In “Pondering Environmental Anxieties,” Patricia Fietta and George LeMaitre have put together an extravagant call and response phenomenon to be displayed this May at Future Lab(s) Gallery in North Adams, Massachusetts.
Utilizing the rather large, elongated space of the gallery, the pair has gathered a variety of installations in several different mediums, all heartfelt, yet many a humorous response to the ever-growing problem of environmental instability. Ranging from graphics to sculptures and everything in between, Fietta and LeMaitre explore the conceptual aesthetics of the very act of the Earth’s ultimate survival in the face of climate change denial and offer inescapable knowledge and information.
The artists are master storytellers, their knowledge taking the forefront of this exhibition in the form of both image and words. Almost every individual work in the show is informative. The expansive “Ocean Acidification” of Fietta’s is rapt with blue waters and individual life forms filling the surface. A reaction to the instability of the oceans, the artist responds with poetic yet dire messaging:
“Carbon dioxide emissions are making
The oceans more acidic,
Making it harder for shellfish, corals,
And types of plankton to survive.”
There is no room for interpretation, questioning or avoiding the consequences of environmental ignorance. The possibility of the endless momentum of the extinction of species is not in some apocalyptic future — it is now. This piece takes a survey of the beauty of diversity in the oceans, the innocence of its denizens, the grave injustice put upon nature by inhumanity and selfishness.