Environmental Talk

Somewhere in Holland, Johannes Vermeer rolled over in his grave….

I am a big believer in the idea that everyone is entitled to their opinion.

I’m also a big believer in the idea that if your opinion is wacky, the rest of us are entitled to laugh at it. Not with it, at it.

While they may not be quite as funny as skateboarding dudes taking a nutshot on a railing or chimps dressed as people, “artists” who try to preach through their art are right up there.

If you suspect an article about artists who’ve “banded together” to respond to climate change would prove fertile ground when trolling for things to poke fun at, you can be pretty sure you won’t be disappointed.

Why is it that artists are always “banding together?” They don’t form groups, congregate or incorporate. They band together like Boy Scouts who got lost on a camping trip. The results are about the same, too. They just kind of stumble around until someone with more experience comes to rescue them.

If we’re all concerned about an obesity epidemic in this country, I think we should be at least as concerned about an irony outbreak as long as artists continue to pontificate about global warming while painting pictures with oil-based paints.

Almost as much fun as seeing wacky artists in the wild is to listen to the explanations of their projects. As the Boston Globe describes it, “Clara Wainwright walked along Harvard Avenue near her art studio while wearing cotton robes displaying endangered species, including the brown bear and African elephant. The Brookline artist hopes to generate conversations about climate change through her “Eco-Shaman Walkabout Project,” by drawing people to her workshops. There, she asks visitors to try on her robes and ponder the declining number of endangered species across the planet.”

Walking around in endangered species robes is more likely to generate conversations about the status of mental health care in this country. Among the endangered species Clara might want to ponder are people who wear suits and pay taxes so the Boston Center for the Arts can put on goofy exhibitions like this.

Also among the exhibitors at “Greed, Guilt and Grappling: Six Artists Respond to Climate Change” is Jay Critchley, who traveled up and down the East Coast filming people yawning and, presumably, planting trees to offset the carbon footprint of traveling up and down the East Coast.

Critchley was fascinated “when he discovered research indicating that yawning helps to cool the brain, and was inspired to draw an artistic connection between cooling one’s body and cooling the planet.” If we could just get the whole planet to go to this exhibit, we might have enough yawns to knock us back into an Ice Age.

The exhibition is running now through March 30, 2008 at the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts.

It’s a good reason to take the family to New York.

global warming, climate change, wacky artists, eco-shamans, and bears, oh my, Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the “Arts”