Message to the Future
Better Living Through Chemistry
First Billboard
2084 Billboard
Erosion
Vanishing Gold
Feathers Billboard
Help
The Last Billboard
Choices
Moon Tracks
Carpool
The Wasteland
Memorial
Twin Towers
Tornado
ARTIST STATEMENT
In my art I try to balance the tension between beauty and environmental destruction in portraying the changes in our world. We live in exciting, precarious times. Today the most dramatic changes are experienced instantly …. there is world wide information available to all through the internet, cell phones and Facebook. With it comes an obsession for freedom, even for revolution.
Since the sixties I have painted many aspects of nature, the dark volcanic islands of the Galapagos, the fierce beauty of the Grand Canyon, the incredible vanishing animals of Africa as well as the degradation of the wilderness of America. The more I traveled, the more I witnessed these changes worldwide. My response was to paint a Billboard Series and the Industrial Park Series using silver paint, iridescent pigments, and dimensional collage materials that parallel the actual detritus of today’s toxic environment.
In true George Orwellian doublespeak, industry calls its sites “parks,” its clear cutting, “making open space,” its killing, “harvesting,” and of course denies global warming. Today, with the population reaching 7 billion, and the need for the necessities of life, such as food, water, and education, environmental awareness and active conservation are crucial to the health of the world.
The Storm
BIO
My first New York City exhibit in 1969 was called “Elegy to Nature”. Since then I have been painting and drawing the many diverse aspects of the landscape — fascinated by our love, yet exploitation of nature.
I grew up in Western PA, attended Carnegie Mellon University and after graduation came to New York City to live, paint, and earn my Master’s Degree at NYU which enabled me to teach art at Pace University and Pratt Art School.
My most recent work is a series of iridescent paintings called Industrial Park, dealing with pollution, the extinction of plants, animals and global disasters. These works use oil paint with iridescent pigments to simulate the look of broken glass, mine tailings and rainbow like oil spills. In 1980, after a serious car accident and a long recovery, a sense of the fragility of life tinged my work.
During the seventies I had four one woman shows in New York City, received a C.A.P.S. NY state graphics award, proposed and worked on 2 Heresies issues and wrote an article on ECOTAGE. Trips to the Galapagos Islands, Africa, the Grand Canyon and other travels stimulated my series of Billboard paintings depicting the hotspots of the world.
Grants from The Pollack-Krasner Foundation (2008), The Vogelstein and The Puffin Foundation enabled me to publish two catalogs and exhibit my Mythmaker series of 20 drawings at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Wash DC 2004-05. My work is in the permanent collections of many museums: the National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C., the Telfair, the Guild Hall, the Fogg Art Museum, the Hunterdon, the Islip Museum, the Long Island Museum and the Heckscher Museum.
In March of 2008 I exhibited my political and ecological works at the National Museum, called Museo de los Ninos in San José, Costa Rica. This exhibit included works on 9/11 which became part of the museums permanent collection.
In September 2010, I was given a solo show of my Industrial Park works at the Islip Museum, New York called Future Tense. In April, 2011, I had a one-person exhibit called Vital Signs, on the endangered environment at the South Street Gallery in Greenport, NY.
My work, being of a political and environmental nature has required me to look for non-commercial spaces for exhibition and appreciation.
To view more of Janets's work, please go to: Janet Culbertson
RECENT EXHIBITIONS
2012 “Possible Peril” Accola /Griefin Gallery, Chelsea, NY
2011 “Vital Signs,” South St. Gallery “ Landscape Today,” 2010, “Future Tense.” Islip Museum, NY
2008 Galeria-National de San Jose, Costa Rica, “The Sacred Earth”;
Floyd Memorial Library, Greenport, NY, “Billboards”
2006 Seton Hill Univ. Greensburg, PA “Tomorrows Landscape”
2004-05 The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Wash. DC,
“Mythmaker” series 20 Eco-feminist drawings from 1974
MD Hall of Creative Arts, Annapolis, MD,
“Smart growth?” Ill. Central College, East Peoria, “Tomorrow’s Landscape”
2003 Cambridge Multicultural Arts Ctr., MA “Today’s Landscape” &
Nassau county Museum at Hewett Library, Envirnmental works.
2002 University of Nebraska, Omaha — “Earth First”
2001 Friends Academy, Locust Valley, NY (three artists)
ISSUE:
S P R I N G
2013
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