Installation View, Ecologies of Restoration by DM Witman, Danforth Art Museum, 2024

Transdisciplinary artist DM Witman talks with GroundTruth Director Margaret LeJeune about her work on the polycrisis including how her background as a field biologist has informed her creative processes. Witman’s work has been exhibited in over 120 solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally, and she has been awarded residencies at Ellis-Beauregard Foundation (Maine), Monson Arts (Maine), and How to Flatten A Mountain (Ireland). She is the recipient of grants from the Maine Arts Commission, The Kindling Fund and Warhol Foundation, The John Anson Kittredge Fund, and the Puffin Foundation. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Portland Museum of Art (Maine); and CICA Museum (Korea), among others, and she is affiliated with photo-eye Gallery (New Mexico) and the Maine Museum of Photographic Arts (Maine). Witman holds an MFA from Maine Media College and a BS in Environmental Science from Kutztown University. #ecoartist #womenphotographers #environmentalphotography

DM Witman

Interview on April 7 for Ground Truth Institute

Margaret LeJeune: I first learned of DM Witman’s work when I was invited to curate an exhibition titled Agency for Broto: Art-Climate-Science’s 2021 conference, a project of the Cape Cod Center for Sustainability. The questions which drove my curatorial process included “what exists at the intersection of empowerment, the climate crisis, and radical empathy? what does agency look like in a post-human world? and, can it be ascribed to non-human species, rivers and/or ecosystems?” Witman’s video work Witness, which was included in the exhibition, addresses environmental disruption and humanity’s role in global degradation. In this work, a nude figure is seen perched atop a block of ice that changes color through the duration of the piece as the sounds of a reverberating boat engine and cracking ice intensifies. Next to the figure, a video of waves crashing ashore within a sterile oval frame suggests nature as compartmentalized artifice. This work can be viewed here.

Since then, I have followed Witman’s work closely. In 2023, I invited her to have a solo exhibition, Solastalgia Times, at the Red Door Gallery at Bradley University. And in 2024 we began to share space more regularly as we worked together as members of the Board of Directors for the Society for Photographic Education. The conversation below reflects my curiosity to learn more about DM’s motivations and processes in her work on environmental grief and ecological shifts.

ML: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me about your creative practice for the GroundTruth archive. One of the most compelling things about your work is how it visualizes grief, healing, and ecological loss. When did you first recognize mourning as an ecological condition rather than only a personal one?

DM: I first felt it when I worked as a field environmental scientist, it was by experience. The field work I conducted was for baseline studies and permitting for infrastructure projects. This was in my early 20s. Quite quickly I became acutely aware of change, destruction, transformation of the natural and semi-natural spaces. I didn’t have a name for it, but it was very real and at times incredibly intense. It wasn’t until many years later that I became aware that it could be more than my singular experience, that eco-distress and mourning is really an existential issue. This was shortly after working on the series “Melt”.

DM Witman, eom no. 1 from the series Ecologies of Mourning, 2023-24, 18 x 15”, unique gold-toned salted-paper on handmade abaca

ML:  In Ecologies of Mourning, you describe grief and healing as non-linear and liminal. How does photography, particularly process-based and material experimentation, allow you to hold that ambiguity?

DM: I have learned a great deal about loss and mourning, through experience and research. There are a number of psychological and social models which provide for an understanding of how humans process and experience loss–in each there is the element of time. And how this unfolds over time is unique to each of us.  When I work with materials, photographic or not, time is an essential component. Allowing materials to respond and unfold, is directly tied to the idea and/or experience at hand. Life is ambiguous, it is change over time, it is dynamic, as are our bodies and everything else (mostly)around us. This liminal place of working, allows me to consciously sit in this space of ambiguity and attempt to understand.

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“Get Dirty, Eat Well, and Make Art”: Reflecting on 25 Years of Wormfarm Institute with Donna Neuwirth & Jay Salinas

Meet Donna Neuwirth and Jay Salinas, co-Founders of Wormfarm Institute, a cross-sector arts and culture organization rooted in Sauk County, Wisconsin.

Apr 27, 2026

Podcast Interview conducted by Matthew Fluharty with Art of the Rural REPOSTED

Meet Donna Neuwirth and Jay Salinas, co-Founders of Wormfarm Institute, a cross-sector arts and culture organization rooted in Sauk County, Wisconsin, in the heart of the Driftless region of the Upper Midwest.

Over thirty years ago, Jay and Donna made a leap of faith, leaving behind Chicago and the city’s vibrant arts scene for a forty-acre dairy farm in Wisconsin. Out of this experiment grew one of the most inventive and influential models for artistic, cultural, and agricultural stewardship in rural communities, a way of seeing connections embodied in Wormfarm’s notion of the cultureshed.

“[The cultureshed is] the idea that the whole of a region’s culture — that means chefs and farmers and businessmen who are all forming the culture of a region — speaks to and is inspired by the place in which it emerges, but also has a capacity to speak clearly and coherently outside of its region.” —Jay Salinas

From this foundation, Jay and Donna built a residency program rooted in the simple, generative idea of invitation – welcoming artists to visit, stay, and pitch in with the labor of a working farm. As we learn in this conversation, all of the work that has garnered Wormfarm such attention and respect continues to be rooted in those relationships and conversations that can be exchanged across a bean row.

As we learn, this ethos led to some of the Institute’s most well-known work: the Farm/Art DTour, a ten-day, fifty-mile, self-guided drive across Sauk County, punctuated by temporary art installations, pasture performances, and roadside poetry; and Fermentation Fest, a celebration of the deep connections between food, land, and culture.

“We invented something where we could be who we are and could be products of our urban environment and bring some attention to these spaces, ways of life, and important land uses that we believe more people should pay attention to in urban areas as well as in rural areas.” —Donna Neuwirth

Across all these efforts, Wormfarm has cultivated a web of cross-sector partnerships that weave together farmers, ecologists, choreographers, sculptors, and community members across the Midwest.

This conversation scans from Wormfarm’s history forward into their visions for the future, and what can emerge out of deep attention to place, culture, and ecology – and where those soundings might take all of us.

Learn more and support Wormfarm Institute at wormfarminstitute.org.

March 2026 e-Newsletter for subscribers and non-members is here

March 2026 e-Newsletter for subscribers and non-members is  here

Fossilidades, REVELAR, Forest Design, fragment, Evgenia Emets and Te.Ra Landscape Architecture, 2026

Guardians of Future Forests: Evgenia Emet’s Holistic and Metaphysical “Eternal Forest” Project

Interview by Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

Evgenia Emets works collaboratively with both communities and the land in her “Eternal Forests” project. Pairing ecological dialogues and community co-creation with cultural and biological research, she creates living forests that she hopes will protect and build future forests. 

Evgenia, your current Fossilades project has been planned in Torres Verdras as part of the project REVELAR at CAC Centro de Arte e Criatividade, curated by Jorge Reis and opening in March in an exhibition titled A Memória Dos Pássaros Que Não Voam. What are you most excited about for the exhibition?

Fossilades combines fóssil and possibilidade (fossil and possibility in Eng). When I was invited to create work for the REVELAR project, the point of departure I chose was an ancient Araucaria’s fossilized trunk found in the territory. Witnessing millions of years, I heard it ask whether this memory of deep time can become a catalyst for ecological imagination.

The resulting project unfolds in two directions:

One is a film installation created in collaboration with Marco Piano, presented at the exhibition. Five women exist in the forest in cyclical time. Their gestures are ritualistic, dissolving the boundary between body and woodland. It is a communion, a reenactment of becoming one with the forest.

The second dimension is architectural and ecological. I mapped the quality of reflectivity in an ellipse in the former bullring’s oval arena. Using its two foci (ellipse focal points), I positioned symbolic nodes as offering places for fire and water elements, then traced intersecting lines to generate planting coordinates. 

My intention in restoration work is to maximize habitat potential - layering canopy, understory, and ground cover. I began with biodiversity research and received 75 trees from the local Municipality - all suited to the local climate and ecology which I paired with shrubs and medicinal plants that historically existed in the territory but were reduced through intensive agriculture. 

The work will be complete if the land reveals myths and creates a new story shared and enacted collaboratively by the community and that people choose to become guardians of the proposed community forest.

Eternal Forest Grove, Picote, Marco Piano, Eternal Forest, 2025

In the restoration element of the work, you have mentioned deforestation and forest fires as inspiration for your “Eternal Forest” project. How has this project developed from focusing on destruction to seeking solutions and planting trees?

“Eternal Forest” is about rebuilding emotional and spiritual connections between people and forests, while also creating physical spaces for biodiversity habitats. It is not only about planting trees, but about planting a seed of care in each community so they can exist for generations.

In 2017, I experienced deep ecological grief in the aftermath of destructive fires in Portugal. The questions I had were: What collective wound was I feeling in our relationship with the forest? How did people create landscapes that are mostly productive, often highly extractive? And where are the spaces for natural forests to thrive?

I did not want to focus only on devastation. I wanted to understand how, through art and connecting with communities, we can create and protect forests.

Sacred forests and groves exist in almost all cultures. Some survived, some were hidden, and many suffered with the spread of Christianity and later with colonization and industrialization. Yet many (such as sacred groves and forests in India, Ethiopian, and Eastern Europe) remain in people’s consciousness and therefore can be traced through cultural research. 

Eternal Forest Grove, Picote, Marco Piano, Eternal Forest, 2025

Reflecting your international perspective, the “Eternal Forest” project mission statement – i.e. creating 1000 sacred sanctuary forests for 1000 years and beyond human life – seems to parallel the Indigenous concept of “Seven Generations” (J. Vukelich Kaagegaabaw 2024) held by Anishinaabe / Ojibwe tribes. How have you interpreted “native” and “non-native” aspects of trees/plants when working with different lands and cultures? 

I understand that my role is not to impose, but to adapt the vision of Eternal Forest to a specific place, culture, knowledge, and living ecosystem by creating from a space of deep listening through ecological dialogue. In collaboration with local ecologists and botanists, I work to understand what strengthens biodiversity and resilience to support the ecosystem long-term. 

The idea of creating one thousand sanctuary forests for one thousand years is rooted in a long-term perspective. This does resonate with the Seven Generation principle, which incorporates thinking about the generations ahead and how the decisions we take today will affect them. 

I try to approach working with native and non-native plant species with care and humility. Native species are fundamental because they support insects, birds, fungi, and entire systems of interdependence locally in these places. At the same time, I recognize that landscapes are dynamic and plants mobilized when aided by human migration and a changing climate. 

Fossilidades, REVELAR, Performance, CAC, Marco Piano, 2026

You really take a long-term perspective, which makes me wonder: what do you hope the project will accomplish for future generations who will experience it? In other words - What elements constitute a successful “Eternal Forest”?

I would consider an “Eternal Forest” successful when being “forest guardians” becomes part of people’s psyche. This is why we are actively working on connecting to landowners and stewards who are interested in creating forest sanctuaries with us and being part of the network.

In five years, I envision several Eternal Forest Sanctuaries rooted in distinct regions. 

In ten years, I hope we have established an ecological and cultural network that shares research, artistic exchange, and stewardship practices.

In twenty or thirty years, success would be measured by continuity and whether the forest is embedded within the local community. For me, this would mean having an effective cultural and artistic program, and people who come to visit, learn and spread knowledge. 

Fossilidades, REVELAR, Performance, CAC, Marco Piano, 2026

As a localized and site-specific project with a collaborative mission, how does your approach to a new community differ from or is similar to your approach to nature?

Regeneration cannot be rushed, and neither can trust. So we move slowly to understand, build trust, and create a feeling of ownership for the project. Through patience, listening, and transparency the project gains depth. Communities feel like co-authors rather than spectators through conversations, shared walks, gatherings, and artistic co-creation. In my experience, I have found that a speedy top-down approach does not work. 

My approach to land is similar to my approach to community because I consider humanity an extension of a more-than-human world. When approaching ecosystems, listening, for me, means approaching the land and its beings in an active, compassionate way as co-creators and co-inhabitants by studying species composition, hydrology, soil structure, exposure, and existing ecological pressures. 

To me, our experiences and point of view act as different ways to explore reality that bring these manifestations into the world from the idea space. Place and time, and awareness are important in understanding this context. When everything is in sync, the work feels inevitable rather than constructed. 

The land shapes the concept. The concept refines the intervention. What we call the material world: soil composition, water presence, sun and wind exposure - correct and ground the vision.

February 2026 e-Newsletter for subscribers and non-members is here

This paper was submitted by ecoartspace blog interviewer Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein to the Journal of Geoscience and Eco Agricultural Studies, and was published on wmjournals.com,  January 7, 2026. 

Abstract

Many artists are increasingly acting as interlocutors between the Arts and Sciences to promote and develop real solutions to challenges including soil restoration through interdisciplinary collaboration. Individually and in collaboration, artists play an intrinsic role, unique to the 21st century, as contributors to effective en-vironmental soil management solutions beyond visual representation. The broadened 21st century definitions of art have allowed the discipline to grow past awareness work, and into projects related to soil restoration, agricultural biodiversity and permaculture solutions, and nature-based-solutions. The projects that I will survey include both artists who are trained scientists as well as artists in collaboration with scientists specifically addressing soil replenishment and innovative solutions for arability. As an artist, writer, and chef, who has held a vertical integration practice related to ingredients and materials, interviewed many prominent contemporary environmental-artists, and contributed to academic work on contaminated vacant-land restoration through Nature-Based-Solutions, it is clear to me the relevance and effectivity of STEAM frameworks related to soil. Artists’ role as innovators who base their work on a bottom-to-top process based on observation, acts in informative contrast to the scientific ‘top-to-bottom’ hypothesis approach, which like ying and yang complete each other in developing holistic solutions for soil and beyond. Faced with growing challenges from past contamination and malpractice, these frameworks will be pertinent in resolving climate and soil solutions.

*Corresponding author: Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein, Artist and Educator, Entrepreneur, Hessen, Germany.

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January 2026 e-Newsletter for subscribers and non-members is here

Day 3 Soil Conference, Photo from British Society of Soil Science LinkedIn Post

The Basis for All Life and Fertile Growth: Interest for Art/Science Collaborations Blossom at The British Society of Soil Science Conference 2025

Field Report by: Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein 

“Are you a gardener?” Asks a man offering seeds. I took three: a flower, a pepper and an herb; healthy soil’s delicious gifts. And as discussions of soil remediation permeated the dull walls of this multi-floor conference building, reassurance of interconnected and ubiquitous life brightened the rooms with hope. This was hope made of growth, healing and the magic beneath our feet. Art brings things to life, I am told, the world needs to know about our soils, art can bring people closer to this planet and help restore it. “Both art and science imagine possibilities” Rebecca Hearn tells me with glistening eyes.

Manchester is an ironic backdrop for a soil science conference. A city haunted by its industrial past, rare greenspace dots a city center filled with tall repurposed mill and factory buildings. Still students and creative souls are vibrant in a backdrop of grungey and damp red brick dotted with murals. This backdrop was the overarching ghost that haunted these soil scientists as they dedicate their lives to challenge industrial farming practices like tillage, compaction, runoffs, and overfertilization with experiments proving the benefits of crop biodiversity, field rotation, and nature-based solutions. Many face the contamination in British soils head on as they measure how micro-plastics enter the soil as litter begins to break-down, and the arsenic, lead, asbestos, heavy metals, tars, cyanide and hydrocarbons industry left behind. 

I thought of the seeds I was gifted, their nourishment completely dependent the soil’s health they grow within. The participants shared a disappointment in people’s common ignorance: how many urbanites have never touched soil or know how their food is grown; and how many rural communities have decreasing access to healthy soil, and lack knowledge to make thriving black earth. 

Jo Pearl’s exhibition table at BSSS Conference 2025, photo: Hallstein

And yet, I am told that soil is becoming more visible and interesting, as the basis for all life and the fertile beginnings for nourishing ourselves and our world. Exhibitions like the recent “SOIL” exhibit at Somerset House emphasized this. ecoartspace member Jo Pearl exclaimed, “People want to talk about Soil! Even the King!”. Her work “Dirty Secret” will travel across Europe in the exhibition Soil Art Tales funded by the EU’s Mission Soil (www.SoilTribes.eu) this spring. On this and other projects, Jo explained in her presentation: “When people feel things, they act. Art is a way to get people to feel things and to shift perspectives. In a germaphobic world, how do we get people to see what is underneath our feet? If the biome could speak, I imagine the worms would say ‘Save Our Soil’.”


Daro Montag’s installation at BSSS Conference 2025, photo: Hallstein

ecoartspace member Daro Montag reminded the crowd in his presentation that  “When thinking of art and soil, people may focus on colors – like pigments from the earth” His own work focuses on imaging soil microbes. His research has shown how “even older soil samples are very much alive.” Emphasizing the benefit of working across the two “cultures” of art and science –he spoke about a shared spring of curiosity and how bridging the discipline gap makes both richer. Excitedly, Daro went on with a call for reconnection “Soil is more important than most of us remember, not just underneath our feet, but as the basis for our very existence- soil exists on your minds, under your fingernails, and in your veins.”

Paul Granjon (Zprod.org) connected how important integrating audience participation is in making soil vitality visible and creating nature connection. His work as an artist and educator with Microbial Fuel Cells and Mud Batteries through bioelectrogenesis creates projects like moving robots fueled by the microbe in mud. Projects like Mud Machine wrekshops and singing solar powered compost greet primary school students and adults alike. He said “it helps when things move and flash to get people excited because the mud is alive” calling artists to promote their passions through practice. “Good times are important! People need a positive slant to focus on or these dire situations will not change,” he said “joy and excitement motivates through hope”.

Design is represented in mapping experiments and landscape projects that parallel our member artists’ focuses on sustainable development. Some scientists reimagine wasteful heavy industry as a space for activity, education, and leisure. There was a heavy emphasis on recycling, repurposing and regenerative practices as parts of net-zero and circular development. I learned that best practice emphasizes soil and concrete repurposing as well as green mulch that best practices are regenerative practices; to start with soil in order to reach net zero foundational design. “Soil is living, its not just spoil, it needs treating as a biologically important resource” said Jonathan Atkinson. 

A question from the crowd during a panel on Regenerative Agricultural Practices echoes the work of many ecoartspace members taking inspiration from indigenous and historical practices, “Can we look to the pre-industrial past and our ancestors for future innovations?” The response: There is amazing documentation of these practices, but it is not digitized so it is difficult for people to access. And, as images of porous and compacted earth pass by, I wonder: Is our exponential digital growth leading to a similar porous  knowledge base reflecting the porous and easily eroded lands industry produced? 

Weaving through posters in rows, topics are varied, but share a dedication to solution-oriented research and a deep passion for this planet. I learn that Artists are activating many of these spaces with poetry and land art, and are fostering these projects with their research-based creative practices. Arts Universities and creative organizations dotted the posters of many of the scientists. In fact, these fruitful collaborations brightened these researchers’ eyes, many seeking broader platforms to build public awareness and aide in saving our earth.

“In Collaboration for Restoration” Poster by Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein at BSSS Conference 2025, photo: Hallstein

At my poster on artists’ role in science, many scientists shyly whispered in my ear how they also like to draw or paint or work with ceramics as they passed me photos of their meticulously drawn landscapes. So, the “Soils Turn” book (available for purchase here) was well-suited to the scene. Many flipped through the book with excitement, buzzing with potential future collaborators and inspiration. My poster “In Collaboration for Restoration” drew a crowd excited to interact and respond to the questions I posed: “What Issues in Soil Science Should be Addressed by Artists?” And “What Unique Role Can Art Play in the Soil Science Field?” Responses revolved around how artists use their skills to communicate and grow connection.

“Soil has a PR problem. Art is a communication tool,” Jo says, “for me at least it both about beauty and communication.” And translation is necessary in collaboration between the two disciplines’ specified languages. A solution? Be unafraid to ask ‘what do you mean?’ and make sure there is clarity while working together and be open to learning new things and terms. In discussions about developing art and science collaborations: ask what is a good outcome? The scientists expressed hope on learning how to collaborate, build trust and spread trust between the disciplines. Most of all, they said, always remember that the goal is to bring what’s underneath to the surface by spreading the experience of getting your hands dirty, to engage people, and help change the way we think about soil not as ‘dirt’, but as something magical. A good result? Visitors getting excited about the complex world beneath their feet. 

Participants at Lecture in Main Hall at BSSS Conference 2025, Photo from BSSS Instagram Post

Some organizations and resources represented at the conference who are building collaborations between soil scientists and artists are:  IMPACT, University of Art London, Lancaster University, The National Trust, Somerset House, and Rothamsted Soil Archive.