Every landscape has its eccentricities. Some are quiet; others are boldly forthcoming with the particular features that invoke wonder, dismay, or puzzlement. Charleston, South Carolina and the surrounding region withhold and reveal their mysteries with vivid force. In the fecundity of its modest and heroic gardens, the complexity of its hydrology, and the aggressiveness of its engineering, the landscape insinuates a history of invention, oppression, abundance, exhaustion, and renewal. Often achingly beautiful, there also are many areas seared by exploitation, faulty planning, and bizarre incongruities of change.

Art and Landscape in Charleston and the Low Country is based on the exhibition "Human/Nature: Art and Landscape in Charleston and the Low Country" curated by writer and teacher John Beardsley and art historian Roberta Kefalos in conjunction with the 1997 Spoleto Festival. In contrast to the groundbreaking 1991 exhibition "Places with a Past", organized for the Spoleto Festival by Mary Jane Jacob, where artists generally sought out architectural sites endowed with historical or cultural significance for their interventions, "Human/Nature" emphasized the landscape as a mediator of history, social, ethical, and esthetic values in this major southern city.

Readers (like myself) who neither saw the 1997 exhibition nor have visited Charleston will find the publication accessible, engaging, and quite beautiful. Beardsley's essay clearly establishes the background and rationale for the exhibition. To disclose the dynamics of social histories and environmental implications in this particular area, Beardsley selected thirteen established and lesser known artists and designers, including Magdalena Abakanowicz, Thorton Dial, Patrick Dougherty, Adriaan Geuze, Martha Jackson-Jarvis, Mary Lucier, Esther Mahlangu, Martha Schwartz, and others to exhibit work. Representing a generous range of methodologies and media, not every exhibitor had worked before with landscape, but all possessed an interest in the social and natural constituents of all places. Most of the projects were created in response to particular sites or circumstances, including places in center city Charleston, as well as the surrounding Low Country. In addition to Beardsley's essay, the concluding section of the book is dedicated to the dozen projects documented in color photographs and texts by the curators on the artists' backgrounds and the significance of the Charleston project.

While the exhibition offered an impetus and framework to consider social and cultural ideas embedded in landscape, the book is particularly distinguished by a richly textured essay by Theodore Rosengarten and the idiosyncratic photographs of Len Jenshel. Rosengarten lives in the region; with knowing affection, his narrative braids together passages of historical research, prolonged observation, and personal experiences and conversations with long-time residents, some of whom are descendants of former slaves. With a metaphorical cadence, he captures the mazy growth and development of the region, the evolving traditions of gardening, botanical, and agricultural studies, the unique ecology, as well as the harsh evidence of dashed hopes and oppressive forces. He depicts a landscape fashioned by many cultures, sensibilities, and describes its unfolding from the contrasting perspectives of farmers, plantation owners, scientists, and slaves. Describing the rich complexity of the environment, the specter of slavery remains deeply inscribed in the gardens and landscapes of Charleston.

Len Jenshel, also a knowing observer of Charleston and the Low Country, sought out sites that represented the area's magnificent and troubled history, as well as places in the very moment of rupture and dramatic transition. His photographs of a cemetery with unkempt plastic construction fencing, a sudden summer flood in a desolate part of the city, or mounds of sand and shorn palm trees at the Harbor Hilton Resort construction site capture the capricious character of an environment laden with history yet perpetually transformed by neglect, calamity, or opportunity. The laudable, if exaggerated, expectations of "Human/Nature" have become a familiar lexicon for many contemporary exhibitions on landscape and the environment. Artists are invited to create or install work that makes the covert texts of landscapes more legible and accessible. Art is then strategically dispersed throughout the city and region, offering an incentive to visit and consider more modest or less traveled sites. Beardsley describes these revelatory sculptures and projects as "a suite of authentic experiences in an increasingly simulated world." They serve to reveal the dynamics of an environment and development in order to "heal the breech between nature and culture" and to "affirm the possibility of a beneficent relationship with nature" through a "new model of stewardship."

While many of the exhibitors' projects were genuinely engaging, if not entirely challenging, the claims of the exhibition may be too grandiose, unintentionally diminishing the credibility of an important initiative. "Human/Nature" generously demonstrates a number of ways that a diverse group of artists may choose to work in a particular landscape. Admirably seeking inclusion, the curatorial strategy appears to be an expression of Beardsley's interests rather than a searching intellectual inquiry or esthetic position. Thus, neither individual works nor the totality of experience or impressions can affirm (or confirm) prospect of realigned perspectives or a paradigmatic shift. Without dismissing the instigation and influence of art in our cities and communities, it is important that projects and exhibitions promote critical opportunities rather than desirable outcomes. The great mystery and promise of art is its incalculability — the imprecision of cause and effect.

I am left with an impression that many of the exhibitors' projects are highly specific in their intentions and objectives, but few of fully embrace the startling incongruities and inexplicable relationships of this late 20th century landscape. With the notable exception of Jenshel, Lucier, Schwartz, and Gonzalez's works, many of the projects reference without analysis or interpretation particular cultural, racial, and ethnic influences. Given the impressive aspirations of "Human/Nature", we might expect to be more challenged or discomfited by works created and installed to reveal the multiple, often combative, narratives that continue to shape this most extraordinary place.

Patricia C. Phillips is an independent art critic. Her writing in the past sixteen years has concerned public art, architecture, design, and sculpture — and the intersection of these areas. Her articles and essays have been published by Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, Rizzoli International Publications, M.I.T. Press, Princeton Architectural Press, as well as other publications. In 1996, she curated the exhibitions "Making Sense: Five Installations on Sensation" at the Katonah Museum of Art and "City Speculations" at the Queens Museum of Art. She is editor of City Speculations which was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 1996.