TIO NYC: ART AND WATER

02 Jan TIO NYC: ART AND WATER

Guy Laliberte photo courtesy of Marlborough Gallery

Marlborough Gallery, 40 West 57th Street, Manhattan, is always one of Susan’s and my favorite stops when in New York. The current show (through January 5, 2013, so hurry) was special, even for Marlborough.

In it’s simplest terms, GAIA, Guy Laliberte’s exhibition, is about veiws of Earth from Space, but that is like saying Monet is about haystacks.

In 2009, Laliberte, founder of Cirque du Soleil, became one of a very small number of non-affiiated civilians to have gone into Space. He spent eleven days aboard the International Space Station and shot thousands of photographs of our Blue Planet from that vantage point, over 200 miles above the Earth.

The forty or so photographs in the show are spectacular as art, but they also graphically illustrate the fragility of the one habitable planet in our solar system. I was particularly taken by the depictions of water, free and captive, and the immensity of our deserts.

Laliberte obviously had that in mind. He established ONE DROP, an organization dedicated to raising awareness of water and related issues, and serves as ONE DROP’s chairman. The proceeds from the GAIA show will go to ONE DROP, to continue its efforts to make safe water available to all.

Readers of Telluride Inside… and Out are familiar with water concerns, not only because water issues are of such importance to people in our region, but because Telluride local Jin Zidell has devoted time and treasure to found Blue Planet Network in the interest of providing safe drinking water to thirsty places around the world.

When you go to see this show, leave time to watch the 87 minute video of Laliberte’s journey, including the rigorous training, the launch, time aboard the ISS and the landing. Susan stayed for the whole video!