other student projects on exhibition in the building will include a winning design for a future zero-carbon-footprint building on UVM’s campus by UVM’s Environmental Art and Architectural class.

Featured Artists:
ALEX S. MACLEAN
ANDREA POLLI
ARTHUR CHUKHMAN
CAMERON DAVIS
CHRISTOPHER MIR
R. ELLIOTT KATZ
ETHAN BOND-WATTS
GUY ROBERTS
H. KEITH WAGNER
JEAN-PIERRE ROY
JED CRYSTAL
JOHN ANDERSON
MEGAN BISBEE-DURLAM
ALEX CARVER
CHRISTOPHER NORTH
NANCY DWYER
CAROLINE BYRNE
PATRICK MAROLD
REBECCA SCHWARZ
THEO JANSEN
TOM HANSELL
TED MONTGOMERY
BRIAN A. WHITNEY
WESLEY BASCOM
GARY R. HALL

Exhibition sponsored by The Jan & David Blittersdorf Foundation, The Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, Seventh Generation, Green Mountain Power, Burlington International Airport, and the Lintilhac Foundation.
Location: Firehouse Gallery