Lost in the Weeds: Climate Change and Human Nature

April 1, 2021
Updates

Featuring Artworks by
Crista Cammarato, Naomi Falk, Brian Frus, Tea Mäkipää, Christopher McNulty, Sean Miller and Connie Hwang, Laura Mongiovi, PlantBot Genetics Inc., SIGNALS, Robert Schaller, D.L. Simmons, Meredith Starr, Bethany Taylor, Turbidity Paintings Project, and Ryan Wurst

Curated by Craig Coleman with Assistant Curator Lilly McEachern

 

 

Exhibition and Events at ATHICA, Free and Open to All

On display in ATHICA’s Leathers’ Building location beginning April 17, 2021: Lost in the Weeds: Climate Change and Human Nature, an exhibition curated by Macon-based artist/curator Craig Coleman and featuring the works of eleven individual artists and four collaborative artist teams from across the country and beyond. All use the stuff of nature to convey the beauty, mystery, and inescapability of its rule, and perhaps, its ruin. The technology-infused works on display take form through new approaches to sculpture, installation, video, interactive sound and video, virtual reality, animation, blown glass, weaving, and more and derive their substance from natural materials, the ecosystems of the world, and data from natural phenomenon. Thought-provoking, energetic, and urgent, these works both analyze our changing environment and substantiate a new way for art to express the effects of humanity on our small planet.

Curator Coleman discusses the theme of the exhibition: “Weeds serve as a metaphor for being lost or buried in complications in both a political and personal sense. The works in this exhibition make connections between climate change (weeds will thrive in a warmer climate—edible crops will suffer), our political climate (are we “lost in the weeds”?), the ambiguity of how we define a weed (a plant that is in the wrong place), and ecology. Are weeds harbingers of climate change, are they hyper-objects, are they beautiful, are they an eyesore, do they damage or assist the growth of wanted plants?”

The contributing artists are based in Alabama, Colorado, Florida, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Germany.

See the Exhibition Catalog

About the Curator Craig Coleman
Craig Coleman is an artist who works in photography, installation, and digital media. Coleman received his BFA from Florida State University and his MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Currently he is Professor of Art and Chair of the Art Department at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.

His projects connect ideas and processes from experimental film with digital art and installation. His photographs, mixed media works, and installations have been shown in many venues across the U.S., including the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (Atlanta, GA), Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art (New York), Asheville Art Museum (NC), the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (Boulder, CO), SOIL Gallery (Seattle, WA), Down Arts Centre, (Downpatrick Northern Ireland), The Pensacola Museum of Art,  and the John Erickson Museum of Art (JEMA). Craig is also Director of XVAC Projects (Experimental Video Art in the Corridor), a series of video-mapping projects funded by a grant from the Knight Foundation.

More information: http://www.craigcoleman.us/ | CV: Craig Coleman

About the Assistant Curator Lilly McEachern
Lilly McEachern is a recent graduate of The University of Georgia where she earned a B.A. in Journalism with a minor in Art History and a certificate in Museum Studies. She currently works as Project Coordinator at the Steffen Thomas Museum of Art and at the Lyndon House Arts Center, where she is conducting research on the enslaved population of the Ware-Lyndon Historic House. McEachern is from Columbus, Georgia and resides in Athens.

More information: CV, Lilly McEachern

About the Artists and Works on Exhibition
Complete Press Release with Images and Artist Information

Press Release, Web Version

Press
Flagpole Magazine, April 21, 2021
Red and Black, April 17, 2021
Flagpole Magazine, May 5, 2021

Exhibition Catalog (Flippable)
Exhibition Catalog (PDF)

Image Gallery: Click to Expand, Arrow to Advance

 

Lost in the Weeds is sponsored in part by The James E. and Betty J. Huffer Foundation and the Georgia Council for the Arts through the appropriations of the Georgia General Assembly. Georgia Council for the Arts also receives support from its partner agency – the National Endowment for the Arts.