Julie Lapping Rivera – “Caroline Dormon”
Curated by Nancy Haver and Olwen Dowling
September 7-30, 2021
We share the air.
Our lives are fundamentally interwoven with all lives on earth. This notion of the world as an interconnected organism was introduced in western scientific thought in the 1700s. And this belief was shared by numerous religious traditions long before that time.
The works in this exhibit express interconnectivity –and our existence as relational. In Julie Lapping Rivera’s woodcut, Caroline Dormon, the naturalist/ethnologist, is affiliated with her beloved pine. Through Meredith Broberg’s soft-ground etching Untitled (Boma), we see an intimate portrait of our imperiled primate kin. There is powerful irony in T. Klacsmann’s image Scherzo in Blue, with humankind’s water tower imposing over the turtle’s environment. In many of the works here we see elements that are overlapping—or not distinguishable, as in Joan Safford Wright’s woodcut, Wind, in which the water, cloud, reflections, and wind’s influence are inseparable.
At this moment in time we are profoundly aware that we are inextricably dependent on all life on earth.
“Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart.”
–Robin Wall Kimmerer
