Crow’s Nest: The Tear Drinkers Art Opening

Force of Nature volunteer Jim Moffet offered to take photos at the opening of the Lydia Moyer art exhibition: The Tear Drinkers. I was so relieved not to have to worry about photos and was far more relaxed at the event. Here are a couple he took at the opening reception Friday night.

People sat on the barn floor to watch the images projected on the wall. This is a long exposure so the moth animation at upper left is blurred.

From the artist’s description:

…the work is based on the interconnections between species from symbiosis to predation. Tropical moths drink the tears of sleeping birds—a benevolent service in a poetic way, like kissing away the tears of a child, even as it implies commensalism: one species benefits without harming another.

Last year was also the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. Media attention has been drawn to how the exclusion zone around the site has largely returned to wilderness in the absence of humans…

The Tear Drinkers, then, is based around three predatory/prey pairs. The manner in which the animals are rendered is meant to suggest irradiation, a reference to how natural life continues, though altered, in the face of disaster. The projections play with how technology can be used to re-animate creatures caught in the still-death of photographs, transforming them into ghost-like, man-made approximations of the real thing. Video, in this case, is used not as a tool for narrative so much as an extension of drawing or photography.

After viewing the work people who had braved the evening’s rain drifted downstairs in the barn for the reception, featuring a cake with icing in a likeness of the moths in a bottle image from the installation.

The installation will be open each evening from 7 – 9 pm through June 11.

Posted by Daniel Barringer on May 4, 2012.