The Voice

Issue date: 3/12/07 Section: Inside WCC

Media Credit: Michael Fitzgerald

On the heels of RecycleMania and with Earth Day roughly one month away, a new exhibit at WCC promises to help students think green thoughts with its theme of "environmental descruction."

This exhibit, titled "At the Crossroads," uses objects found by Californian design professor Ann Savageau. The exhibit runs through Apr. 27 at Gallery One, located on the ground floor of the Student Center Building.

Savageau is excited to appear at the gallery due to its proximity with the main floor of the Student Center, "I love it because I think it has such public exposure here." The design professor hopes to inspire students with the showing, "[they] are going to be the ones who have to grapple with this."

Displays include mounted shoe soles representing mankind's footprint on the environment displayed next to bits of shredded tire treads along a long, stretching line in a sequential morphing effect. The tire treads eventually become frogs, an animal chosen by Savageau because they're a bellwether species. "If they're suffering, the environment is suffering."

Tumbleweeds hang throughout the exhibit, a species Savageau describes as a famous invasive species that was introduced to the American continent as a plant that cattle could eat in harsh times such as drought.

Two floor installations include a pile of bones that belong to various invasive species (including humans). Another pile has cotton balls (a product Savageau describes as using 25 percent of the world's pesticides) interspersed with fortune cookies that have messages concerning environmental destruction which visitors are invited to take.

Everything in the exhibit has been altered to appear white, a technique Savageau hopes to use to evoke "death or fading away. Nothing looks alive and colorful."

Savageau hopes to inspire people with her work. "They think 'I'm only one person,' well if every one person pitched in…"

Former University of Michigan professor Savageau teaches Environmental Conservation and Sustainable Design at the University of California, Davis where she helps students learn more about using green products in their design.

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