Giant Black Snakes Attack Dallas
It’s not every day you get to put up two posts about snakes. The concept behind Susan Robb’s sculpture and what it’s doing in town are explained after the jump. (And, for the record, she calls them toobs.)
In short, Robb is a Seattle-based artist. Her installation is called Warmth, Giant Black Toobs. They are 13 solar- and wind-powered 50-foot-tall plastic bags, here to celebrate the CADD Art Fair, which includes the opening reception tonight, starting at 7. Wanna know more about the toobs? Here’s Robb’s statement on them:
More than a billion tons of trash is dumped into the ocean every year. According to an article in Best Life Magazine, oceanographers have found a swirling miasma of consumer plastics—plastic bags, plastic bottles, plastic toys—the size of Texas in the pacific ocean. Plankton, fish, birds, and marine mammals all ingest these plastics (and the chemicals they contain and leach), which in turn we ingest. Scientists are just beginning to research the long-term ways in which the chemicals used to make plastic interact with biochemistry, uncovering how plastics not only effect planetary health but are also linked to cancer, diabetes, and endocrine malfunctions. Like Andy Warhol said, we are indeed (and literally) all becoming plastic.
In WARMTH, GIANT BLACK TOOBS, Robb uses solar power and ambient breezes to give life to the ever-present black plastic garbage bag. Polypropylene garbage bags, 50 feet tall by 30 inches in diameter, are inflated with air by allowing the wind to fill them or by running with them. One end is staked to the ground; the other end is free. The sun does the rest. Employing a similar principle to that of hot air balloons, the sun heats the air inside the Toobs, and since hot air is less dense then cold air, the Toobs become buoyant.
Solar-produced buoyancy, breezes, and internal convection work to transform this symbol of the (American) cycle of consumption and waste into seemingly sentient creatures, live plastic hybrids whose choreography brings to mind the very sea creatures our epoch’s mass of waste affects.
8 Comments to “Giant Black Snakes Attack Dallas”
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Oh, wait. I thought this post was about something else. Never mind.
This causes me to think that the sofa in White Rock Lake might have been an art installation too.
Just what a city already covered in graffiti needs, more banal protest”art”. This worthless pile of crap represents (insert trendy cause here).
In person this was a really mesmerizing, beautiful piece. At times the “toobs” moved as if in slow motion, akin to sea anemones moved by the current, then, without a moments notice they would violently whip around appearing to fight each other. This piece was both beautiful, and, an eloquent subtle commentary. Contrary to what an anonymous embittered hell hole would say, environmental issues will very quickly cease to be a “trendy” cause and become serious problems if no one brings them to our attention so that some action could be taken. And here, not only does artist Susan Robb bring it to our attention, she does so in an alluring, interesting fashion, far be it from an in-your-face type “protest art”. Dallas, like most cities has it’s issues, but it is making an effort, and that is more than some are doing. Back to Susan Robb, she has a pretty interesting website where a video (unfortunately low-res) of her toobs can be seen (although not from the installation at the art fair): http://www.susanrobb.com/Portf.....bs_mov.asp
Oh, don’t worry. There’s an abundance of self absorbed, condescending environmentalists who believe that if not for their vacuous stunts, the unwashed masses wouldn’t be aware of (insert trendy cause here).
That is something I can definitely agree with. However I am also clarifying that this particular artist and her contribution to the Dallas art community are no where near the above ‘hell hole’ description, but rather (as mentioned before), the sculpture is quite good and meaningful. On the other hand, in the arena of the internet, where the unwashed masses come to complain, there are an over-abundance of complainants that leap before they look, or think.
Good and meaningful? Thanks, but i’ll stick with fun and meaningless.
I do REALLY like those things too, but in a different way. Susan Robb’s Toobs definitely share some of that aesthetic, but there is more to them, which elevates them (pun intended), and makes them more of a unique thing. Also, I really like how something so seemingly simple can serve such different purposes. However, one simply doesn’t invalidate the other.