Mother Nature Holds Her Breath

Mother Nature Holds Her Breath

Mother Nature Holds Her Breath, by Mj Viano Crowe, is an accordion book in seven panels that embodies two radically opposing visions. Crowe incorporated papercut and printmaking stencils offset and registered in this unique bookwork, its crisp black borders producing a stained-glass effect. However, the book's 2 sides may be initially (and intentionally) disorienting to a viewer. On one side, nature's fecundity is on full display, flora and fauna crowded onto the pages like a cornucopia of vibrant growth. On the reverse side, the imagined idyll plummets into an ominous industrial wasteland, the sky a dull green over roiling waters and spewing smokestacks. Just as the two sides are connected, the ruinous 'side' of environmental issues must be addressed before its tragic effects subsume any hope for environmental health as portrayed on its reverse.

- Betty Bright, Co Curator "RECLIMATION, Artists' Books on the Environment," San Fransisco Center for The Book, 2021.
Art Historian, Curator, Writer in the Contemporary Arts of the Book.

Mj Viano Crowe

Accordion book, recto verso
12” x 7’ when extended