This is a broad-based exhibition with media ranging from painting and photographs to digital video and lithographs. Various works explore ecology in depth, as they consider how people connect to the natural world. Ultimately, the show rejects the notion of ecology consisting solely of pristine rivers and immaculate forests, totally separate from humans.
That might sound a little abstract, but the exhibit is far from abstract. For example, the show has several artworks referencing Onondaga Lake. The current exhibition presents her lithograph depicting birds and a table display of a turtle shell, porcelain shards, a vintage lantern and native seeds and plants.
There are also porcelain sculptures by Edward Marshall Boehm portraying two young bald eagles. The return of bald eagles to Onondaga Lake is a significant development in local ecology. A third artist, Brandon Lazore, has created an oil work focusing on the central role of the lake in Haudenosaunee culture.
This is where warring nations met centuries ago to found the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and symbolically bury weapons. Beyond that, the show displays works expressing divergent perspectives. Viewers see greenery, a sunny sky, water with scarcely a ripple, no sign of humanity except for tiny figures, three men in a boat. The painter Sarah McCoubrey, who teaches at the university, is offering an interesting proposition: What if a landscape had the power to alter itself? Other pieces document the ways in which contemporary artists touch on ecology.
Her work is based on Appalachian folkways, on how environmental decay has affected the cultural identity of that region. Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris run the Canary Lab at SU which takes a research-based approach to art and media dealing with ecology. The work strongly suggests that this is where someone without a permanent home stays. The photo depicts Tracy, a woman he first met when he was photographing Avella, a small town in Pennsylvania where his father grew up.
