{"id":8686,"date":"2018-09-30T19:04:22","date_gmt":"2018-09-30T23:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=8686"},"modified":"2018-09-30T19:06:05","modified_gmt":"2018-09-30T23:06:05","slug":"unless-cardon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2018\/09\/30\/unless-cardon\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Art In Prudential Center Atrium Is A Call To Halt Global Warming"},"content":{"rendered":"

The title of Boston artist Stephanie Cardon\u2019s public artwork \u201cUnless\u201d<\/a>\u2014installed in the main entrance of the Prudential Center shopping mall at 800 Boylston St. through November\u2014comes from Dr. Seuss\u2019s 1971 environmental fable \u201cThe Lorax.\u201d And it signals the artist\u2019s call to halt global warming.<\/p>\n

In Seuss\u2019s story, after the land has been trashed by a terrible factory and runaway consumerism, the Lorax, who has been warning about the dangers, flies away, leaving a pile of rocks with the word \u201cUnless.\u201d The fellow who started the whole mess interprets the message to a passerby: \u201cUnless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n

For \u201cUnless,\u201d Cardon\u2014with help from the Boston independent public art curators Now + There, led by executive director Kate Gilbert\u2014has hung 3,400-square-feet of repurposed construction site netting across the windows of the atrium entrance. The artwork is mainly orange with a blue circle, like a target or sun, as a focal point. The blue circle is repeated on the floor and main staircase.<\/p>\n

\"Stephanie<\/a>
Stephanie Cardon\u2019s installation \u201cUnless\u201d in the entrance atrium at Boston’s Prudential Center. (Ryan McMahon\/Now+There)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The text taken from Roman Catholic Pope Francis\u2019s 2015 statement \u201cOn Care for Our Common Home\u201d<\/a> is embroidered in rings curving around the blue circle in the windows: \u201cThe climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all. At the global level, it is a complex system linked to many of the essential conditions for human life. \u2026 Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes in lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cClimate change knows no borders or nationalities, but its effect will exacerbate the divisions we have drawn between peoples, fomenting xenophobia and racism,\u201d Cardon says on the project website<\/a>. \u201cThis is the time to come together across our differences to care for each other and to organize in defense of our common home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cardon worked with some 30 people\u2014 members of the Inquilinos Boricuas en Acci\u00f3n community at the Villa Victoria Center for the Arts in Boston\u2019s South End as well as students at Boston\u2019s Massachusetts College of Art and Design from Puerto Rico, displaced by 2017\u2019s devastating hurricanes\u2014to embroider the text and prepare the netting. (\u201cThirty percent of the netting used is upcycled directly from Boston-area construction sites,\u201d according to organizers.) The tapestry was installed overnight from Sept. 18 to 19.<\/p>\n

\n

Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activisms (and our great festivals) by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"Stephanie<\/a>
Stephanie Cardon\u2019s installation \u201cUnless\u201d in the entrance atrium at Boston’s Prudential Center. (Ryan McMahon\/Now+There)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Stephanie<\/a>
Stephanie Cardon\u2019s installation \u201cUnless\u201d in the entrance atrium at Boston’s Prudential Center. (Ryan McMahon\/Now+There)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Stephanie<\/a>
Stephanie Cardon\u2019s installation \u201cUnless\u201d in the entrance atrium at Boston’s Prudential Center. (Ryan McMahon\/Now+There)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Stephanie<\/a>
Stephanie Cardon\u2019s installation \u201cUnless\u201d in the entrance atrium at Boston’s Prudential Center. (Ryan McMahon\/Now+There)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Stephanie<\/a>
Stephanie Cardon\u2019s installation \u201cUnless\u201d in the entrance atrium at Boston’s Prudential Center. (Ryan McMahon\/Now+There)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The title of Boston artist Stephanie Cardon\u2019s public artwork \u201cUnless\u201d\u2014installed in the main entrance of the Prudential Center shopping mall at 800 Boylston St. through November\u2014comes from Dr. Seuss\u2019s 1971 environmental fable \u201cThe Lorax.\u201d And it signals the artist\u2019s call to halt global warming. In Seuss\u2019s story, after the land has been trashed by a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8688,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,100,105],"tags":[37,53,442],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8686"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8686"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8698,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8686\/revisions\/8698"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}