Artists Respond to BP

There was never a "wind spill", nor has there ever been "toxic sun waste". We don't have to process water to generate energy from it. We can make plastics quite efficiently out of corn. There are very few things that we can't produce less dangerously, less expensively, without petroleum.

Even if you're one of those who doesn't believe in climate change (a debate for another day), the tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico has made it increasingly clear that there are many, many more repercussions to our addiction to oil effecting us directly, right here and now. So, why are we still subsidizing oil with tax payer money? Why don't we stop subsidizing and let the "free market" fix the problem?

Now that I've dispensed with my two cents, I'll descend from my soap box and we can move on to the art.

For these listed above, among many other reasons, artists have been emerging in mass to respond to the oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico. A recent article featured many of these responses, most of them derivatives of the BP logo. I donated a piece to the exhibition entitled "Oil Slick", reviewed in the Wall Street Journal, which opened in Bushwick Brooklyn and marked perhaps the first wave of exhibitions on this theme. One specifically poignant image which was used in both articles, was a detail from a painting by my great friend and brilliant colleague Adam Miller.