Sybase, Inc. Presents
Nature Speaks: Installations by Deborah Kennedy
September 25 - December 10, 1999 and January 4 - March 19, 2000
Foyer, Galleries I, II, III, and Mezzanine
Nature Speaks is an exhibition of site-specific environmental installations by contemporary artist Deborah Kennedy. The exhibition is interactive and provides a remarkable example of the integration of art with environmental studies.
Most Americans have reached the consensus that the protection of our environment is critical to our quality of life and well-being. Today most people participate in a household recycling program, and children born in the past 20 years have known a world in which the finite supply of natural resources has always been acknowledged. Yet this encouraging state of affairs is clearly at odds with many of today's environmental realities. On a global scale, we are experiencing ozone depletion, extensive water and ground pollution, threatening changes to the climate, accelerating rates of extinction and deforestation, and serious damage to the oceans. Locally, Santa Clara County is home to numerous Environmental Protection Agency-identified Superfund, and it seems every other car on the highways is a sport utility vehicle, notable for its high gas consumption and low standards of emission control.
The time is ripe for artists and visionaries to redefine and clarify a more ideal relationship with the earth, to encourage mindfulness of one's own actions, and to consider how they might impact the life systems around them. Deborah Kennedy, a resident of San Jose for many years, is one of the artists to have accepted this responsibility.
Nature Speaks highlights holistic, integrated ways of looking at the world, emphasizing the relationship between wholes and their parts, and the complexity of those relationships. This way of looking at the world—an outgrowth of modern systems theory as well as many ancient philosophical belief systems—is what many theorists believe is necessary for the development of new technology that operates like natural systems, functioning indefinitely without depletion or environmental degradation.
Kennedy's Project Nexus is an interactive, hands-on installation giving visitors the opportunity to experience a holistic model of the living environment. Kennedy constructed a large, 3-dimensional expression of a botanical illustration called the "yarnball theory of environmental complexity." The piece is part interactive art object and part musical instrument; a performance is scheduled for the evening of the members' reception. Another installation, EarthWise, presents an unusual landscape that suggests our deep relationship with the environment.
Close the Loop, an installation created by SCU students in collaboration with Kennedy, resembles an infinity symbol. A gap in it and alludes to a river of paper flowing through the campus and the need to "close the loop" by both recycling and using recycled materials. All the installations which comprise Nature Speaks will be described in more detail in the next issue of the de Saisset members' newsletter, which will include an interview with the artist.
The de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA 95053
© 2005 de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University - contact rnadel@scu.edu - phone: 408-554-4528