RUNOFF DOLPHIN SUITCASE

Since 1985, Kim Abeles has created many artworks about the environment with an emphasis on air pollution. With support from the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Project, Abeles created a sculpture depicting a dolphin using trash picked up from Los Angeles beaches. The sculpture entitled, "Runoff Dolphin Suitcase" puts the ethic of the value of preventing ocean pollution into vividly concrete terms. The familiarity of garbage runoff art stimulates an assessment of one's own contribution to the "runoff art." Storm drain runoff carries litter, plant debris; spilled oil, traces of rubber, asbestos, and lead from cars; as well as herbicides and pesticides from lawns. The sculpture was used to help children understand the effects of throwing trash into storm drains.

PRESIDENTIAL COMMEMORATIVE SMOG PLATES

Presidential Commemorative Smog Plates are portraits of U.S. Presidents from McKinley to Bush created from particulate matter in the polluted air. The cut stencils on dinnerplates were placed on my rooftop for varying lengths of time depending on the extent of their violation or apathy toward the distressed environment. Upon removal of the stencil, the Presidents' visages in smog are revealed, accompanied by their historical quotes about the environment and business.

McKinley became the appropriate starting point because his presidency occurred when two automotive factories were running full production in Detroit, thus marking a lifestyle and transportation mode which currently causes 70% of our air pollution. Also appropriate for the format of commemorative plates, McKinley was the first president to be packaged and sold to the American public.

Apathy and ignorance mark Reagan, Bush and Taft as the darkest smog collections. Ronald Reagan was notorious for his erroneous comments about the environment and apparently couldn't decide if problems existed. George Bush views himself as "The Environmental President," yet holds a contradictory record of effort and global cooperation. William Taft vowed to follow in the relatively pro-environmental footsteps of Theodore Roosevelt, but nestled in the hands of big business shortly after his election.

The United States has never had a President combining strength with insight to lead an energetic movement to restore our natural resources. However, both Roosevelts and James Carter made efforts toward a better environment. Consequently, though portrayed in smog, they appear with the palest pollution.

The remaining of the seventeen Presidents range in a relative scale of gray particulate. Their golden quotes reveal their attitudes toward competitive business and their blinders hiding the realities of the skies. Dwight Eisenhower reflects the 50s enthusiasm for industrial progress, that era when factory emissions were idealized as pink puffy cumulous clouds from smokestacks. Conversely, Woodrow Wilson's 1913 Inaugural Address haunts as a dark sermon warning of our industrial path and its effects on citizens. In January 1970, Richard Nixon's dramatic speech about restoring the environment was designed as a distraction from unrest on college campuses. Lyndon Johnson's attitude, indicative of many of our leaders, heralds "baring the secrets of nature," but fails to grip the meaning of his gesture that "the next [wo]man to stand here will look out on a scene that is different from our own."

SMOG COLLECTORS

The London Globe printed a new word, “Smog,” coined in a speech at the 1905 Public Health Congress. They considered it a public service to describe this phenomenon. Ninety-one years later we possess, yet avoid using, the technology to correct 95% of the pollution legacy.

The Smog Collectors materialize the reality of the air we breathe. They achieve their potency most effectively when the image contradicts their substance. Thus, my process is a private retaliation brought to public attention.

I place stencil images on transparent or opaque materials, then leave these on the roof of my studio and let the particulate matter in the heavy air fall upon them. When the stencil is removed, the images reveal themselves. To quote a stranger, they are “footprints of the sky.” Since the worst in our air can’t be seen, Smog Collectors are both literal and metaphoric depictions of the current conditions of our life source. They are reminders of our industrial decisions: the road we took that seemed so modern.

Presented here are smog translations of Buffalo photographer Patricia Bazelon's series of local industrial elevators. I translated the photographs into smog collectors, rendering the exact scale and content of the original. Presented next to each Bazelon postcard is its replica in twenty days of smog on plexiglass. The smog translations resemble the texture of etched glass, but are actually made of gray particulate matter composed of fine particles of oil products, vehicle exhaust including small particles that fly into the air as tires hit pavement, and numerous types of factory exhaust.

CEPA Gallery would like to thank Lauren Tent for her help in realizing this project.