chashasma is pleased to present PRESERVATION, a two-person exhibition featuring artists Michele Brody and Rachel Miller. Preservation will combine the work of these two mixed-media artists into a visceral experience of light, sound, space and time that focuses on their distinct methods of preserving the environment and memory. Michele Brody will encompass the main gallery of chashama’s 112 West 44th Street space with an installation of quadrupeds composed of aluminum strips and hardware that will parade charges of floating plants suspended in tubes of nutrient enriched water. Entitled Garden Sentinels this piece is made possible in part with public funds from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

The installation focuses on the piecemeal efforts by humanity to preserve Nature within our industrial society. Rachel Miller will fill the floor of the window platform and back gallery space with evolving, historical fabric patterns, which will be comprised of organic and industrial materials. Through this work, she explores how the patterns of our past are both historically and metaphorically connected to personal patterns of ritual, development, and transience. The essence of Michele Brody’s work is to understand how we live with change and the constant flux of our environment. By incorporating the growth of plants within a range of materials she wishes to express the meaning of change and transformation as witnessed in the actual life cycle of flora. She wishes to embed within the viewer a desire to be more aware of the tenuous relationship between ourselves, nature, and the urban environment and how we as individuals can make a difference. Planted in Garden Sentinels will be culinary herbs nourished by energy efficient LED lights that will be put up for adoption at the end of the show for people’s homes and gardens.

Rachel Miller’s work explores environmental and ecological patterns, and how they interconnect with our own patterns of growth, departure, and rejuvenation. Using both the body and landscape as cynosure and subject, she explores the landscape’s role as an active residence for both the living and the deceased. Her works, which include sculpture, installation, performance and costume, examine the constant resurfacing of the past, and its integration with the present.