PLATTSBURGH — What is above and below Lake Champlain as well as its West Bank detritus is the subject of climate change themed exhibition, “Climate’s Shipwreck Ballad” by Robin Lasser and “Transmutation Traces” by Marguerite Perret, at the Plattsburgh State Art Museum.
Lasser is a Professor of Art at San José State University who produces photographs, video, site-specific installations, and public art dealing with public health, environmental issues, and social justice.
Lasser often works in a collaborative mode with other artists, writers, students, public agencies, community organizations and international coalitions to produce public art and promote public dialogue.
Perret is a full professor of art at Washburn University where she teaches foundation design, digital imaging and contemporary art theory as well as cross disciplinary, special topic courses blending art, science and ecology, such as Endless Forms: Darwin’s Legacies, an upper division graduate level course examining the influence of the theory of Natural Selection in the arts and humanities.
EXHIBITION RECEPTION
Lasser will be at today’s reception from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the Burke and Slatkin Galleries in Myers Fine Arts Building. Musical entertainment features the Plattsburgh State Gospel Choir.
“The Water Station by Ōta Shōgo,” a collaboration with Julia Devine of the Theater Department, will be held in the Winkel/Burke Galleries from Oct. 3-6. The show runs through Dec. 9.
WATER WORKS
Two years ago, Plattsburgh State Art Museum Director Tonya Cribb contacted Lasser and Perret to come to Plattsburgh to investigate the element water, more specifically Lake Champlain.
“Part of that package included a residency which was really important to Marguerite and I because it allowed us to come last fall about this same time for around a week and we had the opportunity to talk with faculty members, both scientists, theater folks and artists, and also interview people from the community including the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Vermont where I got a lot of research about shipwrecks,” Lasser said.
“And to diversify, I was also interested in racial, social and environmental issues. So, I spoke to the president of the Underground Railroad Museum here and her reflections on the waterways as a gateway to freedom were really influential for me. So that residency really helped shape what is that Marguerite created, and Marguerite is more focused on the science. I’m very interested in the science, but more focused on the environmental and social justice issues.”
FOUR FILMS
Lasser immerses viewers in a suite of projected films with music was composed by Gil Guillermo.
“They’re quite powerful, I feel, and beautiful, yet they are reflection on a challenging issue, which is climate change,” she said.
“Together, we wrote some of the text, and he created the Ice Ships Weep Sea Shanty Ballad as well as a spoken word piece that is also sung that highlights the science involved with the lake in relationship to climate change, but also the very human part of the notion of a ship floundering. That is the grief or loss that happens. So, his ballads are very soulful I would say, and yet they include research about the 300 or so ships that are living under the lake.”
WRECK HOOK
Before Lasser came East, at home she thought about water and Lake Champlain. It took her a few months to really understand what her hook to this place in terms of the kinds of work she involves herself in as an artist.
“In doing some research and talking with Marguerite my collaborator, we learned that 300 ships are buried under Lake Champlain,” Lasser said.
“They have existed there since the Industrial Revolution to the present. For me, I thought, oh my god, it’s almost like these floundered ships are a living buried archive of the time frame in which the climate change we’re experiencing now has been produced. In other words, from the Industrial Revolution to the present. For us, shipwrecks became a metaphor for climate change, and thus the title for my half of the of show which is Climate Shipwreck Ballad.”
The films are:
– Requiem: Ice Ships Weep
– Spiritual: Ice Ships Weep and Dance
– Sea Shanty: What of us remains?
– Lost at Sea: Climate’s Shipwreck Ballad Embracing Migrating Trees
“This is all that is happening under the water, and then I learned that 300 species of birds annually fly over Lake Champlain,” Lasser said.
“I thought wow as a metaphor that these numbers of around 300 birds migrating above and 300 ships below was very poetic for me as a jump off point. So, I work with the birds and ships and the idea of migration and climate change, all these issue surface in the four shipwreck ballads that are projected on the walls.”
TWO MORE
Excavating Watershed Stories: Toward Social and Environmental Equity is narrated by Jacqueline Madison, David Fadden, and Chris Sabick. The music is composed in collaboration with a tree living along the shore of Lake Champlain. Madison is the president of the North Country Underground Railroad Historical Association. She speaks about Lake Champlain as a “gateway to freedom”. Fadden is an Akwesasne Mohawk artist, author, and storyteller. His narration includes stories addressing water in relationship to environmental inequities creating dangerous health issues for Indigenous peoples living on the reservation. Sabick is the archaeological and research director at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum and speaks to the relationship of shipwrecks and climate change. The music is composed by capturing a riparian tree’s electric signaling system. These signals are assigned a key, tone, or instrument. The silences indicate moments of rest between signals.
Rotifer Sanctuary is a short experimental film highlighting the amazing microbes that do all the heavy work, to break down human waste at the wastewater treatment plant in Plattsburgh, New York. The treatment plant also creates a sanctuary for rotifers, whose population is being greatly diminished, in Lake Champlain, due to the zebra mussel invasion in the warming water. The music is composed by capturing a riparian tree’s electric signaling system. This tree is living along the shore of Lake Champlain, adjacent to the wastewater treatment plant. These signals are assigned a key, tone, or instrument. The silences indicate moments of rest between signals.
MICROPLASTICS
The artists cleaned Plattsburgh City Beach with SUNY students, Cribb and Dr. Timothy Mihuc, director of the Lake Champlain Research Institute.
“In the end, all those plastics have become artwork,” Lasser said.
“Marguerite took some of the microplastics and plastics that were picked up on the shore and used those to create visuals both photographs. Also, she creates photographs that overlay ceramic pieces. So, they’re sculptural. Almost all the works that she has in the show are based on that single day of the beach clean-up that we did together.”