Eva Mantell and Joel Beck work together as greenworldx2 to bring an enlivened connectivity to art and the environment. Our projects relate painting, sculpture and light to the everyday — to reveal new spaces for the imagination.

 

Started during the pandemic, when we wanted to create more flexible spaces for our inter-generational, blended family to live, work, go to zoom school, and play in, we were soon moving the furniture and the art around into new configurations. Using the materials we had around us: cans of paint in the basement, the plywood stacked in the shed, invasive vines we cut down in the back yard, we brought change inside and outside the house, and began designing the kind of lighting we wanted to live with.

 

We have continued to move outward from this very personal core of work, bringing our installations to a variety of public, educational and creative spaces. We have the same goals that we had at the start of our collaboration: to have an equal artistic partnership; to include all ages and members of the family; to be practical and economical; to make things by hand; to use materials sparingly; to add art and creativity to the everyday world.

We chose the name greenworldx2 as a reference to Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism. The Greenworld is a space in a play or a legend that has the metaphorical power of transformation. In Shakespeare’s comedies, the Greenworld is a forest where banished lovers can run to — fleeing a corrupt kingdom. It’s a place where they can find love and comedy, fresh air and fresh viewpoints. Spending time in the Greenworld is transformative. Emerging from this forest, changed, they can now go back to society and start to rebuild it for the better.

Is art a kind of Greenworld? We are testing the idea.

Eva Mantell, born Princeton, NJ 1963, BA University of Pennsylvania, MFA School of Visual Arts, NYC. She has shown her artwork at Think!Chinatown, NYC, the Hunterdon Museum, NJ, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, ICA Boston, Racine Art Museum, WI, the Institute Library, New Haven, CT, and more. She teaches art and art history to all ages, with a focus on special needs students.

Joel Beck, born Champaign, IL 1957, Museum of the School of Fine Arts, Boston, and the North Carolina School of the Arts. Joel is a painter who co-founded and codirected Roebling Hall Gallery, and Salon75 Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. His art has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Harcus-Krakow Gallery and the Portia Harcus Gallery in Boston.