The new installation at Desert Botanical Garden isn’t a collection of Sonoran flora, nor another gathering of glittery Chihuly glass. Toward 2050 is a colossal labyrinth of nearly 5,000 color-drenched textile flags, each bearing a message about the dangers of global warming. At its center is a towering cone made of more of the flags, all of them commissioned by Phoenix textile artist Ann Morton.
Part art installation, part social action, Morton’s latest brainchild is on display through June 1. Her previous projects include 2013’s Ground Cover, a commentary on homelessness in which artists created a massive blanket that covered a hunk of Downtown. In 2019, there was The Violet Protest, where artists assembled a giant quilt addressing “core American values,” and about which a documentary film has been made.
Morton’s newest project was inspired by an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report about how global warming is on track to increase by 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2040. The report offered guidelines that would reverse greenhouse gas emissions and stop the effects of global warming by the year 2050.
After reading that, Morton put a call out for environmentally themed “prayer flags.”
“Makers from 46 U.S. states and nine countries made flags,” Morton says. “I think out of more than 5,000, I got maybe six that I wasn’t able to use, because they were too big. If there’s time, we’ll make them fit.”
One of the flags offers a collage of sea bass and carp sewn onto a field of sunflower yellow. Another displays splashes of red and green under the legend, “Listen to the wind!” Yet another displays a quilted hieroglyphic of a multi-colored tree frog.
“The labyrinth is the star of this installation,” she tells me. “The flags are expressions of what people love about their own environment. They run the gamut – illustrative, abstract, made by kids and elders, all expressing their love of our natural world.”
Morton provided postcards that makers can send to lawmakers, asking them to help save the earth.
“Without that element, we’re just singing to the choir,” she says. “I’m guessing we have about 5,000 of those postcards in circulation.”
Whether the recipients of the cards do anything that impacts climate change remains to be seen. Meantime, once the installation comes down this summer, Morton and her Toward 2050 colleagues will set about making all those prayer flags into blankets for those in need.
“Some of the flags won’t survive,” she says. “They’ll fade and be rained on. But that weather is part of the story, and that story will be in the blanket. So far, the flags are holding up better than some parts of the planet.”
– Robrt L. Pela
BRANCHING OUT
Conceptual artist Charles Gaines is renowned for large-scale art based on converting images and documents into numerical structures and other systems. This spring and early summer, Phoenix Art Museum is displaying his most recent work in its entirety. Charles Gaines: Numbers and Trees features eight large triptychs of cottonwoods, which were photographed near the San Pedro River here in Arizona, plotted with colors on a numbered grid with overlaying images of the trees. The collection also prominently displays one of Gaines’s earlier pieces, “Greenhouse,” a huge glass enclosure with three stainless steel trees at its heart, shrouded with smoke. External monitors track rising global warming temperatures in real time. The exhibition will remain in the Cummings Great Hall until July 20. W-F, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. and Sa-Su, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Check online for ticket prices. 1625 N. Central Ave., Phoenix, 602-257-1880, phxart.org
– Lex Doig
