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

PLAYA campus and pond with the Fremont-Winema National Forest in the background

EMPHASIZING RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN COMMUNITY AND THE LAND THROUGH ART AND SCIENCE: PLAYA’s Approach to Socially and Ecologically Engaged Community-driven Art Projects Blending Art and Science in Rural Oregon

By: Olivia Ann Carye-Hallstein

Sitting at Summer Lake in the Great Basin in Rural Oregon, PLAYA hosts a number of residencies and other opportunities for artists working at the intersection of Arts and Science, Community and Justice. Kathryn Wilson, the Program Manager, at PLAYA describes the organization’s approach and understanding of successful engagement within their unique Rural Oregon location. Where tribal nations, ranchers, watershed councils, amongst other communities meet, many artists work within the communities to shed light and contribute through workshops, reflecting on the changing climate, the land, and cross-cultural engagement. For those interested in working with PLAYA, consider applying to the  2027 Art/Sci Awarded Residency application before it closes on June 30. 

Hi Kathryn, I would love to learn more about PLAYA’s relationship to its location situated in a high desert basin and surrounded by such a diverse community. How does your location contribute and inform the work you do there? 

Lake County's Oregon Outback informs everything we do--from the landscape to the community. The Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin Band of Northern Paiute have called this land home since time immemorial, and some more recent families have been ranching here for eight generations. Our programs are designed to introduce and immerse people in this breathtaking landscape, exposing them to its natural features: flora, fauna, geology, water systems, shorebirds, dark skies, and so much more. Our programs also use art as a pathway into relationship with, and knowledge about, this landscape. This region faces significant social and ecological challenges, and PLAYA works alongside the community to foster dialogue and serve as a partner in addressing these issues. We regularly host scientists conducting research in the region. Whether residents spend days unplugging and taking in the wide-open playa (or Summer Lake, depending on the time of year), exploring the wild Fremont-Winema forest, or walking through high desert wetlands, they often have a transformative experience.

Art/Sci Awarded Residency March 2026 cohort

Since PLAYA hosts a number of art/science residency opportunities in rural Oregon, often focused on specific ecological challenges, such as wildfires & water and BIPOC makers there must be a range of projects that you see. What does a successful residency period look like to you? 

A successful residency at PLAYA can take many forms, so we like to think of it as a living ecosystem of exchange, research, and mastery—where artists and scientists cross-pollinate ideas across disciplines, collaborate with the natural world, deepen their craft, and share dialogue, knowledge, and inspiration with Lake County locals. Some residents use unstructured time for creative exploration and production, while others spend their days in the field researching, playing, and discovering new approaches to their work. Strong collaborations and friendships often emerge as a result. A meaningful indicator of success is genuine community engagement, whether through workshops in local schools, outings with residents, or open studio tours. Rural Oregon is a living network of Tribal nations, ranchers, watershed councils, and more. For us, success means residents don't just make work about the community—they work relationally with it.

What an important consideration that often gets overlooked. Do you mind expanding? What do you find that art can uniquely contribute in working with a community ‘relationally’ to address the challenges faced in rural Oregon and beyond? 

Art brings people together to clarify what matters most to a community. When that consensus is visualized through art, it can help develop a strong core for the community to return to when deciding what to fight for and how to face challenges together. Community-driven art builds coalition, collaboration, relationships, and trust—skills that are essential for solving critical problems.

Art can have an enormous impact on communities facing socio-political and ecological challenges. When artists—even those who may not be local to a community—reflect back the opinions and stories of local residents, as well as the science and stories of the natural world within and around that community, their work creates an opportunity to see these issues in a new light. Artists and scientists who engage with locals also foster relationships and bonds with people who hold different perspectives on complex issues. 

Heather Goodwind in her studio at PLAYA, 2025

Keeping all this in mind, what kinds of projects have come out of previous residencies that you are particularly excited about?

Many collaborators have come through PLAYA, and many new collaborations have been born here when artists and scientists find each other in synchrony. One particularly exciting project is happening right now: spearheaded by Wildfire + Water artist Sabina Haque and poet Emilie Lygren, The Memory of Water: Field Notes from Pakistan & Eastern Oregon is a cross-cultural ecology exchange project connecting Oregon and Pakistan through water, salt, fire, migration, and climate memory. The project links students in Paisley, Oregon, with students in Karachi, Pakistan, through art and poetry centered on our shared climate crisis. The work will be on view this September at our Wildfire + Water Pop-Up exhibit at PLAYA.

Both PLAYA’s focuses on artistic engagement as well as impact sound really exciting to me. What will be next for PLAYA? 

We are excited to see how PLAYA will grow in the coming years, deepening the partnerships and collaborations that are central to its mission. The coming year will emphasize continued cohort programming, expanded educational partnerships, and public-facing programs that invite dialogue and shared learning. For instance, the Wildfire + Water: Artists and Scientists Adapting to Change residency Pop-Up Exhibit this September will be the culmination of a year-long immersion: new works by nine artists exploring the urgent issues of wildfire and water in Lake County. Informed by the expertise of local collaborators, the artists' works offer timely reflections on critical social and environmental issues in this region. Through long-term relationships with regional and academic partners, PLAYA aims to strengthen opportunities for artists, scientists, students, and community members to work together and respond to environmental and cultural change. 

We are open to hearing from groups we have not yet connected with who wish to start a collaboration with PLAYA. Whether through a campus rental, a collaboratively built program, or something else entirely, we are always looking for more opportunities for mutual growth.

Lake Abert, Lake County, Oregon

Thank you so much, Kathryn! For anyone interested in applying to the 2027 residency or other opportunities at PLAYA, Visit PLAYA’s website here.

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

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.

April 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