EXHIBITIONThrough Emerald Eyes
Through Emerald Eyes was Zela’s solo exhibition held at the Gympie Regional Gallery in January 2013.
The exhibition Through Emerald Eyes at Gympie Regional Gallery combined several aspects of my journey, expressing concepts developed during my studies of a Master of Environmental Education degree and translating them into visual form.
Tones of green blue and brown, organic twining and climbing forms all suggested growth, fertility and vibrant life forces. The show also pulled together the two forms of fibre art in which I had become involved – felting and papermaking. Cast paper forms were embroidered over and combined with colourful felt in low relief sculptures.
During my studies, I came across the concepts of different shades of green which symbolized different levels of empathy with nature. Light green environmentalists tend to emphasize lifestyle/behavioral/consumer change as key to sustainability. Light greens strongly advocate change at the individual level. The thinking is that if you can get people to take small, pleasant steps (by shopping differently, or making changes around the home), they will not only make changes that can begin to make a difference in aggregate, but also begin to clamor for larger transformations.
Dark greens, in contrast, tend to emphasize the need to pull back from consumerism and emphasize local solutions, short supply chains and direct connection to the land. They strongly advocate change at the community level. In its best incarnations, dark green thinking offers a lot of insight about bioregionalism, reinhabitation, and restoring damaged landscapes. At its heart, dark green thinking reshapes human links to place, allowing specific intimate knowledge of home place to broaden with age into a bonding with the earth as a whole.
