first large scale painting, Evolution, which was exhibited at Sperone Westwater Gallery in 1992, the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Venice Biennale in 1993. The Biosphere series, referencing Douglass Trumbull's seminal 1971 film Silent Running''', envisions a situation where the Earth has become too toxic for human life, and the last vestiges of nature are placed in geodesic domes on space ships roaming the outer reaches of our solar system. Biosphere also references the quasi-scientific experiment Biosphere 2 in Arizona. Second Nature Illinois State University, University Galleries, Normal Illinois, August 17- September 29, 1995. Curated by Barry Blinderman, this is the first museum survey of Rockman's paintings featuring thirty works ( 18 large scale paintings and 12 smaller works) from 1986 to 1994, with catalog essays by Barry Blinderman, Douglas Blau, Stephen Jay Gould, Prudence Roberts, and Peter Ward. The exhibition traveled to the Portland Art Museum (June 5 - July 23, 1995), Cincinnati Art Museum(Oct. 22 - Dec. 31, 1995), the Tweed Museum of Art (Feb. 6 - March 17, 1996) and The Cranbrook Art Museum (September 20 - October 27, 1996). Travels Many of Alexis Rockman's works have been inspired by his travels around the world, including to Costa Rica, Brazil, Madagascar, Guyana, Tasmania, the Galapagos and Antarctica. Rockman traveled to Guyana in 1994 with fellow artist Mark Dion, resulting in numerous paintings of the flora and fauna that he observed. For the 1994 trip, he strictly painted works that depicted what he saw, with particular interest in various types of insects. Neblina (1995), one of the last works resulting from the Guyana trip, was painted after the collapse of a tailings dam at the Omni gold mine in Guyana, resulting in cyanide leaking into the waterway. Neblina shows wildlife huddled together high in tree branches. Rockman returned to Guyana in 1998, and his works from that trip focused on aspects of ecotourism. Rockman traveled to Antarctica in 2008 with Dorothy Spears, and works resulting from this voyage were featured in the "Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape" exhibit at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Dioramas 1996-97 Dioramas involved a pointed move away from painting: each of the nine works in the exhibition combines paint with collage elements, including photographs, readymade and found objects ( dead animals, etc.), each encases in a block of transparent Envirotex resin between three and a quarter and five inches thick. The