Neatly stacked shirt boxes filled with carefully lined-up shells - a scene that may evoke a day at the beach with a particularly compulsive collector - are the first things you see as you enter the gallery at the Long Island Art League in Dix Hills.
They're right in the middle of the floor, the centerpiece of an installation for an exhibit called "Earth Works - Artists Addressing the Environment."
"It's green, it's environmental, it's happening now," says curator Carole Jay, who hopes the show will gently nudge people to action, or at least make them think more about the beauty of nature and the damage humans are inflicting. She's gathered works by six artists, some of them on the unusual side: Upstairs, rows of jars containing beach detritus collected by an artist who's also been a Jones Beach lifeguard for 20 years are displayed on towering metal shelves. The old cups, unspooled cassette tape, bloated glove, fuzzy hairbrush and other items left behind by careless visitors float in seawater, looking like weird specimens in a mad scientist's laboratory.
