exhibition statement | exhibition history | artists' bios

Eco Echo: Unnatural Selection

Exhibitions by San Francisco Bay Area artists on the subject of global and local ecologies

Artists: Anne Beck, Barbara Boissevain, Ginger Burrell, Judith Selby Lang, Richard Lang, Kent Manske, Michelle Wilson, Nanette Wylde

Exhibition Statement

We live in a time of heightened ecological awareness and denial. Climate change, environmental degradation, species extinction, bio-engineering, and genetic modifications are just a few of the issues in which actions, decisions and consequences are engaging our social and political conversations.

Ecology also refers to a sort of housekeeping--the manner and nature with which environments are cared for. Technology and the increased scale of our actions has resulted in ecological effects which transcend physical borders, often causing individual entities to lose control of the care and quality of their physical existence; and providing others opportunities for both care taking and/or exploitation.

Our understanding of ecological issues is tied to the wonder and magnificence of science; the scope and reach of which has permeated our existence. Science continues to discover, uncover and invent phenomena beyond common comprehension, often inserting these into our personal lives without our knowledge, consent, or well-being as priorities.The scientific paradigm provides many positive outcomes yet these often include harmful and sometimes unacknowledged negative effects. Monoculture, medical interventions, genetically modified foods, robotics, and pharmaceuticals are obvious examples. These concerns encircle our planet, and with each minute movement, create waves of concern and delight--echos which reverberate in the lives, if not the minds, of earth's inhabitants.

Eco Echo: Unnatural Selection presents an array of artists who respond to aspects of our ecological environment in unexpected and diverse ways. Each artist is grappling with some ecological concern, creating echos which are celebratory, poignant, beautiful, complex, and provide opportunity for audience examination and reflection.
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Exhibition History

Gallery Route One, September 13 - October 20, 2019
Point Reyes, California
pdf Gallery Guide for Eco Echo at Gallery Route One

ARTLab at Cubberly, September 15 - 23, 2018
Palo Alto, California
Eco Echo: Art and Environment Laboratory
with a CoLABorative screen printing event, offered free during the opening reception, a Kokedama hanging art garden workshop, and more!

WORKS/San José, March 3 - April 15, 2018
pdf Gallery Guide for Eco Echo at WORKS San José

Images from Gallery Route One installation



Title wall with What's for Supper? by Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang



Barbara Boissevain's The Trees Will Outlive Us, Kent Manske's San Francisco Bay, Nanette Wylde's Fishbowl Facts and one from Anne Beck's The Intention to Know



Nanette Wylde's O Humboldt, O Muir: World Views, Kent Manske's Nests, Nanette Wylde's On Longing, Manske and Wylde's Meaning Maker, the Lang's What's for Supper?, and Ginger Burrell's artist's books on the pedestal in the foreground



Two from Anne Beck's The Intention to Know

Images from WORKS/San José installation



WORKS' banner with Coral Reef augment



Entrance to WORKS with Anne Beck's All the King's Horses



Kent Manske's Genetic Garden: v3.2.18 on right and TreeMan on far wall



Judith Selby Lang's beach plastic neckware on left, Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang's What's for Supper? on the far wall, Kent Manske's artist's books: Corpus Animare in foreground



14 prints from the On Longing series by Nanette Wylde



Gallery view



Detail of Barbara Boissevain's Cupertino Cement Factory



Screen image of Nanette Wylde's Karoyakani augment against Michelle Wilson's Water Lines



The library of inspirational reading . . .

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Eco Echos Artists' Bios

Anne Beck works collaboratively and independently in a variety of media from painting to print and book making to public intervention. Broadly, she is exploring the roles of amateur naturalist and lay surveyor of the current landscape--collecting specimens and recording data, cataloguing that which seems useful, and investigating further that which seems impermeable. This is all in the context of envisioning a sustainable path forward for herself and the planet, which is often a playful exercise in the face of absurd and complex circumstance. Beck has received residency awards from the Virginia Center of Creative Arts, Can Serrat in El Bruc, Spain, Oberpfalzer Kunstlerhaus in Schwandorf, Germany, was Barstow Artist-in-Residence at Central Michigan University, and is a 2015 recipient of the Fath Scholarship for Artists and Artisans of the Book from the Rare Book School in Charlottesville, Virginia.
annebeckprojects.com

Barbara Boissevain a photographer and visual artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She uses a camera to explore our strange and beautiful world while documenting various environmental and social justice issues. Boissevain is concerned about the problems communities and individuals face when living alongside toxic sites without their full knowledge or consent. She considers this situation to be one of the biggest civil rights issues of our time and hopes to educate, inspire and inform viewers through photography. Boissevain has an MFA from San José State University.
barbaraboissevain.photoshelter.com

Ginger Burrell is an artist and teacher. She often collaborates with her husband, Greg, who is adept at U-turns because there is something that really needs photographed. She has her BFA in Photography from San José State University. She teaches book arts at the Palo Alto Art Center and in her home studio. Ginger's primary medium is artist books. Her work includes photography, monotype and composite imagery and explores a range of topics from the personal, to the political, to the universal. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and her books are held in private and public collections.
www.gingerburrell.com

Richard Lang and Judith Selby Lang (as a collaborative team) have been visiting Kehoe Beach, Point Reyes National Seashore in Northern California since 1999. They have rambled 1000 meters of tideline of this one beach hundreds of times to gather plastic debris washing out of the Pacifc Ocean, and from this one beach have collected over two tons of material. By carefully collecting and "curating" the bits of plastic, the Langs fashion it into works of art that matter-of-factly show, with minimal artifice, the material as it is. The viewer is often surprised that this colorful stuff is the thermoplastic junk of our throwaway culture.
www.beachplastic.com www.plasticforever.blogspot.com

Kent Manske creates images and symbols to inquire, process, manage, convey and assign meaning to ideas about human existence. He uses traditional and digital printmaking processes to create one-of-a-kind and editioned prints, books and art objects. His work is in many collections including The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and The Oakland Museum of California. Manske has an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
preneo.org/kent

Michelle Wilson is a papermaker, printmaker, book and installation artist. She is also one-half of the ongoing collaborative, political art team BOOK BOMBS. She has exhibited regionally, nationally and internationally. Her work is in signifcant international collections. She is a past Artist-in-Residence at the David and Julia White Colony in Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica, the Jentel Artist Residency Program. Grants received include a Puffin Foundation Grant, a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Project Streaming Grant, and an Artist-Investigator Grant from San Francisco's Triangle Arts Lab. Creative Capital designated her as an "On Our Radar" artist in 2015.
www.michellewilsonprojects.com

California born, Nanette Wylde is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and cultural worker making socially reflective, and often language-based works of hybrid media. Wylde's interests include: language, personality, difference, beliefs, systems, ideas, movement, re ection, identity, perceptions, structures, stories, socialization, definitions, context, memory, experience, change, the natural world, and residue. Wylde has a BA is in Behavioral Science from San José State University. Her MFA is in Interactive Multimedia and Printmaking from Ohio State University. She is Professor Emerita of Art and Art History at California State University, Chico.
preneo.org/nwylde

exhibition statement | exhibition history | artists' bios