MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

May 5,2023

This week we recognize  Maru Garcia  Maru Garcia, and her laboratory and fieldwork practice exploring organic matter.

Ground Dwellers, 2015 (above) is a group of bio-art in Petri dishes that incorporates a collection of microorganisms present in the soil where corn is cultivated. Corn is Mexico’s staple and single, most important nutrition source. The conservation of these micro-ecosystems assures future corn production, innovation in fertilizer creation and biological pest control. The collection of species was obtained by the researchers at CNRG (National Center of Genetic Resources). This is a government institution that is committed to obtaining, characterizing and preserving species important for Mexico’s biodiversity.”

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Vivarium, 2018 (above) is a performance piece that “studies the interactions within an ecosystem, from the movement of matter and energy to the community created by the living and nonliving organisms. This network of interactions is captured in the macroscopic and microscopic level over time, as an attempt to scale what it means to be part of a larger ecosystem: the Earth. For Vivarium I, the artist shared a marine ecosystem in the coasts of California in a space of 6 hours, engaging with the environment and living organisms that surrounded her.”

Playground, 2019 (above) “is a multimedia installation that looks in a critical point of view the situation of South East Los Angeles, where massive contamination of lead occurred due to irresponsible practices of a car battery recycling facility. Being lead a dangerous substance, particularly affecting the cognitive development of children, Playground offers the viewer the possibility to play with the soil in a protected environment. The playful interactivity of the piece is captured by a live projection, confronting the experience with the reality of people affected by this problem.”

Speaking on the lead contamination in South East LA, Garcia created Vacuoles: Bioremediating Cultures, 2019 (above) an installation of 29 ceramic pieces that contained lead contaminated soil from south east LA. “This project resulted from research into an environmental and social crisis specific to South East LA, where thousands of families face severe lead contamination in land affected by a company recycling car batteries. As part of the research, soil samples were collected and encapsulated in oval shape ceramic pieces. This artwork responded to some plants’ bioremediating action in their vacuoles, where they absorb the lead and encapsulate it in these cellular organelles. The work is presented as an interactive installation, and the “vacuoles” represent the 29 most contaminated parks, schools, or childcare centers in South East LA. The viewers can walk around these vacuoles and think about themselves as “bioremediating organisms.” Their image is projected on the wall as they move around the space, resembling a Petri dish or a microscopic view. This is an invitation to exercise our possibility to act as remediators instead of exploiters.”

Garcia's most recent and ongoing project is titled Prospering Backyards (below). It “is a project that uses the power of art, science, and community to address the severe case of lead contamination in the soil caused by Exide Technologies in areas of East Los Angeles, Boyle Heights, Vernon, Commerce, Maywood, Huntington Park, and Bell. This is a collaborative scientific research between community scientists from the affected community, artists, activists, and scientists, to develop an alternative method for reducing lead exposure in contaminated backyards while considering the health of the soil and the environment.”

Maru Garcia            combines laboratory and fieldwork tools from her background in plant chemistry and the pharmaceutical industry. Her use of media includes research, installations, performance, sculpture, and video, usually with the presence of organic matter to help understand the biological processes occurring in complex systems. She has participated in conferences, solo and group exhibitions in North America, Europe, and Asia. Garcia was an artist in residence in the National Center of Genetic Resources in Mexico and has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts ‘Anonymous Was a Woman Environmental Art Grant’, the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) Environmental Justice Grant, the California Arts Council, Los Angeles Sustainability Collaborative, Clifton Webb Scholarship for the Arts, and Fundación Jumex. She collaborated with the Art-Sci Center and Counterforce Lab at UCLA and was a 2020- 2021 Sci-Art Ambassador for Supercollider. Garcia worked at the Getty Research Institute in the 2019-2020 Scholar program titled “Art and Ecology” and was a 2021-2022 artist in residence at 18th Street Arts Center. Currently, she's a Getty Foundation grant recipient for the exhibition “Sink: places we call home” with Self Help Graphics & Art, to be presented in the Pacific Standard Time Art x Science x LA in 2024. She is an Associate Research Scientist in Mineral Sciences at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and founder of Biomedia Studio and Prospering Backyards. Garcia holds an MFA in Design & Media Arts from UCLA as well as an MS in Biotechnology and a BS in Chemistry both from Tecnológico de Monterrey, México. www.marugarciastudio.com

Featured Images (top to bottom): ©Maru Garcia, Ground dwellers series 2015, images primarily shot in Mexico, photographer Tania Lara; Vivarium performance video  2018, California; Playground, 2019; Membrane tensions 2021, scoby and bacteria in glass container, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery; Prospering backgrounds ongoing, taking place in Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles, South East LA; Portrait of the artist.

Over the last year, ecoartspace founder Patricia Watts worked closely with rivers artist Basia Irland to present her Repositories, portable sculptures created during her waterway journeys, as a monograph. Irland's objects reveal rich stories of rivers through her collections of water data, watershed maps, artworks, plants, and seeds. The artist invites you to take this book with you to the river!

Repositories was printed in March 2023 and made available in our store mid-April. It consists of 152 pages, 80 color images, and 11 unique site maps. This is an ecoartspace publication, the first in a compilation of monographs on single series by ecological artists. An edition of 300, the book is hardbound with case binding, smyth sewn signatures and FSC paper. It was design by Graeme Walker in the UK. Preface & main text are by Patricia Watts and the foreword by Sandra Postel, Director of the Global Water Policy Project & 2021 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate.

REPOSITORIES takes us on a series of ecoconscious journeys with an artist who has been intimate with many waterways, and the people, flora and fauna living along them. For over twenty years, Basia Irland has been working with scientists, students, activists and Tribal members along waterways across the US and Canada. With her ongoing art practice to create a deep and meaningful engagement with living bodies of water, the construction of Repositories emerged as a methodology for archiving documentation of research and physical engagements during Irland's riparian journeys.

Irland has journeyed throughout international watersheds and along entire lengths of rivers during her epic durational Gathering of Waters projects. She is an artist, Fulbright Scholar, author, and activist who creates global community-based water projects featured in her books, “Water Library” (UNM Press, 2007) and “Reading the River, The Ecological Activist Art of Basia Irland” (Museum De Domijnen, The Netherlands, 2017). Irland is Professor Emerita, Department of Art, UNM, where she founded the Art & Ecology Program. She has written for National Geographic; had a large retrospective in the Netherlands; been invited to represent the United States in the Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador; and has been featured in over 70 international publications.

Purchase your copy here

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

May 1,2023

This week we recognize  Jaanika Peerna, and her drawing, installation, and performance practice for over twenty years.

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"Whether in her large-scale gesture drawings on Mylar that become expansive installations, her smaller sculptural pieces that become receptacles for delicate inscriptions of light, or her videos and performances, at the core of Peerna’s work is a concern for the embodied, sensorially engaged subject in dynamic relation to the spatial and material world. By drawing attention to the evanescent experiential qualities of light, shadow, and movement, Peerna’s work operates with the subtle force of a slowly rising tide – first by awakening the senses, and then, gradually, by delivering insights only a mind deeply in touch with its body is prepared to receive." Taney Roniger, catalog essay, Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn, NY, January 2015

Peerna’s work has always been fueled by the forces of nature but since 2017 the artist has taken on more specific approach to address the climate breakdown we are all surrounded with. Ever since she was a little girl dreaming of becoming an Olympic figure skater, ice has been close and dear to her: its toughness, transparency, beauty as well as fragility. As we are witnessing a massive and furious melting speed of glaciers in polar regions these past decades Peerna has been looking for ways to face the facts, heal the soul as well as act an an artist in order to help slow the destruction down.

Her Glacier Elegy projects (above) consist of exhibition-size installations and live drawing performances where at first a large drawing is made with audience participation and then melted with blocks of ice. The audience is included in a collective experience of creating something only to be literally melted away by the end of the performance. The project has had a strong impact on the participants in diverse communities and locations where Peerna has performed.

Much of Jaanika Peerna's recent work is a lament to glaciers and natural ice. Her ongoing project Glacier Elegy forms the central core of her monograph (below). The book presents an in-depth look at this iconic work, through essays, images of works and performances, and the artist's own words. In doing so, it shows how a contemporary artist in her prime addresses the climate emergency. The book touches on ecological grief and looks at how Peerna and other key contemporary artists have used the subject of ice to highlight the global climate emergency.

Jaanika Peerna is an Estonian-born artist and educator living and working in New York since 1998. Her work encompasses drawing, installation, and performance, often dealing with the theme of transitions in light, air, water and other natural phenomena. For her performances she often involves the audience in participatory reflection on the current climate meltdown. Her art practice stems from the corporeal experience of our existence and reaches towards enhanced awareness of the fragility, interconnectedness and wonder of all life. She has exhibited her work and performed extensively in the entire New York metropolitan area as well as in Berlin, Paris, Tallinn, Barcelona, Venice, Moscow, Dubai, Sydney, Canberra, Montreal, and Cologne. Her work is in numerous private collections in the USA and Europe and is part of the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris. Her performance Glacier Elegy was recently acquired by the Glyn Vivian Museum in the UK. Her work is represented by JHB Gallery and ARC Fine Art in the US, HAUS Galerii in Estonia and IdeelART globally. She was awarded the FID Grand Prize in 2016 for her work in drawing, and she was a teaching artist at the Dia Art Foundation for many years. Her new monograph Glacier Elegies was published in 2021 by Terra Nova Press and distributed by MIT Press. www.jaanikapeerna.net

Featured Images (top to bottom): ©Jaanika Peerna, Sizzlecolor, 2005, digital print, 24 x 24 inches; Light Matter, 2015, solo exhibition at Kentler International Drawing Space, New York, photo by Etienne Rossard; ReRouted Flight, 2020, audience activiated wall installation with instructions, about 6 x 10 fee, at Tallinn Art Hall, Estonia; Glacier Elegy Brooklyn, performance with a block of ice in a public park, October 2020; Glacier Elegies monograph published 2021; portrait of the artist.

Mia Mulvey, Old Tjikko, 2018, cyanotype on wall and Pando II, 2018, ceramics on pedestal

Slow Steady Movement Towards Change:
Art in a Wild, Isolated Space

Interview with Stefan Hagen from the Montello Foundation and Kate James from Concord Art Association on the recent “This Earth” exhibition including members Mia Mulvey, Elisabeth Condon, Laurie Lambrecht, and Margaret Cogswell.

Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

On view through May 7, 2023, is an exhibition that surveys artists who have visited the Montello Residency in rural Nevada. This wild and stunning desert landscape allows a unique space for contemplation and reflection. Artists choose to create work on site or use the impressions from their stay to create work in their studios. It is a windowed small cabin on a lonely road in the middle of a vast landscape. I speak with Stefan Hagen and Kate James about their intentions and perspectives on the work being shown, the intentions of the residency and the philosophical basis behind their motivations.

Elisabeth Condon, Urban Jungle, 2016

The Montello residency invites artists from all over the world to witness and reflect on the desert wilderness. What is unique to you about the “artist as a witness” when experiencing these spaces rather than a more quantitatively analytical perspective?

SH: A desert landscape is ideal for observing the fragility of nature. Though it seems that every living entity is adapted to a very harsh environment, but it is also obvious that there is a very precise balance necessary for living things to thriver here. Any footstep will stay visible for at least a month. The extremely slow rate that higher forms of plants grow make it clear that our presence has an irreversible effect, globally and locally.  For the residents it is a unique opportunity to spend uninterrupted time in an unusual landscape that becomes familiar to them over the duration of the retreat. It becomes so familiar that they can revisit specific places and experience the interconnectedness of nature. This can be a catalyst for a new direction or influence an existing body of work. The resulting works of art have the ability and the power to influence the audience in a way no quantitative approach can. Since our decisions are largely based on irrational and spontaneous impulses, the work becomes especially influential. The numbers are certainly there to back this up.

Laurie Lambrecht, Desert Driftwood, 2018

Laurie Lambrecht, High Desert Tapestry, 2018

The evidence is clear in a recent show at the Concord Art Association of many of these artists titled “This Earth.” It shows an incredible range of disciplines and topics related to the environment. From photographs to color palettes, to smells, to sculptures with water, and performative works, it is a true survey of perspectives. What have been some of the challenges and surprises you have come across while trying to honor each artist in such a diverse group?

KJ: Yes, this show reflects the diversity of artists who have experienced the residency and offers variable entry points to consider our own relationship to the environment, but the themes remain the same throughout and the variety of experiences. These lead to more chances to connect with the viewer. Some of the work was created at the site and some was inspired while contemplating the desert environment and created post residency. An example of a post-residency production is the video where two artists dress as mussels and sing a pleading song to please protect them. Even a puppet show inspired by a rat living under the Montello cabin speaks to the fragility of life. A theme kept in a conceptual sculptural installation about the water crisis using water from Walden Pond. We literally breathe in Thoreau's conservation ideas by means of water vapor.  

Fragility, balance, survival, co-dependence, coupled with awe, wonder and inspiration and the implied or inferred urgency to respect nature all coalesce in the show. The fragility of life in the desert is a paradigm for the fragility of life on earth.  The desert setting for this residency makes the artist hyper aware of what threatens our existence.  It's poignant that the universal question from viewers who have visited the show has been, "would I be able to be alone and unplugged in the desert."  This show subtly honors questions about survival.

Margaret Cogswell, Desert Mounds, 2022, lithograph ink bar rubbing of the desert floor, watercolor, colored pencil and collage on Chinese paper, 15 x 44 inches

The theme of the fragility of life has come up in a lot of my recent conversations. Even in my last interview was rewilding and the artist as passive observer rather than interventionist in the environment. In your experience in such a delicate wild space, what is a constructive human interaction with the environment that fosters mutual growth and awareness?

SH: It is always a paradox that a scientist or artist or any observer must travel to these wild spaces and set up a camp, intrude in order to reflect on them. But there is a way to tread lightly and minimize the impact. And of course, artists have the tools to tell the stories of these lands for the rest of us, so we don’t have to all travel to these fragile places.

Margaret Cogswell, Tales from the Desert Floor, 2022, lithograph ink bar rubbing of the desert floor, watercolor, colored pencil on Chinese paper, 15 x 44 inches

Absolutely! And, this is in keeping with some foundational philosophies. In fact, Concord Art Association is based in the founding location of “Transcendentalism”, a nature-oriented Christian philosophy that has been hugely influential in New England. This isolated residency is literally on “Thoreau” Avenue. Bridging across the continental USA, what is it that makes this exhibition relevant to the New England mentality and the contemporary Zeitgeist?

KJ: Thoreau’s experiment in solitude, simplicity and living deliberately at Walden Pond parallels the Montello residency. In fact, the placement of This Earth down the street from Thoreau’s cabin is very intentional. Thoreau and the transcendentalist movement marked a giant change 200 years ago in how we saw ourselves in relation to nature, a shift in thinking that God is not a separate entity but part of Man and a part of uppercase N, Nature.  Thoreau also opposed industrialization as he purported it was destroying the environment.  He inspired the conservation movement, and, I might add, "the awareness and simplify movements."

The Montello Residency was modeled after Thoreau's experience at Walden. Both Walden and Montello outfitted environments with secluded simple cabins for the observation and reflection of nature without distraction and both reflect the paradigm shifts of their times. Like Thoreau's opposition to industrial growth, current environmental movements in response to the climate crisis are fueling our collective understanding. I believe a philosophical shift like the one created in the 19th century is the key to shifting our fraught relationship with the environment today and who better to activate that shift than artists. A newfound reverence for nature and simple lifestyles and electric cars and plastic bans are some of the tiny signs of change in how we collectively think about the environment. The art of Thoreau like the art created at Montello supports this slow steady movement towards change.

Thank you both so much for speaking with me! This is such an incredible opportunity and an increasingly necessary space for an intimate interaction with the landscape. 

The ecoartspace May 2023 e-Newsletter for subscribers is  here

Host Analog, 1991 (above) is comprised of eight segments of a Douglas fir tree that lived for 600 years in the wilderness to the west of Wy'east Mountain, now also known as Mount Hood. The tree, felled and bucked, was deemed unsuitable for lumber sometime in the 1960s and was left to decay in the forest. In 1990, it was rediscovered in the Bull Run Watershed (Portland's water source since 1895). Host Analog continues its relationship with the Bull Run as it is misted daily with water brought to the City from its original home. It is an urban nurse log, serving to exemplify a living laboratory of diversity, adaptability and resilience. When the segmented tree was transported to the plaza of the Oregon Convention Center, it was an active nurse log, carrying with it a native ecosystem. Over time, the forest landscape growing on Host Analog has been diversified with urban plants self-seeding and taking root, enabling a unique laboratory and creating an aesthetic that confronts the notion of what is "natural" with the elements of chance and change. This dynamic artwork will never be considered complete, as it will continually evolve.

Beckoning Cistern, 2003 (above) is an aluminum cistern that collects roof watershed from the 81 Vine Street building in Seattle, Washington. Water is directed from the roof via downspout then through the extended index finger of an outstretched hand and into the 10 x 6 feet diameter tank "cuff" before eventually making its way down Vine Street to the Cistern Steps. The gesture of the outreaching finger suggests that of the Creation of Adam by Michelangelo from the Sistine Chapel in Rome.

The Brightwater Art Master Plan for the Brightwater Treatment System, 2003 (below) proposed a philosophical approach, criteria, guiding principles and art opportunities for the wastewater treatment plant and conveyance corridor in King County, Washington and was intended to provide guidance to future artists involved in the project and to inform the general public about the context for art in the system. This is an early example of an artist taking an active role in developing innovative opportunities for ecological artists to do public art projects.

Simpson's most recent public art project Anthropocene Migration Stage, completed in 2022 (below) is in response to the Habitat Beach, built in conjunction with the new Elliott Bay Seawall. Simpson strategically situated two sets of immediately useful as well as forward thinking sculptural placements along the Seattle Waterfront promenade, Anthropomorphic Triapods and SeaBarrier to both furnish a public amenity and a staging area of accessible materials to migrate inland as needed, mitigating future rising sea encroachment. Anthropomorphic Triapods act immediately as seating and interactive play objects, and stand ready to be engaged as shoreline habitat anchors and wave attenuators. This promenade location was once a principle boat landing site for the Duwamish Tribe. SeaBarrier is made up of multiples of six-foot long precast concrete wall segments, with a faux sand bag motif, that utilize a flexible interlocking modular system typical of a Jersey barrier. All port cities are on the edge of rising tides, Simpson has inscribed the names of some of them along the bottom of SeaBarrier in a gesture of commonality.

Buster Simpson has been active as an artist since the late 1960s, working on major infrastructure and planning projects, site specific sculptures, museum installations, and community interventions. Simpson received a MFA in 1969, and later, the Distinguished Alumni Award in Architecture and Design, University of Michigan. He's a recipient of numerous awards, among them, NEA fellowships and the Americans for the Arts Public Art Award in 2009. His work engages social actions and sustainable opportunities often considered "poetic utility." Humor and rich metaphors distinguish his work, with deceptively simple sculptures. In 2013, the Frye Art Museum mounted a major retrospective of Simpson's work. In May of 2015 and 2016, Simpson conducted Rising Waters Confab at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation on Captiva Island, Florida, which brought together a collaborative team of scientists, artists, land use specialists, and activists to create approaches to resilience and the graceful migration of people and biota. Simpson has exhibited at The New Museum, MoMA PS1, Seattle Art Museum, Frye Art Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum, Capp Street Project, and Museum of Glass. His work is included in numerous public commissions throughout North America. www.bustersimpson.net

Featured Images (top to bottom): ©Buster Simpson, The Purge Diptych, Hudson Headwaters Purge, 1991, and Purge Projectile, 1983, both in New York; HOST ANALOG, 1991, Oregon Convention Center, Portland, Oregon, stainless steel irrigation, basalt, old growth (windfall) logs, city water, porcelain enamel signage, 17' x 90' x 30'; Beckoning Cistern, 2003, Growing Vine Street, Seattle, Washington, painted aluminum, stainless steel, 34' x 6' diameter (including downspout); Brightwater Art Master Plan for the Brightwater Treatment System, 2003, King County, Seattle; Anthropocene Migration Stage, 2022, Elliott Bay Seawall, Seattle, Washington; portraits of the artist as Woodman, 1974.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

April 10,2023

This week we recognize  Nathalia Favaro Nathalia Favaro, and her twenty year arts practice based in      São Paulo, Brazil.

"This work [Intervalo, above] was developed during the Labverde Artistic Residency in the Amazon Rainforest in Manaus, Brazil, in 2018. In an attempt to experience a space in constant action and transformation, almost unidentifiable as the Amazon Rainforest, the work suggests, from the variation and intensity of light, the discovery of a place that we do not fully understand. In the Amazon Forest, as it is a closed forest, we hardly see the light coming in and consequently we do not perceive the nuances of shadows. The work is a video record of walking through the Adolfo Ducke Reserve, with a blank sheet of paper in my hands, trying to reveal the space in between things, a space that is light and shadow and only exists in this context, over a period of time."

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"Nathalia Favaro experiences some forms of the world through the gesture of creation, elaborating, through ceramics, an architecture of existing things articulated in space. It allows the reality of the object to manifest itself from another point of view, at the same time apprehending it from within. Her works highlight the look at what can often be imperceptible or unimportant, such as the dry branches of a tree." above

From satellite images of Google Earth digital platform, the proposal of this work, The Edge Effect, 2019 (above) is to cover 900 km of the BR - 319 highway, which connects Manaus to Porto Velho, in the Amazon Rainforest. Based on drawings generated in the territory due to the removal of the trees, the work looks for the remaining cuts in these spaces: the voids, the remains of parts, the parts of a whole, the fragments. In the context of the forest, “forest fragments” are areas of closed forest that remain intact in the middle of a plantation, a pasture or a deforested area. The trees at the ends of these fragments are exposed to weather, parasites and other biological and chemical factors, becoming less healthy and slowly dying. This process is called the "edge effect."

"The "Daily Life" series includes a series of works that I have done over the years. In each of them I try to record the duration of an experience in a certain period of time and space. The chosen materials refer directly to the daily use of the same and many times the work arises from it. With this series I record my walk through materialities." above

Nathalia Favaro (1981) is a brazilian artist currently based in Berlin, Germany. She graduated in Architecture and Urbanism from Mackenzie University, São Paulo and from Buenos Aires University, in Argentina. Her work moves between sculpture, drawing and video with themes related to the territory, the use and the transformation of the land. Among her exhibitions, the individual O Gesto e o Vazio (São Paulo, 2019) and the collectives: 16 VERBO (Galeria Vermelho, 2022), Abre Alas #16 (A Gentil Carioca, Rio de Janeiro, 2020)and La naturaleza de las cosas - Humboldt idas y venidas (Art Museum of the National University of Colombia, Bogotá, 2019). In 2017, she was an artist in residency at EKWC - European Ceramic Workcentre, in the Netherlands and in 2018 at Gaya Ceramics in Bali, Indonesia and Labverde, Brazil. At the moment she is in an artistic residency at B.L.O. Ateliers, in Berlin, Germany. www.nathaliafavaro.com

Featured Images (top to bottom): ©Nathalia Favaro, Intervalo, 2019, video (4:00 mins), included in Embodied Forest, 2021 online + book, ecoartspace; Untitled, 2017, porcelain and bronze glaze / porcelain and bronze glaze 100 pieces / 100 pieces for the exhibition O Gesto e o Vazio, curated by Elias Muradi, Ely Lutaka, Eduardo Ferrer e Luciana Nemes at Fundação Mokiti Okada, São Paulo, 2019; Edge Effects, 2019 45 ceramic pieces, iron cable and steel cable / 45 ceramic pieces, iron cable and bar 160 x 40 x 10cm, exhibition Massapê Projetos, 2021, curated by Julia Lima; Daily Series #4 Bali, 2018 ceramics/ceramics 31 pieces of 40 x 20cm each; The Horizon Is Within Us, 2019, Finland; portrait of the artist taken by Aline Vilhena Roca.

The ecoartspace April 2023 e-Newsletter for subscribers is here

“Sculpture to Transform Culture into Nature,” street infrastructure displayed with regrowth, Mark Brest van Kempen

Passive Resistance: Artists stand back and watch their work grow

Reflections on Growth with Jen Urso and Mark Brest van Kempen

An interview by Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

Jen Urso and Mark Brest van Kempen parallel each other in topics related to social and personal healing that is deeply connected to their surrounding localities and the natural world. Mark approaches these themes by directly integrating his grassroots organizing and the literal weight and materials of infrastructure and the natural world to display the wounds and growth of human influence. Jen takes a deeply personal perspective, exploring the literal edges of her person and psyche in lines and forms reflecting on locality. Their work is currently showing in the exhibition “Modern Desert Markings: An Homage to Las Vegas Area Land Art” at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art at UNLV in Nevada, which is simultaneous to the controversial land-art fair “Desert X” in Southern California.

Jen Urso, “What the Desert Already Has,” 2023, terrarium with native desert growth, included in Modern Desert Markings.

Mark, your contribution to the “Modern Desert Markings” exhibition at UNLV will follow a theme of environmental wounding and healing in conversation with De Maria’s “Las Vegas Piece” (1969). Much of your work has related to bioremediation from industrial and human influences such as “Biolabyrinth” or “Floating Marshes”. Since De Maria made his marks using a bulldozer that had lasting effects on the otherwise untouched landscape at the time: are you planning an intervention of your own through native species landscape rehabilitation? How do these parallels play out in this landscape for you?

MBvK: My approach to working with landscape varies considerably depending on whether I am working with a human-altered site or a “natural” site. In the case of this dialogue with De Maria’s work, I am not only interested in the initial sculptural gesture of De Maria, but I am also interested in the intervening encroachment of the surrounding landscape that is erasing this initial gesture quickly. Within the fifty-odd years since De Maria made the piece, the actions of weather and plant growth have made the piece very hard to find and, in some areas, completely erased it. This rebounding of desert life (without any help from me) is inspiring and speaks to the temporary quality of all human activities no matter how large and aggressive. Therefore, I feel that is enough to point out this ‘healing’, overriding ability of nature without help from me.

It is interesting to visit these earthworks and consider the work of the landscape on the pieces as part of the work. Most people only see photographs of these pieces that were taken when the pieces were first completed with crisp edges. Now just a few years later the pieces have completely disappeared or are quickly eroding. I recently visited Double Negative and I would argue that the erosion is as striking as Heizer’s initial massive gesture. In a few hundred years the piece will be completely gone, while I imagine that the Mona Lisa or Pieta will still be intact.

Mark Brest van Kempen, “Living from Land”, full immersion land project performance

You both certainly have this interest in human-influence and ephemerality in common, though your processes are so different.

Jen, in many of your performative interventions, you display interactions and experiences through drawn media and other forms of line work and relate this to human connection. How does the extraordinary desert landscape influence your practice?

JU: In drawing, I am more interested in capturing movement and change. No matter what you are drawing, it is never the same each time you draw it. This is either because you have changed your experience with it or the thing itself is older, decaying, eroding or moving. Regardless of what climate or environment I’m in, my work is subject to the same forces of time and change. The desert influences my drawing less and influences my sense of tenacity and resilience more. Even in the smallest sidewalk cracks and untreated land, desert plants will find a way to survive and thrive. They have built defenses like hard exteriors, thorns or bulbous water repositories. I see the parallel here with my own survival and ability to thrive despite not being raised with what many others would consider essential. The desert’s biome doesn’t consider itself to be lacking because it is all it has ever known.

Jen Urso, “Measuring Coastline,” drawing using composted remains of the artist’s sister

I am so glad you mentioned resilience, plant life, and the deep psychological connection our “Daseins” (senses of self) have with the landscape.

Jen, you explored this in your “Coastlines” project, no?

JU: Yes, the “Measuring the Coastline” piece uses the term “coastline” to refer to the concept in fractal geometry where the closer you investigate or measure a coastline, the longer it becomes. This is related to the crevices and details of an edge and how, as you look closer, there is always more detail to see. After so many changes from the introspection that came during my sister’s illness and her death, I wanted a way to measure it irrationally. So, I thought of myself as a coastline or a country where someone was trying to map the edges. Each time I looked closer, I imagined my edges would expand. My goal was to have a direct, sensory experience with my sister by using her composted remains to dust around the edges of my body, showing my actual form meeting with what was left of hers.

Mark Brest van Kempen, “Transnational Footprints”

That is so touching and heart-wrenching, Jen.

Mark, you share this interest in the personal becoming political through your interwoven approach to art practice as an extension of your life and activism directly like “Living from the Land” Your work seems to stand at a conjunction between grassroots community organizing and material activation to contend with and often correct human influence in the natural environment. Where does art end and your life begin? Is there a difference? And what is the role of material creation as a result of your activities?

MBvK: To me art should be a verb just like living is a verb. To say that art is an object is like saying that music is a piano.

I think art at its most basic form is a human communicating their perception. Perception is being in a place, and sensing that place with your body. Bodies sensing in space is what we are. When I first let go of traditional art materials like paint and canvas, that’s where I landed. I said to myself “I am a body in this place, so these are the tools and materials I will use to make my art.” “Living From Land” was very related to landscape painting, but instead of standing outside of the picture and representing it with paint, I stood inside the image and represented it by eating it with my body. I think this approach often pushes art and life closer together, but the art is framed in a way that differentiates it from the rest of life.

Jen Urso, “Measuring Coastline,” drawing using composted remains of the artist’s sister

I love a lot of very traditionally produced art and material objects can convey powerful feelings and ideas, but I also think that you don’t necessarily need objects for an art experience.

When I approach a site, I consider everything that I can about it. That includes humans interacting with places. Sometimes humans interact physically with a landscape and sometimes they interact conceptually by creating laws, rules and traditions associated with places. Private property, political borders, laws that apply within one boundary and not in another are all interesting “materials” for me to work with as sculpture. The “Free Speech Monument”, “Leona Quarry Earthwork” and “Benicia Tryptic” are a few examples of projects that have included people and political processes as material.

Soil as a material is rich with cultural and political meaning. We grow our food from soil, laws become embedded in soil, identities are associated with soil and our bodies ultimately become soil. Being so loaded is an amazing material to work with.

Speaking of soil and human influence: Desert X is happening simultaneously to the group exhibition you are in at UNLV. Many of the topics are socially nuanced sculptures amidst the desert landscape in both shows.

Jen, Your work is intimately tied to the people you interact with and in Arizona, where you live, has been a controversial player in migration politics. How are you integrating migration and native rights topics into your own work? How do you see the desert landscape as reflective of social interfaces?

JU: The Phoenix area has a rich history of agriculture and settlements that can be traced back at least 1,500 years. In learning some of the ethnobotany of this place, I have learned how much indigenous knowledge has been squandered and destroyed. Those who moved here believed that controlling the environment was paramount. My process in my life and in my work has been to trust the place I am in to slowly teach me what I need to know. By observing and responding, I am trying to elicit a back-and-forth with my work where I set frameworks while giving up control.

Jen Urso, “What the Desert Already Has,” 2023, terrarium with native desert growth, included in Modern Desert Markings

This absolutely parallels Mark’s current theme of “environmental wounding and healing.”

Mark, what is your reaction to social parallels in the Desert X exhibition? What is your reaction to the physical effects on the environment related to viewership and their transport?

MBvK: I think if the work reveals a deeper appreciation and understanding of the landscape for viewers it is generally a good thing. If it is only an opportunity for a selfie and a post on social media proving that you went to an event, obviously this is an exploitation of the landscape. Desert X, like the rest of the art world, is a mixture of opportunities for great reflection and superficial posturing. More generally about travelling and keeping track of carbon footprints, I think it is important to understand the complex problems associated with being a part of a huge, industrialized society. It is crucial to be looking clearly at how our actions are impacting the world and try to move in a more positive direction. At the same time, we shouldn’t be paralyzed by an impossible desire to be perfect. This usually leads to despair and giving up. I think it is more valuable for us to move imperfectly towards an ideal but continue it for a lifetime.

Mark Brest van Kempen, “Living from Land”

Tell–Tale Sails–Score), 2007 (above): "In December of 2012, two months after Hurricane Sandy struck New York City, I was invited to mount an exhibition of the philosoprops at Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert Gallery in the Chelsea district of New York City. The gallery – like many others in the neighborhood – had been completely submerged during the storm and was in the process of being restored. While the gallery owners were appreciators of my philosophy-­based work, for the reopening on January 10, 2013, they felt a particular sense of urgency to exhibit a piece that could offer a sense of resilience, optimism, and cooperation with the elements. They wanted a 21-­‐foot-­‐tall set of Sonic Fabric sails to fill a room that had been flooded under 14 feet of water. On the night of the opening we hoisted the sails, raised a toast to Spaceship Earth, and symbolically broke a bottle of Champaign on the bow of a boat we are all in together."

Santoro's thesis for Rhode Island School of Design's M.A. in Nature-Culture-Sustainability Studies was completed January 2020. Titled "An Intricate Ensemble: The Art-Science of an Ecological Imaginary for the Anthropocene Epoch"(below), her abstract states: The contradictions inherent in European Enlightenment-based “logics” that externalize humans from “nature” were a concern for the Romantic Naturalists, Dadaists, and Surrealists. More recently, some in the environmental humanities and socio-ecologically-concerned arts and sciences have also posed challenges to anthropocentric, hierarchical, positivist modes of thought. I suggest that by engaging the ludic, imaginative, and collaborative while bearing the empirical in mind, dualisms (such as objective and subjective, individual and collective) dissipate, and existence as a dialectical state of intricate ensemble can be revealed. In light of catastrophic disruption to Earth’s life-sustaining processes by exploitative forms of human activity, I argue an “ecological imaginary” is urgently needed, and everyone is capable of contributing to its prefiguring.

Alyce Santoro  has a background in both marine biology and scientific illustration, and has been exploring the intersection of art and science for over twenty-five years. Widely known as the inventor of Sonic Fabric — an audible textile composed of recorded audiotape — Santoro’s interdisciplinary projects weave together philosophy and physics with ecology and social activism in quirky and provocative ways. Her visual and sound pieces have appeared internationally in over 50 exhibitions related to innovative textiles, experimental musical scores, sound/listening, and the intersection of art, science, and ecology. She has written for Leonardo Music Journal, the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts Journal, Antennae, and Hyperallergic. In 2015, she self-published Philosoprops: A Unified Field Guide, a catalog of her work/exegesis on the ways that thought—and the phenomena that spark it—shapes culture. Santoro holds a B.S. in Marine Biology from Southampton College in Southampton, New York, a Graduate Certificate in Scientific Illustration and an M.A. in Nature-Culture-Sustainability Studies from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. www.alycesantoro.com

Featured Images (top to bottom): ©Alyce Santoro, Homepathic Remedies for the Five Ills of Society, 2002 - ongoing, photo by Mary Lou Saxon; Subtle Reality Technologies, 2011, photo by Mary Lou Saxon; Amplified Cactus (Improvisation on "Child of Tree" by John Cage), performed September 5, 2012 on the 100th anniversary of the birth of John Cage, Projects for Prepared Ear presented works in honor of the composer at the Marfa book company in Marfa, Texas; Tell–Tale Sails–Score, 2007, suit of Sonic Fabric sails, recorded with the “Sounds of ½ Life” collage, 9 x 9 feet; MA Thesis "An Intricate Ensemble: The Art-Science of an Ecological Imaginary for the Anthropocene Epoch," 2020, photo courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; portrait of the artist, Sea Urchin Spine Headgear, 2004, live action photo by Matthew Magee.