"Combining Nature & Science"

When Hildy and I went to the “Out of this World,” art exhibit in Albany International Airport, it really made me realize how artists often use their own works to reflect environmental and even political issues. As we both made our way through the different parts of the overall exhibit, it became apparent to me that this was unlike anything I had ever seen in person before. The exhibits were certainly not ordinary or expected. In fact, the exhibits that represent pieces of nature have mediums or are made out of materials that represent the morals within present-day society. What I mean by that is the materials used within the exhibit are often made in factories and are in turn mass-produced. I found this particularly interesting because the pieces themselves often represented the beauty of nature.
This particular exhibit intrigued me on another level because the artists turned ordinary things into pieces of art that make an observer ask themselves a lot of questions. One of my favorite parts of the exhibit was the piece, Seven Columns of Commerce and Pleasure by Chris Harvey. This piece was particularly puzzling for me to look at. In my first glance, it reminded me of the columns that are often outside of buildings that are important for the community. For example, a courthouse, a college building, a museum, or a legislative building may have pillars on the steps of the building to emphasize order and structure. Aesthetically, this makes a building look larger than life and emphasizes the fact that the community may need this building to keep law and order. Overall, it symbolizes importance, grandeur, and wealth. Although the pillars that Harvey created also stand tall and proud and could even represent order, they also represent a type of freedom that I really liked. The varied, vibrant colors exude a type of excitement that plain white pillars on a building do not. It seems as if these pillars represent some type of emotional or psychological freedom while the spacing between each pillar could at the same time represent order and stability. At first look I thought that these pillars may just be a way for Harvey to deviate from the norm, but at a second glance it seemed as if they may have deeper meaning. I could be overanalyzing this but it seems to me that these pillars represent the perfect way of living. It is necessary to have order, structure, and stability of some kind to succeed, but it is also just as important to have excitement, variety, and a sense of wonder in life in order to stay sane and lively at best. This piece of work really intrigued me despite the fact that my reading of it could be completely wrong.
I also thoroughly enjoyed one of David Miller’s pieces, Midnight in the Garden of the Sea. I thought this was very interesting because it depicted a very naturalistic scene while using the sciences as the materials to create it. For example, some of the ocean life is created out of geometric shapes. What I thought to be a worm-like creature swimming through this dark sea was made out of lines and circles. The geometry within this creature was emphasized with the red paint Miller used to draw it. He also separated each of the lines and made the creature appear more like an architectural design than an actual organism. All of the ocean life throughout this piece represents the “beauty” of geometry and design. I really liked the whole concept of combining nature with science and industry.
Overall this exhibit at the Albany International Airport was something that I had never even imagined would be created. I believe that this type of art work shows the artists’ concern with the environment and with the portrayal of the environment.

~Kara Livingston