Going Green

Opening reception and panel discussion, Fri., Aug. 6, 5:30-7:30 p.m., free, Asian Arts Initiative, 1219 Vine St., 215-557-0455, asianartsinitiative.org; exhibit runs through Aug. 20, Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, 8480 Hagy's Mill Road, 215-482-7300, schuylkillcenter.org.

by Will Stone

environmental art

The Asian Art Alliance and the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education have brought to our shores an exhibition of photography, drawings and other video media from 16 green-minded, contemporary Taiwanese artists. Two internationally recognized artists, Chao-chang Lee and Pin-yu Pan, have been poking around the Schuylkill Center's acres of farmland and foliage in search of — among other loamy muses — Buddha. Their on-site installations display a nuanced Eastern approach to environmental art, deriving its equanimity from the minimalist, technical style of traditional bamboo craftsmanship and calligraphy. Underneath a cathedral of Pennsylvania pines, Lee's giant earth garden, arranged from cones, rocks and twigs, sketches out his holiness. Following this found-art, spiritual sensibility, Pan's Ark for Plants translates a Taiwanese ark story into a bower, built from fallen branches to shield not the humans, but the trees.