Dear Mother Nature: Defiled
March 20, 2015
Ilse Schreiber-Noll is our third Allison B. Allen Visiting Artist working with the theme Dear Mother Nature. Below is an excerpt from her Artist’s Statement:
“The series Defiled shows the destruction of the environment juxtaposed to its beauty with emphasis on the abolition of life in our soil, the earth’s living cover, the biosphere or the skin of the earth. Soil erosion has become a most serious environmental concern. Soil, the oceans, rivers and skies are the foundation of our lives and we know we cannot exist in their absence.
I grew up in a small town in Germany. Farms and woods surrounded my home.
Everybody tended a garden and I played and strolled through fields of mixed crops scattered with blue and red wildflowers. Nature at it’s best, beautiful and mysteriously frightening at the same time.
When I visited decades later the paradise of my youth was gone. The fields were turned into tennis courts; many wooded areas had been cleared to build housing developments. Technology had taken over and was on its way to destroy the beauty, pollute air and water and impoverish the once fertile soil.”
The theme Dear Mother Nature was suggested by Linda Weintraub of Art Now publications who will be conducting a public workshop and lecture later in April of this year.
Ilse Schreiber-Noll will be giving a public lecture on her work at the opening reception Tuesday March 24th at 5:30pm in the Mills Gallery. A special closing ceremony will take place April 14th also at 5:30 that will borrow from a Peruvian custom celebrating mother nature.