Take Care

In their show Take Care, multimedia artists and friends Lindsey Lord and Abby Dennis have created a collection of works that emphasize our relationship with the world around us and the many ways it supports us. Through long processes and careful curation that emphasize the importance and surprising accessibility of sustainable creative practices, this show offers an environment in which to contemplate our current relationship with the natural world and invites us to consider how it could change for the better. 

When observing this show as a whole, I am initially struck by the calm, inviting color palette. It is full of soft greens and blues that undulate throughout the pieces, wrapping me in a blanket of peace. While the show emphasizes our need to care for our planet, it also offers an opportunity for self-care: to slow down and observe the flowing patterns and lines that travel across each piece. The artists are inviting viewers to take time to meditate on each composition and arrangement of colors and lines. 

In Lindsey Lord's All the Same and Ticky Tacky series, she offers an opportunity to contemplate a more reasonable balance between consumption and the use of the items we already have, even if they don't seem like tools for creating art. After first turning the delivery boxes into pulp, she dyed them with natural dyes she had access to, turned the naturally dyed pulp into paper, and then created a series of intricate miniature boxes that she used to create different compositions in each piece. The slow, methodical nature of this process serves as an example of what a renewed sense of intentionality in each of our lives could look like.

Similarly, Abby Dennis has created a series of woven pieces in her Sky and Forest Pixel series that are beautiful and intricately created. It is evident from any one of these pieces that each took a great deal of time to make. Dennis' attention to detail and ability to create beautiful colors converge into a collection of pieces that emphasize her dedication to the process. Like Lord, Dennis also creates her own dyes from natural sources, further emphasizing a positive relationship with the natural world and highlighting how possible it is to live and create sustainably. 

Take Care is an opportunity not just to take a breath and step away from the consumer-oriented, fast-paced world around us. Still, it is an invitation to live and move through the world differently, intentionally, and in harmony with nature.