THE EREMOCENE: SOUVENIRS + RESISTANCE

In keeping with our mission to showcase the work of regional artists, artisans, and designers, we are pleased to present The Eremocene: Souvenirs and Resistance by Jane Dodds. This is the first solo exhibition of a project Dodds began in 2017 to create analog records of climate change.

Fired clay sculptures ranging from large globes to future descendants of birds are each imprinted with CO2 (carbon dioxide) data and corresponding dates. Together, these show a steady rise in global levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas contributing to climate change. Dodds used fired clay for this work because its known-to-date endurance is some 30,000 years. Thus, the sculptural records can survive, if the life of this era does not.

The exhibition also includes drawings of animals seen, heard or “captured” by a trail camera on the land where Dodds lives, half of which she has let go to its natural state, or rewilded. The work is a nod to the half-earth theory developed by E.O. Wilson, which calls for a plan to return half of Earth’s land and seas to nature, so the biosphere as we know it might largely be preserved. The drawings are done on cardboard boxes, a material as fragile and ephemeral as life itself.  

A selection of functional ceramics by Dodds will also be available. Jane Dodds lives and works in Clermont, as well as Brooklyn. Her past includes an art practice focused on painting, and a career as an interpretive exhibition planner and writer.