“Forces of Nature” is a group exhibition that explores the intertwine between architecture and the environment through observing weather patterns and their affect on society. Since the first weather report in 1875, it has become a “must check” of our daily life. These days, global warming is on everyone’s mind and tornados and earthquakes have lately dominated the news. But how does our society adapt to the forces of mother nature? Eight artists throughout the United States respond to their surrounding and its permanent changes.
Wendy Heldmann’s paintings depict the aftermath of a natural disaster. A building that has survived an earthquake exists as an abstraction of its former. Beautifully painted untenable and wrecked buildings show what such a site represents the futility of invention and architecture in such a cataclysmic environmental condition. Thomas Doyle’s work from the “Distillation” series mines natural disasters waiting to happen through the creation of intricate worlds in 1:43 scale. Often sealed under glass and like frozen in time, the viewer approaches these worlds as an all-seeing eye, but remains powerless. Chris Ballantyne is familiar with suburban developments, the one that looks the same, no matter where you are in the US.
Banal features of suburban and industrial zones are sources 
for his drawings that highlight the quirky and absurd. Raised in Kansas, Lori Nix is no stranger to disaster and her post apocalyptic photographs are both haunting and alluring with a play betwen illusion and truth. Liz Hicock’s video and photographs are both serious and comical. In 2005, Hicock built the city of San Francisco out of hundred of multi color Jell-O and reproduced in the span of a few minutes the 1906 earthquake. Maura Jasper, “Weather You Remember” is a series actual weather reports delivered by senior citizens asked to rely only on personal experience and memory and in particular to consider change as it relates to technology. Lisa Dahl’s video “Flooded” showing Sugar cubes disguised as tiny houses are ravaged by the power of raging waters and are slowly washed away. The video “Lawn” on the other hand, enforces the powers of nature. Shoots of grass grow out of control to the point of uprooting the foundations of homes. Jessalyn Haggengos creates picturesque landscapes that form out of the flow of poured paint. Strange habitation and rock formations are built for this new imaginative site conveying a sense of beauty and contamination of the American landscape.