Thursday, March 5, 2009

2/28/09 Closing Reception response:

Smiles are not easily generated when thoughts lodge on the precarious state of our planet. Life hovers on a precipice of incalculable dimensions. While its scale, time, and location cannot be predicted, the direction of the fall over the precipice seems clear. It is pointing toward disaster. Without diverting us from this worrisome scenario, Joel Tauber delights his audience by offering them an opportunity to smile. We delight in his efforts to rescue a pitiful and lonely tree from its plight in the middle of a parking lot. The care and affection he lavishes upon this tree, as shown in his video installation, is more than endearing. It is a lesson in good environmental stewardship.

Linda Weintraub
, writer, curator, educator, and artist and author of a series of college textbooks entitled Avant-Guardians: Textlets in Art and Ecology.