SARA PAULA HOFFMAN
Awaiting the Sun King
Oil is a risky business, and BP has survived many disasters – natural and man-made – but there is no precedent for the raw anger about its technical incompetence generated by the Gulf of Mexico crisis. At the heart of America's fury with BP is the knowledge that the corporation was exposed three times between 2004 and 2006 for causing death and destruction because of its ruthless cost-cutting, poor maintenance and avoidance of basic safety laws. The litany of excuses uttered by BP executives to congressional hearings explaining an oil spill in Alaska, an explosion at the company's refinery in Texas City that killed 15, and the tilting of the Thunder Horse oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico fed anger in Washington and across the United States.
The Guardian June 2, 2010, Tom Bower
How the Sun King, John Browne, Sank BP
The Guardian June 2, 2010, Tom Bower
How the Sun King, John Browne, Sank BP
NICKI KLEPPER
Pillars in Memoriam
Pillars in Memoriam was created at Lazaretto Creek in Tybee Island, Georgia. This piece calls on the viewer to question their perception of place. Lazaretto Creek is named after its post-colonial use of the land as a quarantine hospital for incoming slave ships. This piece, and the artist's coinciding body of work, presents a layered assessment of the relationship between nature and culture; place and history. Society, history, and culture contour a natural space and leave an everlasting impression.
CURTIS BARTONE
Aphrodisiac
The large-scale etching, Aphrodisiac, mourns the senseless killing of animals, many of whom are already threatened or endangered, in the name of traditional medicine.
CURTIS BARTONE
Tempest
Water to Blood, Frogs, Locusts, and Tempest Raining Fire are from a group of ten etchings, called “Plague Poems,” produced during a two-month printmaking residency at Emmanuel College in Boston, Massachusetts. The work uses the Old-Testament Plagues of Egypt as a point of departure to comment on contemporary environmental issues and crises, where modern “plagues” are often being perpetuated by a rejection of science and a lack of compassion for the earth and the other living things that inhabit it.