Nancy Harrod "Climate: Fragile & Fierce" & Linda Klein "A Walk in the Park"

Nancy Harrod: "Climate: Fragile & Fierce" My reverence for the tender beauty and immense power of nature drives my work. Nature is both fragile and fierce, as I learned growing up on an Ohio farm. As climate change accelerates and volatile weather patterns become increasingly common, that truth has become impossible to ignore. My abstract, painted-paper collages draw upon the visual language of climate events and their impact on landscape. I paint, cut, fragment, and reassemble until balance and movement emerge from disruption. The process itself echoes the continual cycles of weather—forming, breaking apart, shifting, and reforming. Weather map symbols enter the work as metaphors for unseen forces. Together, these works ask us to look more closely, recognizing that attention itself is the beginning of responsibility. Nancy Harrod is a mixed-media artist based in Great Barrington, MA . Linda Klein: "A Walk in the Park" For many years, I have walked the trails and paths in the parks around Framingham and Sudbury, and I have had the experience of watching nature change over the seasons. During those walks I have seen a tightly curled green stalk unfurl into a showy green fan. I have seen moss slowly grow over a dead log creating a soft carpet for insects to make their homes. Trees move from the wind often swaying above my head, and their movements create sounds: creaking or swishing, bird calls, bees buzzing, insects digging or flitting. As the seasons change, the greens begin to fade into shades of ochre, rust and brown. The leaves slowly float down from the trees or drop their needles to gather on the paths. But during winter the sounds are quiet, almost absent except for the occasional bird flitting from tree to tree or the scuttle of some small animal looking for food. I love this time. I am awed by its beauty and humbled by its very existence.