Michele Brody: Grass Skirts, Dancers for Earth Day

As Earth Day approaches, I start to think of some of my favorite artists such as New York-born Michele Brody. She creates living sculptures incorporating glass, concrete, steel, copper pipe, fabric, light, water and growing plants.

I first came across Michele Brody a few years ago when I saw a photo of one of her grass skirts. She is going to have them on display in New York for their Earth Day celebration this year.

Her public mixed media installations are amazing. She transforms spaces and offers visitors unique experiences by use of color, texture, light, often some kind of motion due to the materials she uses and the way the pieces are presented.

Her web site offers images of her work. "By incorporating the liminal experience with its message of change and transformation as witnessed in the life cycle of flora, or the ever changing makeup of city streets, she wishes to subtly plant within the viewer a desire to be more aware of the tenuous relationship between themselves, nature, and the urban environment. She also wishes to communicate the delicate characteristics of memory and how time can both erode and enhance our interpretations of experience."

The exhibition, entitled River Grass Skirts, consists of five grass-sprouting skirts by Michele Brody that will be on display and growing in the World Financial Center Winter Garden, 220 Vesey Street April 13 through May 9. It's free.

From the press release: In conjunction with Earth Day 2009 on Saturday, May 9, the fully-grown grass skirts will be harvested and worn by a group of dancers during Earth Celebrations' Hudson River Pageant, which focuses on restoring the Hudson River and addressing climate change in New York City.

The event will feature giant river species puppets and costumes dancing alongside live music through downtown Manhattan along the Hudson River waterfront.

So let's all get out there now. Put your right branch in, take your right branch out, put your right branch in and shake your leaves about. Wave your seedlings. Do whatever you can for Mother Earth.