Extinct! Endangered Species & Habitats
Exhibition at Lowell's Brush Art Gallery and Studios
By: Erica H. Adams - 01/21/2010
Salton Sea, a photograph by Constance Sawyer who worked with scientists at evaporating Salton Sea.
Special speaker Constance Sawyer wrote Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water, Our World (2008).
Shen Shen Luo’s hand-drawn animation Old City was shown at the MFA and, Tacome 2009 International Film Festival.
Xenicus Path, 2009, John Guy Petruzzi explores the decline of biodiversity.
Irene Pizzolante designed the poster Not Fur You to raise public awareness about the cruelty of the fur trade.
Progress 2, Ani Avanian's large-scale drawing depicts an ocean of electronic trash.
Las Americas/ Trickle Down Theory by Erica H. Adams a large-scale, scrap material collage redraws the U.S. map.
Say Copenhagen or Kyoto, it suggests climate change conferences. In Lowell, the exhibit Extinct! Endangered Species and Habitats opens to the public, January 23rd (Saturday 2-4 pm) at City of Lowell gallery Brush with History Inc. ("The Brush").
Artworks explore climate change and our relationship to the environment and are by the students and faculty of SMFA /School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in partnership with Tufts University.
Extinct! features science-based gallery talks and exhibits works in animation and video; large-scale drawing and collage; painting, prints and photographs. The exhibit runs from January 23 - February 21, 2010 at The Brush gallery in Lowell.
Co-curated by SMFA faculty Erica H. Adams and SMFA graduate student John Guy Petruzzi, Extinct inaugurates The Brush gallery's Student Curator program. Petruzzi was one of nine graduate students chosen in Boston to exhibit in The Next Generation III (12/2009 - 2/2010) at Emerson College.
Related gallery talks connect art to science, January 30th (Saturday 2-4 p.m.). Featured speaker, acclaimed science writer Deborah Cramer's slide-talk "Evolution and Extinction in the Ocean, the Source of Life" refers to artworks in Extinct! Two other speakers are SMFA student Constance Sawyer who worked with scientists at Salton Sea to create photographs in Extinct! and, Sabrina Hepburn, an ecologist and birder with TRC Environmental, in Lowell.
Deborah Cramer, a visiting scholar at MIT's Earth System Initiative, is the author of "Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World" companion book to the new, permanent Sant Ocean Hall at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, the nation's most heavily visited museum. Pulitzer prize winner E.O. Wilson said of her book: "It has often been proposed that the ultimate human future lies in space. It has become clear instead that the strange world really holding our future, now and forever, is the ocean. In Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World, Deborah Cramer explains why. Authoritatively researched, clearly written, and beautifully illustrated, this book is best of its class."?
Artists exhibiting in Extinct! Endangered Species and Habitats from School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston include: SMFA students: Ani Avanian, Rachel Grobstein, Christine Haag, Louisa Hudson, Vanessa Lee, Shen Shen Luo, Paige Mazurek, John Guy Petruzzi, Irene Pizzolante, Ivette Salom, Constance Sawyer, Sam Schreiber, Emily Somma, Tim Stark, Mark Tang, George Tsalikis and Biying Zhang; SMFA faculty: Erica H. Adams (Painting), Erika Adams (Prints) and Erica Daborn (Drawing).
Located behind the National Park Visitor Center, The Brush Gallery and Studios is found at 256 Market Street, near the Textile Museum.
http://www.thebrush.org








