Austin Green Art will host Annette Lawrence's art exhibit to help raise awareness of direct mail's impact on the environment.

WHAT:  Austin Green Art (AGA), a non-profit arts organization dedicated to raising awareness of sustainability issues through art, is hosting Annette Lawrence's Free Paper exhibition. This three-week exhibition addresses issues of excess and consumerism. Daily junk mail was the inspiration and material used for Lawrence's creations. With Free Paper, Lawrence explores her concerns about the amount of paper used in direct mail advertisements. The paper used in Free Paper was collected over the course of thirteen months and weighs a total of 265 pounds. Free Paper is both a commentary on the disposability of consumer culture and an attempt to introduce order and meaning. Free Paper is Annette Lawrence's first solo show in Austin in a decade.

WHY: AGA has been working with ForestEthics, a non-profit that protects endangered forests, since 2007 on several national campaigns. Free Paper is part of ForestEthics' national Do Not Mail Campaign, a national movement to stop unnecessary direct mail. Free Paper is part of AGA's ongoing efforts to further its collaboration with ForestEthics to produce museum-quality exhibits that educate and inspire the community.

WHAT ELSE: The sale of individual pieces from Lawrence's collection will benefit AGA's ongoing efforts to promote sustainability through cultural practice. The ActionStation will allow the public to sign the Do Not Mail petition and take creative action to prevent junk mail's impact on the environment.

WHEN:  Attendees will have the opportunity to meet Annette and discuss her work during the opening on Friday, January 16. The exhibit runs January 16 – February 6, 2009. 

About Annette Lawrence
Annette Lawrence has been recognized nationally as an artist of tremendous talent. Lawrence has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at the Dallas Museum of Art, the Sweeney Art Gallery at the University of California, Riverside, The African-American Museum in Dallas, ArtPace: A Foundation for Contemporary Art in San Antonio, the University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, the Community Artists' Collective and the Firehouse Gallery in Houston. She has appeared in many group exhibitions including, the 1997 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the first and eleventh rounds of installations at the Project Row Houses, Houston; The Texas Collection, Modern-Post modern at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Gender: Factor or Fiction at the Laguna Gloria Museum of Art in Austin; and Finders Keepers, at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston. www.annettelawrence.net.

About ForestEthics
Founded in 2000, ForestEthics is a nonprofit environmental organization with staff in Canada, the United States and Chile. Our mission is to protect Endangered Forests and wild places, wildlife, and human wellbeing—one of our focus areas is climate change, which compromises all of our efforts if left unchecked. We catalyze environmental leadership among industry, governments and communities by running hard-hitting and highly effective campaigns that leverage public dialogue and pressure to achieve our goals. www.forestethics.org <http://www.forestethics.org>  or www.donotmail.org.

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