Earth Day, for me, has always felt less like a global mandate and more like a quiet, necessary recalibration of the eye. It’s that brief, sharp moment each April where we’re asked to stop simply consuming the landscape and start actually seeing it—the way the light hits a revitalized urban garden or the stark, graphic silhouette of a lone tree against a changing skyline.

In a world that feels increasingly digitized and frantic, Earth Day acts as a vital, tactile reminder of our physical stakes in this place. It’s not just about the grand gestures of policy, though those are knawing concerns; it’s about the intimate, daily observations—the textures we’ve inherited and the ones that, as artists, we’re leaving behind. To honor the day is to acknowledge that we are part of a living composition, one that requires a steady hand and a very clear vision to preserve. Above: Paradise as found at the Mount Vernon Hotel Museum and Garden, my photos

Wednesday, April 22, 7-9 pm: The Tower Show at Union Channel

In the industrial heart of Brooklyn, where the Gowanus Canal cuts a murky, resilient path through the neighborhood, the skyline is defined not by glass spires but by the humble cedar-and-steel geometry of the water tower. For the fifth year running, Arts Gowanus has invited the local creative community to take this local icon—specifically their signature 11" x 17" template—and dismantle, decorate, or entirely reinvent it.

Walking through the rows of finished works is a lesson in the "elasticity of the medium". What begins as a uniform silhouette is quickly transformed through the sheer ingenuity of the participants. One artist might treat the cardstock as a substrate for delicate, atmospheric watercolor washes that suggest an "eternal present"; another might build out from the flat surface with found objects, glass, or intricate tile-work, turning a 2D template into a 3D meditation on urban infrastructure.

The beauty of The Tower Show lies in its "collective solitude". While each of the 300 artists works independently, or as neighborhood art collectives, the exhibition brings them together in a vibrant, democratic display where every piece is offered at the flat price of $200. It’s a rare moment where the barrier between the viewer and the collector is removed, allowing a "blissful immersion" into the diverse mental landscapes of the Gowanus artist community.

The Tower Show opens this Thursday, April 23, at Union Channel at Gowanus Wharf. If you find yourself in Brooklyn, do stop by to see how a single shape can contain a thousand different stories.

Union Channel, 240 3^rd Avenue, Brooklyn, NY Info

Wednesday, April 22, 6-8pm: Probus at Equity Gallery

This exhibition highlights the "probity"—or integrity/honesty—of creation through drawing, referencing historical perspectives from Cennino Cennini and Giorgio Vasari on the importance of an artist's first marks. For those who believe that art should be a "weighted expression" of our social fabric, PROBUS offers a powerful, nuanced communication that is both a reflection of the self and a collective history still being written. Right: Drawing by Catherine Lepp

Participating artists: Steven Assael, Patrick Bayly, Melanie Berardicelli, Peter Bonner, Alaiyo Bradshaw, Sunny Chapman, Peter Drake, Gordon Fearey, Mary Flinn, Brooks Frederick, Marianne Gagnier, Julien Gardair, Judy Glantzman, Daniel G. Hill, Katherine Jackson, John Kelly, Becky Kinder, Margaret Krug, Kristin Kunc, Dulce Lamarca, Mark LaRiviere, Catherine Lepp, Daniel Maidman, Meer Musa, Sharilyn Neidhardt, Selime Okuyan, Guno Park, Benjamin Pritchard, Andrew Cornell Robinson, Matt Rota, Andra Samelson, Peter Schenck, Mary Schiliro, Manju Shandler, Dianne Smith, Sarah Valeri, Melanie Vote, Patricia Watwood, Zane York

Equity Gallery, 245 Broome St., New York, NY Info

Saturday-Sunday, April 25-26, 2-5pm: Open Studio at Salon 37

Olivia Beens, a multidisciplinary artist who works in ceramics and found materials as well as easel painting, is hosting an open studio this weekend to present new works from her Displacementseries. In these unsettling, layered works we are forced to reckon with the friction between body and border evoke a visceral response to a world in flux. Her palette—often raw, punctuated by urgent, gestural marks—suggests both the debris of conflict and the fragile persistence of memory. Figures appear not as fixed subjects, but as silhouettes caught in a state of transit, echoing global surges of migration and local erasures of a city in flux.

Olivia Beens, 37 Canal Street, FL3 [walkup] New York, NY Info

Friday, April 24th at 6pm: Rosaire Appel Artist Talk at Center for Book Arts

In the current climate of "too much information," there is a certain radical pleasure in finding an artist who invites us to look, listen, and read all at once—without ever actually telling us what to think. Rosaire Appel is that kind of artist. Her most recent exhibition and publication, Shatter / Chatter, currently on view at the Center for Book Arts, is a brilliant deconstruction of how we process meaning.

The title itself—Shatter / Chatter—functions as a bridge between the artist's past and present. "Shatter" draws from a novel Appel wrote in the 90s, looking back at her decades-long practice of "asemic writing," where ink and paint mimic the structure of language but refuse to settle into a dictionary definition. "Chatter," on the other hand, is very much in the now: a deconstructed artist's book that creates a wordless conversation through "musical scores" meant to be heard with the eyes.­

In conjunction with the exhibition, and moderated by curator Nicole Kaack, Rosaire Appel and comics specialist Bill Kartalopoulos will discuss abstract comics from process-oriented and historical perspectives, mapping the shared terrain between experimental bookmaking and the evolving language of this graphic form. 
Center for Book Arts, 28 W 27th Street FL3, New York, NY Tickets

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