We are just past the end of cherry blossom season in Japan. People have long flocked to see the spectacle and wonder at its natural beauty. The phenomenon enabled a Japanese scientist to assemble one of the longest-running datasets on climate change, drawing from 1,200 years of records on the trees’ annual bloom. The scientific inquiry and the aesthetic one exist in symbiosis.
The same spirit motivates the works in Human Impact: Contemporary Art and Our Environment, on view through June 20 at BCA Center in Burlington. Each of the eight artists in the show creates a commentary on the ecological tipping point where we find ourselves, drawing viewers to the subject through enticing visuals. In other words: They make the ugly truths of environmental destruction super pretty. [...]
[...] Philadelphia painter Diane Burko’s pieces offer an expanded view of the Amazon rainforest. Made after her 2023 residency there, the works have all the urgency of a fire alarm. In a suite of five canvases that together span more than 5 by 13 feet, as well as two smaller works, Burko combines maps and painted silhouettes of the region with aerial photos of the tree canopy and burnt cross-sections of wood. She elaborates on those close and distant views with an inferno of red and gray, illuminating the scientific with a passionate painterly approach.
