Tracy Hicks

Exhibit: "Global Warning: still/LIFE" (Main Gallery & New Works Space)
Dates: May 9 - June 21, 2008
Installation / Mixed Media

Tracy Hicks

About the Work

Incorporating everything from scientific glassware to casts of recently extinct species of frogs using jewel-bright dyes and pigments, Hicks’ installations blaze with the richness of cathedral windows and overflow with the profusion of Victorian curiosity cabinets. Juxtaposing the exotic specimens collected in the Amazon forests of Peru next to familiar flora and fauna from his Oak Cliff back yard – Hicks addresses the beauty, mystery and haunting precariousness of life on our planet.

“Global Warning: still/LIFE,” was created in 2005 at the invitation of the University of Kansas at Lawrence, which houses the world’s most extensive collections of amphibian species. Working with natural scientists there, Hicks developed a process for making casts of the fragile scientific specimens without damaging them. The resulting installation incorporates hundreds of frogs, cast in translucent rubber and infused with dyes and pigments that glow in the dark or under ultraviolet light, giving new life to species that have disappeared from the Earth.

Hicks’ earlier work dealt largely with preservation in the context of humans’ search for personal and cultural meaning or, as he puts it, the question of “what we find precious enough to hide away in our sock drawers.” An installation titled “The Storeroom,” exhibited in 1993 by the Dallas Museum of Art in a two-man show that also featured British artist Damien Hirst, captured the look and feel of a Depression-era root cellar. “Third Ward Archive,” installed at Houston’s Project Row Houses in 1996, gave life and form to a proud but imperiled African-American community’s photographic self-portraits.

After traveling to Guatemala in 1998 to help herpetologists from the University of Texas at Arlington collect amphibian specimens, Hicks became a breeder of tropical frogs. His collection of approximately 300 frogs includes species presumed extinct in the wild. He is a member of a network of serious amateur breeders who work in cooperation with zoos and other institutions to document, preserve and study the scores of frog species that are in danger of disappearing, in part because of global climate change.

Tracy Hicks

 
Artist Statement

“No matter who we are, we are measured by what we do. As an artist, my chosen role is to reflect our culture and socialization in visual terms that can lead to some series of small personal epiphanies. In my lifetime our culture has altered our physical world in ways that are difficult to define in conventional terms. While theologians, scientists and politicians argue about the nature of nature, I have watched it decline. I have seen the amphibian decline first hand. It is a warning to me. The “Global Warning: still/LIFE” installation project is my attempt to define the metamorphosis currently happening with intellectual and visual terms that can be seen and felt by anyone.”

More information can be found at:  www.tracyhicks.com

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