Lichen

Nov. 17

Mary Anne Barkhouse
Michael Belmore
October 8, 1998 – April 15, 1999

Mary Anne Barkhouse, Wolves; bronze, each approximately 48" x 30" x 22"

Michael Belmore, Transit Shelter; steel, glass, graphite drawings, 8' x 8' x 4'; Raven: graphite on matte film, 48" x 68"; Clearcut; graphite on matte film, 48" x 68"

Artist Statement

There seems to have been a trend with some of the more respected conservationists of our century. They had one thing in common - they were all hunters with a capital "H". They embraced popular opinion of the time - varmints were bad and had to be eliminated. More bears and more wolves meant less deer for them. Occupying a highly predatory position themselves, they recognized competition when they saw it - but they also came to recognize that the balance of power had shifted. Sometimes, no matter how big your claws are or how swift your fangs may be, it just doesn't matter anymore.

Something that has been held as true for two thousand years has, within our lifetime, been re-negotiated through popular consensus. The fate in the twenty-first century of major players within the previous ecological order, such as the wolf, will depend much less upon biology than upon our opinion of it.

In Aldo Leopold's famous 1949 essay, "Thinking Like A Mountain", he observed that, "Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf." Most people will never have a chance to see a wolf first hand and to make a decision for themselves - is this wolf a good thing or a bad thing, is that slug under that log a good thing or a bad thing - and what those of us who do have first hand experience with slugs or wolves want to say is that we really aren't qualified for the job of making those decisions.

Responsibility for our activities and existence is a somewhat delayed reaction within our urban centers. So delayed that for some it doesn't exist at all. There are the misunderstood in need of support. There are the misinformed who really don't know better. But on the other side of the tracks there are no misunderstood ravens…there are only dead ravens.

While this is not a call for a return to the law of "eat or be eaten" and the end of all social welfare, it is a reminder of Thoreau's dictum that, "In wildness is the salvation of the world." Can we learn to objectively listen like a mountain? Can we hear the crows crackling at us through the sound of rush hour traffic and is there room for a coyote to turn around three times before he goes to sleep? While we're trying to figure that out, the wolves and the slugs and the ravens wait.