Climate Art

We’ve heard from the scientists, journalists and activists, but what about the artists?

Art centered on climate issues has been a missing piece of the conversation, but the Chicago Design Museum has such an exhibit through October 30. The museum, located at 72 E Randolph Street, is free and open daily from 10 am to 5 pm.

“At the Precipice: Responses to the Climate Crisis” is a small but powerful show with a strong Chicago focus.

Selva Aparicio created an enormous curtain of plastic flowers from Chicago cemeteries.  Chris Pappan manifests the Chicago river through Native American imagery. The Tempestry Project is an ongoing knitted record of the last 120 years of local temperatures.

The piece that got me most excited was a colorful bench—in a piece called “Redemptive Plastics,” we see the result of a community-based laundry detergent bottle recycling project that yields beautiful, useful objects. The creators are based out of the West Side, and community members are the ones running all the technology needed to do the recycling.

It feels good to see such creativity around climate and the environment—don’t miss it.

Leave a comment below, or contact the Environmental Action Committee at environment@lwvchicago.org with questions or suggestions.