EXHIBITION
when waters rise
features works by Professor Mary Babcock’s weaving students at UHM
February 12 – 28, 2018
Commons Gallery
when waters rise showcases the work of fiber students in Professor Babcock’s classes.
As students were beginning the Fall 2017 term, Hurricane Harvey was barreling the Texas coast bringing unfathomable floods to Houston and other regions in Texas and Louisiana. The media was saturated with images of streets transformed to rivers, heroic rescues and shelter crowded with evacuees.
Harvey began to dissipate, but Irma—an extremely powerful storm—soon took a tremendous toll on Barbuda, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Martin, Anguilla and the Virgin Islands before moving westward causing major damage in the Turks and Caicos, the Florida Keys.
Maria, the most powerful storm was still yet to come. The worst natural disaster on record for Haiti and the Dominican Republic, she was also the deadliest storm of a hyperactive 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, resulting in major catastrophic damage and a humanitarian crisis that the US government has allowed to leave unresolved.
Scientific American ran a story explicating the link between storm intensity, frequency and climate change. Yet many stories of rising waters seems to go unnoticed as they touch lands less familiar to our everyday narratives.
Saturated by all this information and impressed by gaps in understanding, ART 237 Woven Structures used weaving as a means to embark on a series of inquiries. What are the boundaries of our compassion? Who or what draws these lines? How might our exploration of these rising or receding waters deepen our understanding of the social and ecosystems that they impact?
SPONSORS: University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s Department of Art + Art History and College of Arts + Humanities
Gallery hours + admission:
Mon. – Fri. 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Closed weekends
Free admission. Donations are appreciated.
Parking fees may apply.