Conspiring with Nature
art by Laura Hartford, Maidens of the Cosmic Body Running, Cortney Moses, Todd Smith, and Jo-Ann Van Reeuwyk.
on view April 30 - May 30, 2010
OPENING RECEPTION Friday, April 30, 7-10 p.m. with a free concert by Interstates and Fork in Socket beginning at 8:00 p.m.
Conspiring With Nature is a multimedia art exhibit featuring local and regional artists whose work gets them interacting with the natural world in interesting ways. For example, Louisville-based artist Todd Smith ends up in treetops to make his art. By photographing long exposures of himself climbing trees while wearing a suit of lights, he makes a visual record of his tree climbs.
Other artists in the exhibit work with natural materials in slightly more traditional ways. Jo-Ann Van Reeuwyk and Cortney Moses work with sticks, eggs, rocks, plants, and animal guts to make their sculptural art.
Maidens of the Cosmic Body Running is the two person artist team made up of Lisa Siders and Denise Burge. They say their work seeks to “reflect and personify the constant state of ecstasy (metamorphosis, decay, birth) that is the natural world.” For this exhibit, they show two pieces - Double Fantasy, a string drawing of the text ‘fanstasy’ mirrored in a circular shape, and Maiden in the Forest in the Maiden, a video of a female running projected onto two charcoal drawings of a forest.
In Laura Hartford’s photo-based artwork, she often combines flora and fauna with contemporary portraiture. Over the last eight years she has photographed her son, Jake, in elaborately constructed scenes made up mostly of natural materials. Her artworks are meditations on home and family as much as they are meditations on the fecundity and cycles of nature.
Artist Website Links:
Maidens of the Cosmic Body Running
Cortney Moses
