The Jackson Hole Art Association addresses global warming with its summer exhibition GAIA and Global Warming: Women Artists Champion Nature, kicking off with a free “art talk” at the Center for the Arts Theater on June 24, beginning at 7:30 pm. The show opens June 26 with a 5:30 pm artists’ reception at Artspace; the work remains on display through September 27, 2009.
Curated by Lowery Stokes Sims, GAIA looks at climate change through the eye of the arts. In other words, this is not an exhibit about climate change; it is a show examining–considering–the myriad ways the arts have explored themes of global warming, sustainability (which, in its true sense, refers to any activity or practice that, no matter how often executed, never leaves a corrosive environmental trace) and responsibility.
Hope Sandrow, Peggy Diggs, Margaret and Christine Wertheim (of the Institute for Figuring), Nancy Macko and Judy Cotton are participating artists.
So, GAIA is not land art–art that disappears or transforms–nor is it work designed for a specific public installation. The show is at once a retrospective and commentary. Tracing the “explosion” of enviro-art back to 2006, GAIA embraces the concept that artists are at the vanguard of environmentalism. Creativity and its derivative tactile arts reflect our experience of the world around us.
The Art Association notes that collaborations with “….scientists, statisticians, public policy wonks, municipal officials and arts organizations (has) set the protocol for this genre of art making. Artists thus have been at the vanguard of concretizing (sic) scientific, social, political and economic theory around the environment into specific projects which they have situated in venues for maximum exposure to the public.”
June 24th’s free panel discussion features moderator Lowery Stokes Sims, forest ecologist Nalini Nadkarni, and artists Nancy Macko, Susan Thulin and Lyndsay McCandless.
For more information, phone the Art Association at 307.733.6379.
Tammy Christel 
