Snow Furniture Dancing, a new exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum from sustainable artist and designer Hongtao Zhou, explores climate change through a melting furniture installation.
Hongtao Zhou, guest curator at the Milwaukee Art Museum for the Green Furniture: Sustainable Design in the 21st Century exhibit, wanted to convey a strong sense of the effects of global warming through his outdoor snow installation located on the front lawn of the museum. However, due to unseasonably warm temperatures the artist had some difficulty creating his artwork – which was entirely appropriate considering the theme of his work. The artists explains:
My worry started when all the snow on the lawn melted last week. The ice cover also disappeared from Lake Michigan. It was getting warmer and warmer. I thought the exhibition might be cancelled, but I did not give up; I started to look for snow from surrounding areas and hoped for some cold days.
On Dec. 27th, Lake Michigan regained a thin ice cover. I threw a rock in the lake to make a hole and draw water with a bucket and a rope from a 12ft (3.66m) high bank. Once the water and snow were mixed well, I shaped it around a slim tree branch to help the curved legs stand. Cold wind started to help solidify the new structures.
Locating Snow Furniture Dancing in this spot is very dangerous because the huge windows reflect sunlight onto the lawn and because the weather is very unpredictable these days, nowhere and no one can escape the global warming.
Maybe it will forecast the last dance of the current industrial world, or of human civilization if we do not change the way we live.
The Snow Furniture Dancing installation continues until February 15th or until the furniture melts. The Green Furniture: Sustainable Design in the 21st Century exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum continues until March 14, 2010
Visit: http://hongtaozhou.com and http://www.mam.org/
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