“HOT” will address climate change and global warming. With temperatures rising around the world, artists are exploring ideas about climate change, its causes, and effects.
The exhibition features 17 student and alumni artists from Humboldt State, including Regina Case, Julie Clark, Tim Clewell, Gio King, Haley Davis, Lizzy Dostal, Claire Esselstrom, Elisa Griego-Martinez, Chelsee Harris, Harley Hinkle, David Jordan, Anna Kowalczyk, Anna Ladd, Malia Matsumoto, Bethany Matthis-Montgomery, Terry Torgerson, and David White.
Also appearing at the Third Street Gallery is “Cultivated Ecologies,” an interdisciplinary video and essay project by Cynthia Hooper, an artist and professor at College of the Redwoods.
The exhibition examines the extensively reconfigured network of wetland refuges scattered across California’s Central Valley. Though now disconnected and drastically diminished, these wetlands remain ecologically significant, and have been designed to successfully coexist amid one of our planet’s most intensively cultivated and astonishingly productive agricultural regions.
The sites are critical stops for millions of migratory birds along the Pacific Flyway, as well as year-round havens for countless local species. Though carefully tended and protected by decades of legislative efforts, these habitats nevertheless face significant challenges.
Hooper’s four non-narrative experimental documentary videos patiently depict the graceful and seasonally shifting characteristics of these austere and dramatically mediated habitats. The videos stealthily observe the interactions between refuge wildlife, the infrastructure that supports it, and the human populations that make forays into these novel ecosystems. Accompanying essays in the exhibition describe the historical, hydrological, ecological, and political complexities of these carefully engineered places.
“The sociological complexities built into these refuges mimic our cultural frictions at large,” Hooper says. “Yet these sites also foster interactions between diverse human communities in addition to those between humans and nature.”
HSU Third Street Gallery will host a gallery talk by the Hooper on Saturday, Feb. 24 at 3 p.m. Come meet the artist as she guides you through her exhibition.
“HOT” and “Cultivated Ecologies” will run from Jan. 29 through March 4. The gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday, noon–5 p.m.
The gallery will host a public reception for the artists on Saturday, Feb. 3, from 6-9 p.m., during Eureka Main Street’s Arts Alive Program.
Third Street Gallery is located at 416 Third Street in Eureka, California. Admission is free for all. Groups are encouraged to call ahead to arrange tours. For more information call (707) 443-6363 or visit the gallery’s website at www.humboldt.edu/third.