Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Opening Soon at Eugene Binder Gallery in Marfa--Portable Landscape by Joianne Bittle

We first learned about this project on the website, Kickstarter.com, a place creative works can find funding...and we were delighted to learn this artwork will soon open in Marfa's Eugene Binder Gallery.  There's a video about the artwork on this page.

Joianne Bittle
Preserving Mass Extinction: A Portable Landscape
Opening reception: Friday, October 8, 2010, 9-11pm
October 9, 2010 - March, 2011(I have to check on the exact day)

"The Concept: A Collage of Past and Present
During the Permian period shallow seas covered much of what is dry land in present-day Southwest Texas millions of years ago. Referencing a 1960’s diorama of the Permian Sea from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City along with a diorama from the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum in Midland, TX, an invented landscape has been fabricated in the back of a cargo trailer. This artwork installation is what I call a “portable landscape” and the first in the series. My goal is to connect the ancient to the present environment with the people living in Marfa, Texas, and the surrounding area, and call forth the primordial sense one feels while traveling through this land.

The Construction:
 Like looking through the viewfinder of a camera, a large proscenium window exposes an intimate underwater scene diorama. A painted ultramarine blue-green background, a three-dimensional foreground with objects is constructed inside the trailer creating an ancient oasis, and offers sun-drenched viewers refuge as well as a look into the past.

The seabed landscape is barren incorporating a variety of casted and real fossils including brachiopods collected in the area. Today, these fossils continue to lie buried underground waiting to be discovered and maybe even owned!"

Eugene Binder Gallery
call for hours (432-729-3900 or 432-729-4949)
218 N. Highland Ave.
Marfa, TX 79843

Check out the artist's website:
http://www.joiannebittle.com/

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