‘A Precarious Edge’ opening at MoNA

La Conner artists Meg Holgate and Steve Klein have joined together to present “A Precarious Edge,” their exhibit opening at the Museum of Northwest Art Saturday. As successful artists do, they have created beauty and are confronting viewers with truth and a challenge: with the future of the Earth hanging in the balance how can each of us “preserve and be part of the restoration of our ecosystems?” as curator Jodie Nelson wrote in introducing the exhibit.

Nelson believes that Holgate’s large-scale figurative landscapes on canvas and paper and Klein’s narrative kiln-formed and blown glass offer a unique and immersive experience, heightened by music that will play in the gallery created by Grammy-nominated conductor Christophe Chagnard, his symphonic composition “Terra Nostra II (Our Earth).”

Holgate and Klein were brought together by Joanna Sikes, who, as the executive director of MoNA until the end of 2021, asked the essential question, Holgate related: “’What would you do with this space?’ We both answered: ‘A climate change exhibition.’”

Klein recalled, “Our answer was almost instantaneous. We should address climate change, global warming and the environment.”

Nelson weaved their work together, aiming to inspire viewers “to effect change in their own lives as a means of stepping back from the edge to embrace restoration, preservation, sustainability, and a renewed eco-consciousness.”

Klein calls Holgate’s paintings “contemplative,” and of a scale that invites viewer “to get lost in a thoughtful moment.” He appreciates her “ability to provide a visual image of the excitement, thrill, calmness and contentment that one feels in observing the beauty of landscapes regardless of whether it’s mountains, islands, ocean or desert.”

He defines his current work as narrative and leaning toward making statements challenging his audience to look through the beauty to the dangers facing the environment.

Holgate is in lockstep. “The science and the data are in: our natural world is being altered in unprecedented ways. I invite our viewers to use an introspective eye to consider the human impact on our natural resources. What are the questions and where are the answers in the face of this large, yet sometimes hardly noticeable, threat to our planet?”

She agrees that Klein’s work has a strong pictorial and political narrative, finding in his rich use of color and form a testament to both his knowledge of materials and processes, as well as to his artistic vision. Her pieces, in contrast, she notes, while large in their scale, are simple contemplations on the world’s changing landscapes.

Nelson believes “we need exhibitions like ‘A Precarious Edge’ to help lend perspective on what is happening around us and to feel into an existential impact.”

The exhibit runs Feb. 26 - May 15, 2022. Admission is free.