Stir of Eco

First came recycling bins. Then we started powering cars with French-fry grease. What’s next, houses made from tin cans?

Now we’re hearing this word ‘sustainability,’ and I think it’s a very complicated word,” says Arizona State University professor Richard Lerman, whose eco art is featured in the “Nowhere to Hide: Three Artists in the Desert” exhibit. Lerman explores the concept of interdependence through a plastic-bottle graph of the Hoover Dam’s declining water levels and a working speaker assembly created from bottle brush, wires, and dried cactus. “The trick is to mesh these two worlds, the natural and the engineered, so they sustain each other,” he says.

The locals-only exhibit also includes Julie Anand’s Material Histories -- a series of photographs of found-object collages -- and gouache paintings by Carrie Marill.