Artist Talk and Book Signing

An informal conversation with cultural critic and curator Carlo McCormick and artist Christy Rupp growing from the exhibition Othered, currently at Howl! Happening through May 29, and also celebrating the recent publication of Rupp’s monograph, Noisy Autumn, published by Insight Editions. The book’s title pays homage to Rachael Carson’s groundbreaking book Silent Spring upon its 60^th anniversary. Six decades after the publication of Silent Spring, chemical companies still maintain a website venting their anger at the journalist who would point out that 90% of all insects are beneficial. Special guest Bob Holman will join Rupp and McCormick, reading new poems inspired by the events in Ukraine and Buffalo, New York.

In the exhibition Othered, Rupp investigates topics including resource extraction and water pollution through the lens of Discard Studies, a discipline that examines the wider role of society and culture, social norms, and power on the waste stream. Embodying irony and resilience, her sculpture of fish, mammals, and micro-organisms made from single use plastic and bits of industrial debris expresses the voices of invisible microbes and species caught in the crosshairs. Rupp has long explored how we form our opinions of nature and the role of art in helping us understand climate chaos.

 Using wall-scale collage, “she juxtaposes scenes of nature and industrial development with biological specimens and nature-based patterns that are stylized, tamed and made decorative for human consumption,” says art critic Eleanor Heartney in a recent catalog.

About Christy Rupp

Christy Rupp is an American eco-artist and citizen scientist. Born in the Rust Belt of Upstate New York, she was too young for Elvis and too old for Barbie. For the past five decades, Rupp has continued the search for clues that might explain how we have arrived at the edge of the Extractocene, a world permanently altered by the presence of Homo sapiens.

Rupp was part of the artist collective Collaborative Projects (Colab)—organizer of the historic Times Square Show—as well as ABC No Rio and other East Village-era artist groups.

She has received grants from Anonymous was a Woman Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation CALL Award, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and Art Matters Inc. Her work has been recently shown at the Schunck Museum in Heerlen, Netherlands; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Zimmerli Art Museum; and ABC No Rio in Exile.She has just launched a career survey, Noisy Autumn: Sculpture and Works on Paper, published by Insight Editions.

About Carlo McCormick

Carlo McCormick is an American culture critic and curator living in New York City. He is the author of numerous books, monographs, and catalogs on contemporary art and artists.