Talking in Maths

For multimedia artist Jebney Lewis, global warming is an equation waiting to be solved.

by Bruce Walsh

Bruce Walsh K.R. Wood (left) and Jebney Lewis

[ visual art ]

The vintage defroster isn't quite doing the trick in Jebney Lewis' 1989 Toyota pickup.

He leans over the wheel and rubs his shirtsleeve across the windshield. "Coming from a tech theater background, I hardly ever say, 'If I could do anything I want, what would I do?'" he says, working the glass. "I'm usually more like, 'Well, I have this twig and four nails, what can I do with that?'"

Since 2005, Lewis has been a go-to technical director for experimental theater artists like Pig Iron Theatre Co. and Thaddeus Phillips. He specializes in doing a lot with a little (read: bringing taxidermied animals to life in the 2008 Live Arts Festival's Flesh and Blood and Fish and Fowl).

But with works like the sculptural "Bifurcation, Hysteresis, Catastrophe" — which opens tonight at Nexus Foundation in Fishtown — Lewis is finally starting to lead his own conceptual projects.

The independent turn began with last year's "Yard Songs," a multimedia elegy of the American train industry. Built with salvaged industrial steel, Lewis constructed a hand-pumped vintage railcar that glided down abandoned trolley tracks in South Kensington. With live period music and lectures by area scholars, the Crane Arts show brought together dozens of artists and enthusiasts.

By: Bruce Walsh

"Basically, work is an excuse to bring people I love together around an idea," he says, driving down Columbus Boulevard, en route to a meeting with his current collaborators.

His latest project is much smaller in scale — and therefore more intimate for the three involved: Lewis, artist K.R. Wood and mathematical biologist Todd Parsons. The close friends are attempting to create a visual experience that viscerally communicates the complex math behind environmental collapse.

Hunched over a hot cup of tea in Wood's kitchen, Lewis recalls a conversation that inspired the project: "I think I asked you, 'What topic in your field is the most important for people to understand?'"

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"I guess I said something about dynamics in hysteresis," says Parsons, who studies and writes about environmental science at the University of Pennsylvania.

"The idea is that you can go a long time with the temperature changing, but then you cross a tipping point, and there's an instant transformation: All of a sudden the forest becomes grassland. ... When that happens, even if you went back to the original temperature, you couldn't correct it. You actually have to take the temperature way, way back to hit a different tipping point. That's the hysteresis loop."

Standing in her basement, Wood runs her finger across one of the seams on the sculpture. She has painstakingly sewn hundreds of plastic bag fragments onto a lightweight wooden frame. "I've been collecting different colored bags for several years. It's a little unhealthy," she says with a laugh. "I guess I just think they're beautiful."

Lewis saw a similar tapestry by Wood at a recent show, and decided to connect her art with Parsons' concepts. He began crafting delicate armatures out of reclaimed industrial pallets. The frames work with Wood's translucent quilts to create a stained glass effect. Each panel spans about 14 feet, representing separate ecosystems. When the panels are finally suspended in the gallery space, the creators hope to shed some light on the environmental math: Forest can become grassland, grassland can become desert. And it can all happen much faster than we think.

"Without being really heavy-handed about it, to make a piece about environmental degradation and change using plastic bags and discarded wood seemed really fascinating to me," says Lewis, as he holds one of the panels up to the light.

Total production budget for "Bifurcation, Hysteresis, Catastrophe": $25. Maybe less.

(editorial@citypaper.net)

"Bifurcation, Hysteresis, Catastrophe," opening reception Thu., April 8, 6-9 p.m., free, through May 8, Nexus Foundation for Today's Art, 1400 N. American St., 215-684-1946, nexusphiladelphia.org.