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Oil Spill Animals: Stories of the Natural World
In 2011, Susan Hagen's carvings were on display outdoors at the Schuykill Center in Philadelphia, PA, as part of the group exhibit titled Facts and Fables. Her hand-carved wood sculptures memorialized the thousands of animals killed, harmed or endangered by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Her sculptures are carved from white cedar, weathered outdoors, and mounted on stainless steel rods. The installation allowed viewers to visualize the animals directly affected by the oil spill and to consider the long-term repercussions of our reliance on fossil fuels.
Review in the Philadelphia Inquirer, 7/17/11
The Facts and Fables group exhibition included seven site-specific works about stories of the natural world, with a variety of artistic perspectives, from fictional to factual. The exhibition asksed important questions about the human experience of the environment: How do stories affect our understanding of nature? How do we represent our environmental impact? What is true nature and what is fabricated, and how can we tell the difference? Is our experience of nature limited by our human abilities to sense the world around us? The seven artists used diverse methods to address such questions: memorials, guidebooks, faux landscapes, fairy tale crime scenes, live video feeds, visual perception tracking, distortion of scale, predictions and invitations. Some artists told stories, while others examines the ways stories are created, or retold old stories to unearth new ideas. The artists combined antiquated methods with innovative technology to offer the viewer a range of experience and ways to interact with the natural world.
This exhibition was made possible by a generous grant from The William Penn Foundation.
The
Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education
8480 Hagy's Mill Rd
Philadelphia, PA 19128
www.schuylkillcenter.org
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