Fragile Rainbow: Traversing Habitats will be on view at the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center May 7—June 4, 2022, including over fifty artists who are members of ecoartspace.

The exhibition’s title, “Fragile Rainbow: Traversing Habitats,” found inspiration in the show's largest artwork, Claire McConaughy’s painting Fragile Rainbow (2021). In her words, McConaughy’s sanguine waterscape addresses “interconnection, loss, transformation, and hope.” Her title is especially relevant for this heterogeneous exhibition of artworks by ecoartspace members based in the New York City region whose paintings, sculptures, photographs, and installations evoke “connection, loss, transformation, and hope.” These artists are especially conscious of our indebtedness to living beings in our midst and human beings’ obligation to appreciate and protect organic and inorganic matter alike.   


In recent history, the unsustainable environmental dynamics of Western cultures have intensified with the creation of contemporary cities and urban life. As a result, people have grown increasingly distanced from the land, leaving some 75% of Earth’s terrain substantially degraded. For this exhibition, we invite visitors to acknowledge their relationship with the land in a manner that aims to be more aligned with longstanding Indigenous perspectives that consider the earth, plants and animals family, even within urban settings. When experienced collectively, these artworks can remind us that we are embedded in and must be conscious of our contributions to our habitat. When we walk in the woods, we become part of the forest, yet when we walk on the sidewalk, we are no less walking on land.

To create this sensorial experience, works were selected that amplify habitats’ various voices from birds to bladderwrack, clouds, cochineals, compost, coral reefs, cows, deer, flowers, fungi, human beings, jellyfish, knotweed, lichens, mangroves, metals, minerals, mugworts, mushrooms, plastic, rainbows, rivers, roots, rust, seeds, shells, soil, the sun, rivers, trees, watersheds, and worms. Idyllic landscapes stride landscapes riddled with plants eager to migrate and unpredictable outcomes. Similarly, imagery evoking bleached corals find resolution in a biomorphic sculpture meant to substitute for coral reefs.

Public Opening Reception: Saturday, May 7, 3-5pm
Public Closing Reception: Saturday, June 4, 4-6pm
Organized and Produced by ecoartspace

Stacy Levy: Tide Flowers
May 5 - June 4, 2022
Tide Flowers is a site-specific water installation that registers the tidal movement on the East River at Domino Park, revealing dramatic fluctuations with brilliantly-colored flowers. Twice a day, this activity connects us to the ocean, the moon, and the daily rhythm that is nature’s own. Be sure to stop by Sunday, May 15, for the Flower Moon Total Solar Eclipse.

ECOLOGY EXTENDED: A Conversation
May 22, 2022, 1-3pm
A conversation between artist Rita Leduc and ecologist Dr. Rich Blundell explores their work in the temperate montane ecosystem of the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest. Leduc and Blundell will share their artistic output to date and invite the public into an open dialogue.

andrea haenggi and bladderwrack
May 7, 2022, 3-5pm
During the opening, performers will be nearby at the Marsha P. Johnson State Park to meet and communicate with bladderwrack through dance and walk in procession with bladderwrack into the gallery. Visitors are invited to take one of the bladderwrack and bring them back to any shore in New York City with the help of a guided written prompt.

Walking The Bomb, a performance by Stephen Whisler
May 7, 2022, 1-3pm
Walking The Bomb is a performance including a handcrafted wood and sheet metal sculpture, a human-scale version of Little Boy, the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Dressed in a dark grey suit with a white shirt, the artist walks the streets towing The Bomb behind him.

Artists include: Elizabeth Albert, M. Annenberg, L.C. Armstrong, Nancy Azara, Jeannine Bardo, Jude Norris - Bebonkwe, Lois Bender, Jean Brennan, Michele Brody, Diane Burko, Pamela Casper, Margaret Cogswell, Elisabeth Condon, Katie De Groot, Kate Dodd, Rosalyn Driscoll, Rachel Frank, Alice Garik, Tessa Grundon, andrea haenggi, Kristin Jones, Natalya Khorover, Jennifer Kotter, Laurie Lambrecht, Rita Leduc, Stacy Levy, Lenore Malen, Claire McConaughy, Lauren Rosenthal McManus, Emmy Mikelson, Patricia Miranda, Seren Morey, Carol Padberg, Tracy Penn, Aviva Rahmani, Leah Raintree, Laziza Rakhimova, Bonnie Ralston, Lisa Reindorf, Eleni Smolen, Anne-Katrin Spiess, Priscilla Stadler, Linda Stillman, Mary Ann Strandell, Debra Swack, Sandra Taggart, Kate Temple, Deborah Wasserman, Riva Weinstein, Linda Weintraub, Stephen Whisler, Marion Wilson, Chin Chih Yang, Millicent Young

ABOUT Sue Spaid
Cincinnati-based philosopher Sue Spaid, Ph. D., has been active in the artworld as a collector, curator, art writer, university lecturer, and museum director since 1984. The author of five books on art and ecology, Spaid's most recent monograph is The Philosophy of Curatorial Practice: Between Work and World (2020), published by Bloomsbury Academic. In 2017, Spaid curated "Ecovention Europe: Art to Transform Ecologies, 1957-2017," a sixty-year survey of artists' ecological efforts throughout Europe, accompanied by a book of the same name, published by Hedendaagse Kunst De Domijnen. In 2013, her traveling exhibition “Green Acres: Artists Farming Fields, Greenhouses, and Abandoned Lots,” funded by an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award, concluded its tour at the American University Museum and Arlington Arts Center. While Curator at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (1999-2002), she authored the book Ecovention: Current Art to Transform Ecologies that accompanied the 2002 exhibition she co-curated with Amy Lipton (1956-2020), former east coast curator of ecoartspace. https://suespaid.info

The WAH Center is located at 135 Broadway in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York.

Gallery hours are Friday, Saturday and Sunday from Noon to 6pm. Admission is Free.

For more information visit www.wahcenter.net or call 917-648-4290 or 917-974-6096 or email: wahcenter@earthlink.net