The exhibit, If Not Now, on view from July 16 to October 16th presents artwork by eight artists whose work draws attention to destructive environmental impacts dating to the beginning of the industrial revolution. The work posits the questions: what can be done now; when might the next impact occur and who will take these challenges on?

Many of the artists have collaborated with scientists and environmentalists to seek solutions. Others create work that provides a visual realization of how pollution impacts the air we breathe, the water we drink, the oceans and earth that we harvest and land that we live on. Artists are: Kim Abeles (California) a multi-media artist and early pioneer in the environmental art movement who utilizes smog as a printmaking medium; Jean Benvenuto (Portsmouth) focused the subject of her paintings on holding ponds created to contain and clean rainwater from road run-off; Rosemary Feit Covey (Virginia) printmaker and painter uses print media to present the intricate web of interconnected root systems; Barbara Hennig-Loomis (Virginia) painter and silver-point artist focused large-scale drawings on ghost forests, a result of rising sea-levels. Printmaker and book artist Nicole Pietrantoni (Washington State), Implications, Detail creates large scale installation of books that share the impact of melting glaciers. Multi-media artist and photographer Pam Ponce (Virginia) records the impact that drought had on the Great Dismal Swamp and rising sea-levels around Virginia’s barrier islands. John Sabraw, of Ohio incorporates scientific research into his artwork creating paint from iron oxides that are a remnant of acid run-off from former mining sites, including around the Chesapeake Bay. And, Millicent Young of New York is a sculptor whose work utilizes horse hair that speaks toward the fragility of life itself.

Photo: Nicole Pietrantoni, Implications, detail with text by Devon Wooten.

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