quotes from
Portland: Eco-Art Central

"Artist Marne Lucas is also interested in the union of man and nature--or, more often, woman and nature. In her ongoing self-portrait series, she reaches for and often attains a quasi-mystical melding of subject matter--herself as stylized earth mother--and her natural surroundings. In Lichen Anklepanties, clad only in an inscrutable fungal undergarment, she opens herself to a great, moss-covered tree, a vision of impregnation that is wryly, if obviously, metaphoric: phallic verticality bisecting recumbent soil as the tree, with its cones and seeds, implants new life into fertile ground."
"Bruce Conkle, arguably the Northwest's preeminent eco-artist, pivots in his work between dystopian and utopian modes. He is known for his whimsical Bigfoot series and iconic melting snowman sculptures (made of real snow from Mount Hood), which presage global warming. In 'Friendlier Fire', his 2008 outing at Rocksbox, Conkle peered through the glass darkly and saw T.G.I. Doomsday, a Rube Goldberg-like installation that showed a desolated post-nuclear White House, its once-grand fireplace lit only by the flickering shadow of a propane burner. Yet Conkle maintains his vision of the future is not entirely bleak: "I'm skeptical of the future of our race, given the way things are going, but I am not a nihilist." In fact, like Koivunen, he sees a silver lining in environmental catastrophe, as in his colorful pencil drawing, New Beginning, in which a happy rainbow rings a mushroom cloud."
"Conkle and Lucas continue this chipper, glass-half-full tack in projects they undertake in the collective they helm, Blinglab. The group espouses a style they dub "Eco-Baroque," a glittery fantasy world that, according to Conkle, incorporates motifs such as "rainbows, mounds and strands of moss, crystals, geodes, seashells, and honeycombs." In February 2009, Blinglab's exhibition 'Warlord Sun King' at Marylhurst University's "Art Gym" riffed on Louis XIV-era extravagance, dolling up the gallery as Versailles' Hall of Mirrors, except with aluminum foil in lieu of mirrored panels and recycled paint instead of gilding. Ecology does not necessarily equal apocalypse, Conkle and Lucas (Blinglab) suggests, nor must eco-art's earnestness curdle into the dour; there is wit, fun, and even eye candy to be had at the dawn of the Eco-Baroque."


By Richard Speer
art ltd. March 2009
link to the online version


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