Greater Columbus Arts Council’s window displays tackle climate change

On Jan 15, 2023

Celeste Malvar-Stewart's window display, titled

Fashion and fiber artist Celeste Malvar-Stewart spends a lot of time in her German Village dye garden.

As she cultivates her indigo, madder root and marigolds, she is able to observe the wealth—or scarcity—of insects in the area.

“I have been noticing that there are less and less insects,” said Malvar-Stewart, 56, of German Village. “I started looking up global insect decline, and it just became this topic that I feel like we really need to urgently have conversations (about).”

Malvar-Stewart is bringing awareness to this topic with a new piece for Greater Columbus Arts Council’s Art Spot, a series of 13 public art installations exploring climate change and conservation. The installations are housed in windows of businesses and nonprofits around Downtown and the Short North Arts District.

Produced by 14 artists, the works will be on display through June. A map of the installations can be found at columbusmakesart.com/artspot. And at each site, viewers can scan a QR code to get more information about the art.

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Crickets and couture on Front Street

Located at 132 S. Front St., Malvar-Stewart’s installation is titled “Even the Smallest of Us: Addressing Global Insect Decline.”

It features an indigo-dyed couture gown, hand-felted with local wool and alpaca.

The dress is accentuated with cut-outs of endangered Ohio insects, including Hine’s Emerald dragonfly, the American burying beetle, laricis tree cricket and the Karner blue butterfly.

Malvar-Stewart said she drew the insects, hand-carved them out of wood blocks and hand-printed them on silk fabric.

She also said she wants the installation to help make high fashion and couture more accessible to the public.

“I also hope that they can find beauty in the everyday interaction with the different insects that we have,” she added. “I’m hoping that will really translate and enrich their own daily lives.”

The origin of Art Spot

Art Spot was inspired by a previous pop-up project that GCAC created in 2012 for the Columbus bicentennial celebration, according to Jami Goldstein, the organization’s vice president of marketing, communications and events.

This time around, GCAC extended the project and included a theme.

Artists submitted designs, which were selected by a jury. Goldstein said they received approximately 50 applications.

“I’m delighted,” Goldstein said of the installations. “Some (artists) came at it in a very narrative way, and some of them came at it in an abstract way. I just think the different points of view here is what’s really incredible. And we just couldn’t be more grateful to all the landlords that have lent their spaces to this.”

Art Spot sponsors include the City of Columbus, the Columbus Downtown Development Corporation and the Downtown Columbus Special Improvement District.

Art Spot project directors Amy Leibrand and Stephanie Rond said it was important to make scientific information accessible to the public.

“Art as a form of communication is a good way to provide information to an audience,” said Leibrand, a 47-year-old Grandview artist who also works in the science field. “You don’t have to go into a gallery. You can just walk down the street and see this.”

Rond said it was “refreshing” to see so much passion about these issues among the arts community.

“It’s the idea of starting small,” said Rond, a 49-year-old Clintonville artist. “Amy, Jami and I have started small, trying to open up this conversation. We just want to encourage others to think about starting small, so that we can tackle some of these really large issues.”

Pods and plastic on State Street

Environmental artist Catherine Bell Smith certainly started small. She has spent years collecting materials that have fallen off trees.

She incorporated magnolia leaves, hickory pods and locust pods in her installation, “Unnatural Order,” at the Ohio Theatre, located at 39 E. State St.

Bell Smith strung the items together and hung them in the window. According to her artist statement, the layering of the materials was inspired by the layers of Earth’s atmosphere, “from exosphere to troposphere … where we produce the agents of waste and destruction.”

If viewers take a closer look inside the window, they’ll see white discs hand-woven out of single-use plastic bags. Bell Smith said the discs represent the plastic waste collected in gyres, or rotating ocean currents.

“If you think about just the microcosm of having to take care of your own space, your own garden—translate that to the bigger world,” said Bell Smith, 67, of Upper Arlington. “How can we do better? And what’s our responsibility for being good stewards of the world around us?”

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‘Hints of hope’ on Gay Street

In addition to creating awareness about environmental issues, artists Dan Gerdeman and Rob W. Jones added “hints of hope” to their window installation at Monk’s Copy Shop, located at 47 E. Gay St.

Titled “3 Degrees Celsius,” the piece features a wood carving of two people fishing in a boat labeled “S.S. Hope.” There may be a pink sky and fossils strewn in the painted backdrop, but there’s a tiny green sprout in the dystopian environment.

In other words, there’s still time to prevent the loss of avian and aquatic species caused by soaring water temperatures, said Jones, 47, of Clintonville, who is an elementary school art teacher.

Participating in Art Spot was a no-brainer for Jones and Gerdeman, who both enjoy fishing.

“I spend a lot of time outdoors, and I’ve just watched summers and winters change to these drastic things that we’re seeing all over the United States and the world right now,” said Gerdeman, 55, of Pickerington, who is a high school art teacher. “I just wanted to be a part of that conversation. How can we slow things down a little bit and try to stop the hemorrhaging?”