Collection: Tropics of NIAD, Selected By Andrea Lounibos (online exhibition)

About the exhibition

At dawn, wings flashing crimson then black. Toucan the skybearer carries the half-moon to the heavens in his ivory bill. 

—Jan Conn, from “To Be Sung to Villa-Lobos’ ’The Amazon Forest’,” Jaguar Rain

The most wonderful mystery of life may well be the means by which it created so much diversity from so little physical matter. The biosphere, all organisms combined, makes up only about one part in ten billion of the earth's mass….Yet life has divided into millions of species, the fundamental units, each playing a unique role in relation to the whole. 

—Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life

Following a recent trip to the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, the diversity of pattern, color, shape, and size seen in the jungle there has been on my mind. The flora and fauna depicted in the works below bring back memories of wonder and warmth, along with reminders to care for our earthly home. 

About the selector

Andrea Lounibos is a Director at Adams and Ollman in Portland, Oregon. Having grown up in Florida as the daughter of an artist and an entomologist, her love of art is often informed by her interests in the natural world. She earned undergraduate degrees in Art History and French & Francophone Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, and has worked in the contemporary art world for over a decade, beginning as an intern at LAXART in Los Angeles, California. After calling New York home for almost eight years, Andrea, her husband, and cat (aka The Kitty) moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2015. In addition to supporting the arts, Andrea teaches yoga and keeps bees.