An artist with eco-vision

I stumbled across Kim Holleman's work at the Black and White gallery during a lovely walk through Williamsburg on Memorial Day weekend. A few weeks later, I sent her an email and almost immediately I got a phone call from her. And we talked for about an hour. About everything from permaculture to anti-toxic waste mycelium to ecotopic literature, like the book Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach.

One of Kim's pieces, which was parked outside Black and White, is TRAILER PARK, seen above. I quote from her website: "Trailer Park...examines the paradox of inner/outer space by sheltering the completely functional 'real' park from environmental damage by placing the park inside a mobile Coachmen Travel Trailer." I saw it as a playful reimagining of a space that is traditionally seen through a class lens and a suggestion that any space can be converted into a personal-sized oasis. A resizing of the public beauty ideal.

Kim also showed in the back yard of the gallery her FUTURE MOUNTAIN installation, which is entirely made of un-recyclable plastic bags. It's uncannily beautiful. Again, it's a re-contextualizing of cultural ideals. Plastic bags shouldn't be beautiful, and yet they're everywhere and we can't get rid of them. Maybe we should learn to live with them.

This is what I like about Kim's work. Though I do infer a social judgment from some of her work, what I mainly get from it is the idea that we should accept on some level what our landscape is actually made of and adjust our Arcadian ideals to that reality. Perhaps we can have new Arcadian ideals?