Jason Middlebrook: Live with Less

Middlebrook is a long-time practitioner of using recyclable materials such as old wood, cardboard boxes, rubber tires, and plastic bottles to draw attention to larger social issues. Live with Less is an expression of Middlebrook’s artistic and environmental goal to see beyond the discarded nature of these materials and to re-imagine them as something beautiful and useful. Considered one of today’s most socially responsible artists, Middlebrook draws inspiration from a range of disparate sources including ecology, art history, geography, and politics. In Live with Less, he metaphorically brings the unbridled wastefulness of contemporary living to new heights in a massive 35-foot tower made from several tons of recycled cardboard. The cardboard, collected on campus over a two-month period, will be stacked and layered from floor to ceiling creating visual stratifications analogous to the layers of a landfill. Often coupled with watchful birds and sporadic weeds, these stratifications make their appearance in many of Middlebrook’s sculptures and two-dimensional works including his most recent paintings done on collapsed cardboard boxes. Live with Less will feature dozens of these new paintings as well as a series of wood plank sculptures in which vivid painted patterns echo the natural striations of the wood’s grain. Middlebrook’s signature benches made from found wood will be placed throughout the museum functioning in a dual role as both sculpture and functional object. Throughout the run of the exhibition, Middlebrook will be collecting plastic water bottles consumed on campus and recasting them into multicolored concrete sculptures that will exponentially form a sculptural mound on the museum’s second floor. In all his efforts Middlebrook speaks to our need to live with less. At the same time he shows us that all is not lost. There are plenty of regenerative possibilities in, as he states, "creating something from nothing." The UAlbany Offices of Environmental Sustainability and Grounds Management have offered instrumental support in the planning and implementation of Live with Less. During the run of the exhibition, Middlebrook and the University Art Museum will continue to work closely with both offices to promote the need for environmental accountability on campus and the community around us.