Eco Art:

Man's effect on nature expressed in art

By Charles Bonenti

New Marlboro

Some subjects are loaded ones for art.

Take world hunger -- or racial discrimination. It's too easy to get preachy and indignant and before you know it you've crossed the line into propaganda -- or just bad taste.

The trick is to make a point vividly without milking the subject for all its worth -- or at least not doing it too obviously.

The exhibition "Eco Art" -- a look at man's effect on nature -- at the Meeting House Gallery now through Sept. 22 -- tiptoes through this minefield of possibilities with a handful of inspired interpretations, several casualties of overstatement and a lot in between.

This is a big show with 33 invited artists, most from the Berkshires but a few beyond, so the range of interpretations is free and loose and, at times, downright puzzling. A still-life with bottles, for example, may say something about recycling, but it's a stretch. And a day diary with flower doodles is charming, but ...

More to the point is Nancy Ruben's view of the urbanization of the landscape as a Toile-de-Jouy panel. Encroaching development, the clear-cutting of woodlands, the threat to wildlife are all expressed as pastoral vignettes in this traditional French treatment of wallpaper and fabric. It is a witty, inspired use of a historical form to present a modern issue.

In the same vein, Ann Fredericks' treatment of leaves from diseased-threatened tree species, as gold-leafed Olympic-style crowns, is equally original, despite some pretty hefty labeling. Again, a modern-day topic is rendered as an historic artifact, giving a kick to the presentation.

Dale Cullerton's wire-mesh trap populated with carved-stone fish suggests the meagerness of subsistence living and the impoverishment that comes from overfishing.

Less about man and nature than about nature itself, Walton Ford's big oil, in the style of John James Aududon, of gulls fighting over a fish is an arresting, beautifully rendered study of savagery in the air.

Julia Erickson's array of seed pods, leaves, bundles of twigs and other gleanings from the field is both a look at the shapes and textures of nature and an abstract design composition in itself.

Where overstatement runs free is in the two videos -- one by Penny and Asa Hardcastle imposing stock quotes and anti-consumption messages over the action at a market checkout counter, and the other by Sanjiban Sellew that has a red liquid (blood, we assume) flowing from scarred soil and also raining onto flower petals. Both make their points with a sledgehammer.

There are original, inventive things to be said about man's effect on nature. Eco Art offers a few examples, but for its size, not nearly enough.

The Meeting House Gallery on the village green (Route 57) in New Marlboro, is open Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 4 or by appointment. Call (413) 229-8635.