The Art Gallery at Volunteer State Community College will be showing the work of artist Alex Lockwood in October and November. The Central Basin of Middle Tennessee is home to a globally unique desert-like ecosystem known as the Cedar Glade. Surrounded by Eastern Red Cedars, these clearings are made of limestone rock formed 500 million years ago during the Ordovician geological period. The exhibition “A Future Field” is a depiction of a Tennessee Limestone Cedar Glade in the distant future.
“On the one hand it is a celebration of place: I use discarded plastic to recreate this environment with a wide range of plants globally unique to the Glades, including Gattinger’s Clover, Limestone Fame Flower, Glade Larkspur and the Tennessee Purple Coneflower,” said Lockwood. “On the other hand, the show is a warning told through dystopian science fiction: my work imagines this ecosystem on a post-human Earth that has been permanently altered by the plastic garbage we relentlessly generated. Over time our waste has broken down and infused itself into every fiber of the natural world - reworking all flora and fauna into plasticized versions of their original forms.”
The exhibit is free. It begins on October 4 and will be on display until November 26. The gallery is located on the first floor of the Steinhauer-Rogan-Black (SRB) Humanities Building on the Gallatin campus at 1480 Nashville Pike. It is open Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. For more information, please contact the Vol State Gallery manager at jason.lascu@volstate.edu or call 615-230-3200.
Pictured: “A Future Field” (detail) by Alex Lockwood.
