Walking Away (Water Ceremony), 2022, still from video, print on metal

Kimberlee Koym-Murteira

Nov 29, 2022

Interview conducted by Kate Mothes for wethemuse.art

Kimberlee Koym-Murteira is an Oakland-based multimedia artist who centres her practice on ideas of embodiment and physical presence in the world. Relationships between ourselves and nature, the space around us, the time of day, momentous events, and the seasons are captured in a range of video, sculpture, dance, installation, and music. She often collaborates with artists and performers who focus on meditation and healing practices, and as a teacher, works with students to envision ways that art can translate physical, emotional, and spiritual experience into new ways of seeing. Independent curator and WTM mentor Kate Mothes met with Koym-Murteira in November on Zoom to discuss ideas around perception, presence, memory, and her most recent project Unseen to Seen, which collaboratively explored responses to the pandemic.

Kate Mothes: There's a lot of research that goes into your work. And probably, I'm assuming from teaching, there's an element of constantly gleaning information as you’re working with students.

Kimberlee Koym-Murteira: I actually did a lot of the [plaster] casting and different things with students for the Unseen to Seen project. So that was a chance to break my practice into my teaching, which I've been trying to do more and more.

The framework [of my practice] is really the idea of embodiment, like, how are we physically present? That arches over like everything. In our emails, you were asking about the perception. And perception is actually like an embodiment tool. I really think that a lot of us become artists because we need a meditation system. And art, for me, it's like a moving meditation system.

Anyway, I got to teach this embodiment art class and did some of the practices that I’d just done by myself, but with a larger group. So I see that's kind of a thing that I would like my practice to grow into: getting to do kind of social art practice with larger groups, like doing body-casting or different embodiment practices. That's all very art-related. You know, ‘Is that embodiment?’

Shadow Gesture, 2022, interactive projection

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© David Paul Bayles and Frederick J Swanson, Standing, Still. #3, 2020

David Paul Bayles and Frederick J. Swanson: Following Fire: A Resilient Forest, An Uncertain Future by Linda Alterwitz

January 17, 2023 for Lenscratch

In the series Following Fire: A Resilient Forest/ An Uncertain Future, (2020 – present) photographer David Paul Bayles and scientist Frederick J. Swanson collaborate to explore post-fire landscape. The photographs by Bayles and text by Swanson contribute to their investigations of forest resilience in the face of increasing challenges and environmental uncertainties. By sharing this series of photographs, they add to the education, appreciation, and future of the forests.

This Following Fire project is part of long-term ecological inquiry based at the nearby H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest program where studies have been underway for 75 years, and experiments have design-lives of 200 years. In this spirit they intend to pass on the project, and even the photography equipment, to the next generations of photographer-scientist teams.

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"The investigation of unusual materials is just as significant in this process. It is the tangible handling and manipulation of substances to form new stories for an object. I’m attracted to materials that have a history specific to experiences of a life before I discover them. Objects have a memory through their original use, but can continue to form new memories once transformed. It is a form of up-cycling too. They have included doors, windows, drawers, leather gloves, stones, sand, tree branches, plastic trash, human hair, and on-and-on.
Silk organza is another favored material. Scarred and stitched textures, transformed from the fabric I stain, metaphorically mimic surfaces, whether ours or in nature. They contribute to the effort to re-contextualize my sculptures and installations and impart a new role."

"Hair is another significant signature in my work. Its intrinsic links to DNA and its endearing symbolism loom large in the art. Stained organza is stuffed with human hair to form trees, roots, stumps, ladders and animals in the installations and are a symbiotic link to hair living beyond death. Hair remains a collective binder for mortality. As an artist, I want to provoke the viewer emotionally and viscerally. I ask: “How do I present the complexity and seriousness of complex environmental issues to motivate recognition and action?”

Babs Reingold is a Venezuela-born American artist who creates sculptures, drawings and installations, focusing on the environment, poverty and beauty. She has an extensive history exhibiting in solo and group exhibits in galleries and museums from New York to Los Angeles and internationally. Recent exhibits include "Lost Trees" – a solo installation at HCC Gallery 221 Tampa FL  •  Address: Earth – Hudson Valley MOCA Peekskill NY • Water Over the Bridge: Contemporary Seascapes – Morean Art Center • Planet Ax4+1 – David & Schweitzer Gallery Brooklyn NY • Skyway: A Contemporary Collaboration – St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts. Her installation, The Last Tree a solo exhibit had a six-month run at Burchfield Penney Art Center Buffalo NY. It had debuted earlier at the ISE Cultural Foundation in SOHO NY. Reingold has a MFA SUNY-Buffalo and BFA Cleveland Institute of Art. Her primary studio is in St Petersburg, Floria with viewing space in New York City.  babsreingold.com

Featured Images (top to bottom): ©Babs Reingold, The Last Tree, Burchfield Penney Art Center, 2016-2017, silk Organza, rust, tea, human hair, encaustic, string, thread, yarn, 194 pails, video with music soundtrack by Lin Culbertson, approximately 25 x 40 x 14 feet; The Last Sea, 2018, Wood boat coated with paper mache and modeling paste, graphite, rust and tea stained. Animals: rust and tea stained silk organza stuffed with human hair, cheesecloth, leather, thread, yarns, nails, rusted chain, and used plastic debris, approximately 144w x 36h x 168L inches; Lost Trees, 2022, Silk organza, cotton organza, yarn, thread, graphite on panel prepared with modeling paste, wood stumps and branches, old pails, upcycled cast paper bricks from junk mail and old files, drawings on paper and panel, approximately 32 x 26 feet; Hair Nest (left to right) ’01” 2020, Hair Nest ’16” 2018-2020, Hair Nest ’15” 2019; Last Sea: Diorama, 2020, Wood boat, paddles and windows, rust/tea-stained silk organza, cheesecloth, thread, yarn, string, rusted chain, old nails, miniature plastic bottles, tree branches, marble stones, beach sand, Giclee prints of monotypes, 20 x 16 x 14 inches; Portrait of the artist by Grace Roselli, Pandora's BoxX Project.

(Salvia Divinorum 2 Enhanced, Microcosms, color microscopic photograph 2023)

Unfolding Knowledge, One Leaf at a Time:
Science meets Art and Activism in Pflugheber and White’s Microcosms Project

Interview by Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

Jill Pflugheber and Steven White have created layers of fascination, activism, and learning through their visually stunning Microcosms: A Homage to Sacred Plants of the Americas (https://www.microcosmssacredplants.org/). A sparkling example of the intersection between arts and sciences, Steven and Jill use microscopy to reveal the innerworkings of sacred plants to the Americas. By promoting indigenous knowledge bases within both artistic and scientific academic disciplines, they are supporting a vital and much overdue spotlight on some of the most important information about the very ground we live on and the people who spent thousands of years learning from and about it. Their work was featured at the Chamanismo (Shamanism) exhibition held at the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino in Santiago, Chile in 2022.

(Datura Innoxia, Microcosms, color microscopic photograph 2023)

Jill and Steven, these images are enrapturing. Microcosms is not only beautiful, but also scientific. Can you specify what the color microscopy is depicting here (cholorphyll, proteins, stomata, etc.)? What have you learned about both the plants and their visual properties in this process?

These confocal images were acquired by scanning the plant (leaves or flowers mostly) with three lasers. The plants were not labeled with any dyes or stains, so the only fluorescence (blue, green or red) we see is from components of the plant that will fluoresce under these light conditions. This means it is not possible to delineate exactly what structure is what color. Additionally, there may be a variety of molecules excited by the same laser line—so multiple structures may emit the same color. A single structure or molecule may excite/emit more than one color at a time, giving a range from purple to yellows. Chlorophyll is most often green but can be blue as well. Stomata often have blue guard cells, and these cells may have different colored proteins within them. Xylem is often green. Terpenes may be any color, depending on the terpene, and so on. Open stomata, closed stomata; terpenes traveling down trichomes; pollen at various stages of maturation. We are visualizing not just structure, but function as well.

(Brugmansia spp., Microcosms, color microscopic photograph 2023)

That is amazing! The structures that are revealed are enthralling and beautiful. It is incredible to see the actual functioning of the plant in visual form. And your interest in the function of the plants goes beyond aesthetics. How have you approached choosing your specimen?

We conceived our work in Microcosms as a double homage to the sacred plants of the American continent (with its immense geographical diversity that includes both deserts and rainforests) and also to the indigenous knowledge holders who have safeguarded the stories that the plants tell.  The idea of “sacredness” can be difficult to define. Shouldn’t all plants and all life in its tremendous, though ever-diminishing, diversity be considered sacred? Of course. But certain species, for different reasons, are more culturally significant than others, as many readers of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass have discovered. Microcosms selectively highlights a significant, though still relatively small, number of plants forming a spiritual pact that ensures the wellbeing and survival of all species. Using a term that is part of his Rarámuri (Tarahumara) heritage, Enrique Salmón explains the importance of iwígara in the introduction to Iwígara, the Kinship of Plants and People: American Indian Ethnobotanical Traditions and Science: “In a worldview based on iwígara, humans are no more important to the natural world than any other form of life. This notion influences how I lead my own life and guides many of my decisions. Knowing that I am related to everything around me and share breath with all living things helps me to focus on my responsibility to honor all forms of life.” We learned a great deal by researching the plants for Microcosms and also by taking care of them, in their complete cycles from germination to flowering.  

(Datura Innoxia, Microcosms, color microscopic photograph 2023)

When you describe caring for these plants during their complete cycles, it reminds me of rituals and goals of some interspecies collaboration projects. Currently, more and more research is coming to light about the intersection of hallucinogens and psychological healing as well. How do these properties intersect for you within this realm of science, native histories and contemporary healing?

It’s certainly true that often the revered plants that appear in Microcosms are psychoactive. The two authors of Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing and Hallucinogenic Powers (1998) discuss why these special vegetal entities are so important.  According to the great Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes and Albert Hofmann (the Swiss scientist who was the first to synthesize LSD): “Plants that alter the normal functions of the mind and body have always been considered by peoples of nonindustrial societies as sacred, and the hallucinogens have been plants of the gods par excellence […] It is in the New World that the number and cultural significance of hallucinogenic plants are overwhelming, dominating every phase of life among the aboriginal peoples.” The slightly bigger picture with regard to Microcosms and plants such as tobacco, amaranth, cacao, corn, sweetgrass and others is without a doubt more nuanced and well worth one’s attention. Current scientific research on the so-called natural psychedelics (such as magic mushrooms, the plants that together make ayahuasca, and certain cacti) is demonstrating in definitive ways potential health benefits. Absurdly repressive anti-drug laws around the world will need to change in order to accommodate these new realities. This is happening already. Canada and certain places in the United States such as Oregon, Colorado, and even Washington, D.C. are leading the way toward a more just treatment of plants and substances that will become the future treatments of many debilitating diseases. Perhaps Microcosms can contribute in a small way with other myriad efforts toward the creation of this change of consciousness. 

(Lophophora Williamsii Peyote, Microcosms, color microscopic photograph 2023 and digital photograph)

This relates well to where your work is being presented at the Chamanismo (Shamanism) exhibition held at the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino in Santiago, Chile. Do you see this as an opportunity to contribute to this change of consciousness?

Yes, we were so pleased and honored to learn that Constantino Manuel Torres, the curator of the exhibition “Shamanism: Visions Outside of Time,” (open through June 2023) chose some of our confocal images of Anadenanthera colubrina and Trichocereus pachanoi for the show’s catalog and publicity. It was amazing to see a microscopic San Pedro cactus on a gigantic banner hanging from the roof of the museum illuminating a busy city street. As Torres points out in the published catalog text: “From shamanism we can learn how to develop an intimate knowledge of our immediate environment, to view the city and its surroundings as an entity full of patterns that can be traversed and understood. Such knowledge of the urban environment brings with it and demonstrates the interconnectedness of all component elements. Indigenous cultures all over the world over centuries have intelligently developed concepts of what is proper for them and their setting at a moment in time.” These are powerful ideas that can orient our contemporary actions (wherever we live) in conjunction with a respectful understanding of the sacred plants that we have included in Microcosms. 

(Hierochloe Odorata, Microcosms, color microscopic photograph 2023)

The theme of interconnectedness is increasingly important as a symbol and as an actualization. Can these images act as metaphors that bridge misinformation in cultural understanding?

Microcosms is an ecodigital repository of biocultural heritage. As we mention in the introduction to the website, each stoma, each trichome, each patterned fragment of xylem and vascular tissue, as well as each grain of pollen in these vital portraits is not only a way into previously unseen vegetal realms, but also a potential way out of a collective ecological crisis. EcoArtSpace sponsored a really inspiring Tree Talk last October called “Fire Transforms” by curator, teacher and art activist Rina C. Faletti. She’s written a brief commentary on Microcosms, and in it she says: “Going far beyond what might appear to be another illustrative account of the beauty of plant patterns, shapes, and colors at an unseen scale, White and Pflugheber successfully argue not only for the organism as art, but also art as organism. Here the project extends its reach from the patently visual to deeper realities of consciousness, agency, equality of lifeforms.” We fervently hope that Microcosms, while paying tribute to the indigenous stewards who have preserved ancestral plant knowledge over the millennia, serves as a call to urgent, empathic, morally based activism as conservators, creators and informed citizens against the political and economic systems that are so irrevocably harmful to the environment. 

(Anadenanthera colubrina, Microcosms, color microscopic photograph 2023)

Thank you for this truly incredible work, Jill & Steven! It has been fantastic to learn from you. 

The ecoartspace February 2023 e-Newsletter for subscribers is here

A Warning to Slow Down: In Conversation with Lauren Strohacker and Dr. Lisa Minerva Tolentino

By Erin Johnson

Published January 19, 2023 with Burnaway

A red light races, doubles back, and moves swiftly along the edges of the corridors and stairways in the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art exhibition Old Red, I Know Where Thou Dwellest. The installation, titled Leukos Lukos after the slippage between the Greek words for wolf and light, is the work of Lauren Strohacker and Dr. Lisa Minerva Tolentino. It lives on the periphery of transient spaces and is controlled by an algorithm that turns LED strips into flashes of color left in the wake of running animals in the woods. 

Like Strohacker and Tolentino, I’m interested in how canids are experienced, represented, and imagined, and what that can tell us about being human. In my two-channel video Heavy Water, a biologist working for the Savannah River Site (Aiken, GA) delivers a lecture about wild dogs whose mythic relationship to the protected three-hundred square-mile nuclear weapon facility is embellished to justify its displacement of local residents, and obscure the violence sustained by its activities. The video’s two channels enact a confluence between two epic timelines: the deep history of the Carolina dogs, who some speculate descend from the continent’s first wolves, and the precarious future imperiled by nuclear weapons programs and the production of radioactive waste. 

Leukos Lukos is one of three works in Strohacker’s solo exhibition that takes as its starting point the very real possibility that red wolves will become extinct in the wild for a second time. The last known group of wild individuals live in and around the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in eastern North Carolina, just four hours from SECCA. 

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MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

January 23, 2023

This week we recognize   Liz McGowan, and her nature-based practice in the United Kingdom.

"I work in conversation with the Norfolk landscape, exploring the meeting points between inner and outer landscapes.My inspirations are the detail, pattern and processes – reed, mud, wind, wave, erosion, tideline, that combine to form a particular environment.My personal concerns are about containment and expansion, about cycles of growth, change and decay, and about the shifting relationship between us and the world in which we are immersed."

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Inside Outside was a reed installation sited on the Waveney Valley Sculpture Trail, 2014-2015 (above), which is a fine structure of walls made from reed that meanders and curls in upon itself to form a hide. When the act of seeking shelter–under a tree, in a cave–becomes the act of making shelter, there is a fundamental shift in the way in which one perceives the world: ‘outdoors’ happens because we have made an ‘indoors’. Once we are ‘inside’, we experience ourselves as no longer visible to us, no longer a part of the ‘outside. The ‘outside’ becomes ‘other’, a place of potential menace that we need protection from.

In McGowan's Spirit Wraps Around Me series (above), each of her cloaks is made with materials from a specific Norfolk habitat – tideline, reedbed and barley field. The cloak mediates between the human body and the landscape it emerges from. It’s an invitation to immerse oneself in the more than human world, like plunging into cold water. More than that, by referencing ritual cloaks, it opens up the possibility of a connection with the genius loci, the deep spirit of the land.

McGowan's Chthon earthworks series (above), refers to the Greek word for 'earth,’ referring specifically to that which is under the earth. In English, ‘chthonic’ describes deities or spirits of the underworld. These works are the result of playing with saltmarsh mud in liquid and solid form, to create patterns and sculptures, exploring what it does and how it moves.

Tidelines, made in 2018 (below), was inspired by the fluid patterns carved into their spindle whorls by the Haida people, a coastal seafaring nation of North West Canada. Using plastics collected from the English and Welsh coastlines over many years and set on repurposed plexiglass the work was influenced by Indigenous designs that spoke to McGowan, who is also an island dweller that spends her time by the sea whenever she can.

Liz McGowan  has worked with natural and found materials for over two decades, creating responses to particular environments through installation, sculpture, drawing and conversation. Her focus is the meeting point between inner and outer landscapes, where personal creativity is given inspiration and form by those elements – stone, reed, tree, earth, tideline – that combine to form a landscape. lizmcgowan.com

Featured Images (top to bottom): ©Liz McGowan, Reed Fans, 2017, reed installations at Cley Marshes Visitor Centre; Inside Outside, 2012, reed installation by Liz McGowan and Jane Frost for Aisle and Air, a curated exhibition at Cley church and surroundings; Tideline Cloak, 2021, Spirit Wraps Around Me series, The Yare Gallery, Great Yarmouth; From Tree to Apple, 2022, earth, apples, shrew skulls, raptor feathers (apple becomes shrew, shrew becomes windhover, becomes will-a-wix, becomes buzzard) Chthon earthworks series, work on paper; Tidelines, 2018, found plastics, set on plexiglass; below, portrait of the artist, wearing Chalk Stream Cloak photographed by Harry Cory Wright.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

January 16, 2023

This week we recognize  Constance Mallinson, and her forty plus year practice as a painter in Los Angeles, California. 

"My earliest paintings are minimalist, and upon moving to Los Angeles in the late 1970’s I started to explore and connect with feminist artists and feminist art theory. I wanted to change from the hardcore reductive work that I was doing to something more personal, and this type of work felt really personal to me. For me, the tiny insistent repetitious marks were a way for me to assert my female body and presence. There is an insistence in building up a surface of thousands and thousands of tiny marks that is quite different from casting a piece with steel. This is my body engaging with the material."

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More recently, Mallinson has engaged in apocalyptic imagery of the sublime landscape, as in "The Large Blass-t" (above), depicting a free fall of post-consumer objects through smoky skies, items she culled from urban streets. Now useless, these objects are dispensed of human attention and in their decaying state. They seem to challenge their own existence, with abundance transposed into waste. The paradox of higher standards of living as manifested by hyperconsumption and resulting ecological disasters is critical to understanding her work.

The artists' epic panoramic landscapes painted from 2001 to 2009 (above) began as an investigation into the relationship between photographic and painted representations of landscape. Literally thousands of appropriated landscape images were “collaged” via painting to form dense imaginary landscapes incorporating multiple perspectives from the microcosmic to the macro, and conflicting narratives. Superseding the traditional single view of the landscape, they engage ideas of received information and its overriding influence on our perceptions of the natural, as well as question historicist ideologies such as the Edenic, the pastoral, and the gendered gaze. Spanning geography, time zones, and seasons, these paintings are tours de force intheir scale and execution and have been appreciated for their ability to seduce and deliver a critique while simultaneously positing a continuing relevance for painting in an era of ubiquitous mass media.

Mallinson's Nature Morte paintings (above and below), are inspired by decaying natural materials and often include Archimboldo-esque human figures. Twisted branches, rotting stumps and logs, curling dried leaves and desiccated flora collected from the artists' daily walks through Los Angeles’ streets and canyons were painted from direct observation in a technique reminiscent of botanical illustration or trompe d’oeil. Some are painted on grainy plywood as “backdrops” for decomposing woodland scenes or Renaissance like saints. Suggesting a mutual vulnerability and destruction in an era of environmental instability, the paintings also represent a ruination of the previous pristine, scenery of her panoramic paintings or the progressive productions of Modernism itself. In some, fragments of human-made objects are intermingled with the flora and fauna to form eccentric, post-apocalyptic constructions, both an incrimination of wasteful consumer culture and a monument to its ongoing ingenuity.

Constance Mallinson  (b.1948, Washington, D.C.)     is a Los Angeles based painter, writer and curator. During her career, she has exhibited widely and her critically acclaimed paintings are included in the collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, The San Jose Museum, and the Pomona Art Museum, the National Academy of Sciences. She has taught all levels of studio art and criticism at the major colleges and universities in Southern California and has written for many art publications such as Art in America, Xtra, Artillery, the Times Quotidian, and numerous catalog essays for university art museums. Her most recent curatorial projects have included “Urbanature” at ArtCenter College of Design, "The Feminine Sublime" at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, and “Small is beautiful” at the Irvine Fine Arts Center. Mallinson is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a COLA Fellowship. Twenty-four of her collages, transferred to porcelain enamel steel, are permanently installed at the Bergamot Station Metro Station.  www.constancemallinson.com

Featured Images (top to bottom): ©Constance Mallison, #2 (Green and Pink), 1979, acrylic on canvas, 66 1/2 x 94 inches; Large Blass-t, 2016, oil on canvas, 60 x 192 inches; What Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?, 2007, oil on canvas, 60 x 216 inches, from panoramic landscape series; You, 2008, oil on Rives paper, from the Nature Morte Series (2009-2011); Lost Woods, 2014, oil on plywood, 48 x 96 inches, from the Nature Morte Series (2009-2011); below, portrait of the artist taken by Eric Alter, 1977.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

January 9, 2023

This week we recognize  Ana MacArthur, and her forty plus year practice, from holography to games, while examining the intersection of art and science.

Ignition, 1989, 1982(above) is one installation in a series of works resulting from research into the current state of solar technology. It is a meditation on holography and its role as a bridge to a possible future, where the ingenuity of light would be one of the keystones to environmentally sound modes of energy production. A Seed, is a five feet diameter pumice crete dish reminiscent of both a satellite parabolic and a metaté (a tool used to transform corn into flour) and holds in its center a circular dichromate hologram that slowly turns causing a transformation of colored light on a white feather suspended above. The hologram is made from an optic that bends light to a focal point out in space, and as a result, when lit, splits the white light into its spectrum. Instead of the hologram recording an object, it captures only light itself.

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MacArthur's installation titled Necessary pupils for climate change, Variation 2, from 2008 (above), reflects on the changes in earth's atmosphere, ensuing global climate change, as a ‘veil‘, of sorts, concealing the planet. Under this veil three million species face radical change, putting us in the midst of the 6th greatest extinction cycle in the history of the planet, and due significantly to practices unleashed by the industrial revolution and our dependence on fossil fuels.

In a moment of speculation, there is a reflection on what species are nearing extinction, and, with a near-by glass book, suggestions towards the significance of protecting this library of knowledge. Appearing as pools of water in flagstone slabs on the floor, circular holograms turning by hidden motors perplex as to how they generate the ephemeral spectrum, as if slow moving search lights, they circumnavigate the room and cross over the pupils housing the biological specimens.

Where Light Meets Water; Mumuru on the Equator, T12a, 2009 (above) is an installation focused around the display of a 5 feet diameter mold of the victoria amazonica, the world’s largest water lily from the Amazon Rainforest of Brazil. As an ongoing extensive project, an initial phase involved making a successful mold of an exceptionally large water lily, on site in the Amazon. On one surrounding wall a 15 foot scroll shares stories, through photos and text, and experiences from two trips and six attempts to complete a successful mold of this unusual organism. It outlines the context of a bioregion extremely vital for what it produces biologically, yet presently under great threat via the reciprocal effects of deforestation and climate change. A small object with a dichromate hologram of a solar cell draws a report with the nearby impressions of the giant leaf and, by association, recalling leaves as the inspiration for photo-voltaic cells. A series of small shelves with translucent wax impressions of the complex, underside of the lily are backlit with a two LED colors per shelf; a representation through linear time of the most pronounced frequencies of the sun's radiation affecting the plants growth in each phase of transformation. Nearby in an enclosed room, a continuous loop video slows one into painterly, haunted sounds of the primordial edges of the Amazon.

MacArthur’s installation In Search of the Collaborative Blue Fringe, Part II,2016 (above) is focused on a collaboration with a non-human animal (butterfly) and a biologist, while reflecting on extinction, interspecies relationships, energy generation and efficiency, and collaboration as a means to unexpected solutions. The work evolves from layers of exploration and meaning of the blue diffracted light from two species of butterflies. The work engaged scanning electron microscope explorations, fieldwork collaboration with a behavioral biologist, the symbolism and psychology of the color blue, and the use of sugar as both energy source for butterflies and flow of energy through the living world.

For Pollinator Concentrator, 2019-2020 (above), located in Taos, New Mexico, the hexagon tiles and the overall pattern of tile work were inspired by the ommatidia pattern on a butterfly’s eye. As much as the tile imagery looks simplistic it was derived from exact scientific photos or specimens with the purpose to maintain the exact morphology for identification, study, and memorization through touch. Each pollinator tile species is from New Mexico, with one exception, and with representations from the main pollinator groups, bees, hummingbirds, bats, butterflies, and wasps. Particular species were chosen for ease of laser etching, resulting readability, and ease of casting. Each specific pollinator in tile has a unique story. A blue glass knob at the top of the pole, the exact mathematical 'focal point' of the parabolic tiled dish, is also a small dish to capture water for thirsty pollinators.

Hexapous, 2022 (below) is a poetic board game played to somatically integrate awareness toward protection and increased propagation of the ‘class insecta’ and more specifically pollinators. Within actions of the player, empathy increases thus clarifying human behaviors that impinge or expand the diversity of this decreasing family of partially invisible creatures; some appearing in the full light of the sun and others in its absence, at night.

Ana MacArthur’s trans-disciplinary art practice functions as a creative catalyst by revealing nature’s processes and connected metaphors through the lenses of life’s relationship to light, environmental intelligence, and appropriate technology. MacArthur’s years of art/science researched-based practice along with tactile engagement with light and environmental work has focused on biodiversity preservation via collaborating with scientists and biologists, immersion in fieldwork including in the Amazon rainforest, pioneering the field of dichromate holography, site specific projects working with community, and innovative curriculum building in biomimicry, environmental education, and STEAM with the desire to catalyze significant change. She has exhibited her art projects and lectured internationally. anamacarthur.com

Featured Images (top to bottom): ©Ana MacArthur, Ignition, Techno-Artists: New Paradigms for Virtual Reality, Metro State College of Denver, Colorado, 1989, 1992;Necessary Pupils for Climate Change Variation 2, 2008, Flagstone, 18 inches circular dichromate holograms, motors, hydrocal plaster, dcg holograms on glass, steel, halogen lights, dimensions variable; Where Light Meets Water, Mumuru on the Equator, T12a, as part of LAND/ART, Santa Fe Art Institute, Santa Fe, NM, 2009, archival pigment print scroll, 42 x 15 inches, suspended hand lenses, dichromate hologram of solar cell, paraffin wax, LED's, digital photos on translucent paper, projected DVD in dark room, 2 part 5 feet diameter mold of Victoria amazonica;In Search of the Collaborative Blue Fringe, Part II, Heizhaus, Uferstudios, Berlin, Germany, 2016, mixed media, black tent 10 feet diameter x 10 feet, video triptych, projectors, speakers, sugar crystals, sugar castings, blue trash, sugar lens, LED light, silk panels; In Search of the Collaborative Blue Fringe, video triptych dimensions variable;Pollinator Concentrator, 2019 – 2020, site-specific interspecies installation, BioSTEAM, STEMarts program for the Taos Land Trust, sited at Rio Fernando Park on Taos Pueblo indigenous land, Taos, New Mexico; Hexapous, 2022, prints of insects or pressed flora sandwiched between Plexiglas tiles, text, marbles, o-rings, cushions, 9ft diameter, sited at Poetry Garden, Santa Fe, New Mexico, ecoartspace exhibition and fundraiser; below, portrait of artist by Kristen Kuester.

The Hungry Girls #7, linen, Fleece, thread, horse yoke, 112 x 24 inches.

Canvases that Flow through the Landscape like Rivers at Peace with the Earth: Moira Bateman’s Truly Sustainable Dye and Abstraction Practice

Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

Moira Bateman makes work that extends local waterways onto canvas the way rivers expand lakes through the land. Using sediment and waters natural movement as her canvas, she works in conversation with the land by assembling her naturally dyed cloths into works of abstraction. Being in conversation with Moira, it quickly becomes obvious the consciousness of her work in relation to a deep reverence and appreciation of her surroundings. From sourcing to practice, to her expanded knowledge of local traditions and insights, and beyond to her personal compositional philosophy, Moira is an incredible example of a truly sustainable environmental artist. 

Cloth after submerged in Prune Lake one year drying at lake edge, Gunflint Trail, Grand Marais, Minnesota.

Hello Moira, it is wonderful to get to know a practitioner who is as rooted in their surroundings as you are. Waterways are so relevant to the sustainability of landscapes and land politics. So, how about we start with you and move into larger topics from there… How about: what is your personal connection to water, its microbiology, and the Minnesota ecosystem? How has it nurtured you and how have you nurtured it through this work?

Minnesota is a very wet state! There’s up to 90,000 miles of shoreline around the lakes, wetlands, peatlands, rivers, and streams. Because water flows significantly out of and not into the state, it has been called “The center of the water universe of North America” …. most certainly by a Minnesotan. My favorite wayside rest is a three-way continental divide called The Giants Range, where water runs north to Hudson Bay, east to Lake Superior and the Atlantic Ocean, and south down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. City water in Minneapolis comes from the Mississippi River. Like other Minnesotans, I have been nurtured by our waterways - spending so much time in boats, in lakes, on the edges of lakes and rivers, walking in bogs, and crossing rivers and streams on bridges as I move around my daily life…. Living here, it seems hard not to think about and be thankful for the water and its varied landscapes. In addition to ourselves, the diverse ecosystems, biodiversity of plants, and animals that live here depend on water. I hope to tell part of the story of this beautiful “Land Where the Waters Reflect the Clouds”.

Exhibition photo of By Way of Water (84 x 60 inches) and Watershed (72 x 144 inches), Bowery Gallery, New York City.

I am especially excited to dig into your work with water sediment as a dyeing medium. Firstly, how have the waterways influenced your process? And what have they taught you about their surroundings and history?

When I submerge cloth in a waterway, it is usually the bigger rivers where the cloth quickly becomes a darker shade of brown and begins disintegrating after a few weeks. I assume this is mostly from urban and agricultural run-off, but it may also be from the moving water on the cloth. I find the disintegration and unraveling of the fabric poignant as it represents a juxtaposition of fragility alongside strength; a theme that runs deep in my work.

I learned some remarkable things about changes in waterway sediments from paleolimnologists during a residency at the St. Croix Watershed Research Station in 2018. I joined scientists in their research boat as we pulled long tubes of lake bottom sediment from far below the lake surface. Studying the sediment layers helps measure change in historical diatom communities, lake productivity, and nutrient levels in relation to climate and land use. I used diatom-fossil rich lake bottom sediment in dying the cloth for my 2019 exhibition “By Way of Water” at The Bowery Gallery in New York City. The abstractions for this series were inspired by the microscopic images of diatoms and other microscopic lake life.

Retrieving cloth after submerged in Prune Lake one year, Gunflint Trail, Grand Marais, Minnesota.

You use bundling techniques to create textures in your abstract work. Are there any resist techniques that have worked best for your process?

I love shibori, but my experiments have been too distinct of patterns for my work. Strong patterns distract the eye from the overall abstractions I make and so I try to create more subtle changes by loosely bunching my fabrics when I dye them. This way, instead of patterns dyed in the fabric, I create the abstractions or patterning in my work by cutting holes or assembling light and dark pieces of fabric next to each other.

Your process of uncontrolled dye process combined with cutting and assembly makes your work uniquely conscious while still so abstract. What is the philosophy behind your compositional style and how does it relate to the ecosystems you are working with?

I work in abstractions because they keep my mind and eyes busy. Abstract work is my way of telling a story about ecosystems, the earth, and life. I use natural materials and processes as these add meaning to the story of the individual places. The places themselves collaborate and become imbued into the cloth and a part of the artwork. Abstraction suits this work best because the pieces are becoming a part of the place and telling their own story through the work. The work needs to be abstract because it is not portraying the place like a representational portrait--the places are bigger and more complex than a representational image could encompass. 

Natural tannins, plant materials, iron-rich soils, and water can be unpredictable, but viscerally connected to life and the earth. As I discover how they interact, the work feels like a sort of alchemy. I go to remote places to source dye materials or leave my fabric submerged in a bog or lake bottom. I like getting my hands in the mud, literally. The cloth becomes imbued with the landscape, becoming a part of that place.

Last summer I attended a class with Aboubakar Fofana, a Malian bogolanfini (fermented mud-dye) master. I wanted to better understand the technical aspects around these traditional materials and processes. In addition to the technical fermented mud dye techniques, I loved learning Aboubakar Fofana’s methods of respectful collection of materials, conservation of water during the rinsing process, and the saving and re-use of every speck of dried mud. I am incorporating his thoughtful practices into my own processes.

Cloth after submerged in Lake of the Little Tree Spirits, Gneiss Outcrops, Minnesota.

What an incredible experience and inspiration Fofana must have been! Just like the Malian bogolanfini masters, your own work is deeply connected to the earth, ecosystem, and intention of place. How important is your Minnesota location to your work? Are there other makers who inspire you?

During graduate school I studied landscape architecture with dual concentrations in studio art and landscape ecology, the ecosystems of Minnesota being the primary focus. My aspirations looked towards earth artists like Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt as well as sculptors Eva Hesse, Magdalena Abakanowicz, and Eduardo Chillida. I was always drawn to cloth and textile art, but it wasn’t until about 2011 that I began using cloth in my work. The biggest influence for my work at that time came from author Patricia Eakins and her story “The Hungry Girls”. The work I made in response to her story made a monumental change in my art as it moved from the landscape into the gallery, and I started working with gestural markings on cloth to depict conceptual ideas.

Currently, I look to artists who attempt to tell the story of the environment and to effect positive change. I have always enjoyed the work of Maya Lin, but I especially admire her Memorial to Vanishing Nature Project: What is Missing. I also follow the work of Studio Olafur Eliasson and admire the variety of projects that highlight global warming but also seek to find solutions for clean sustainable energy.

By Way of Water, Peace Silk, Wax, Thread, Lake Bottom Sediment Stains, Iron, 84 x 60 inches.

You are not alone in your appreciation of local waterways. I understand that Minnesota is home to several indigenous communities like the Dakota and the Ojibwe, whose traditions are deeply connected to the regional waterways and lakes. Have the traditions of these tribes influenced your own understanding of these spaces?

The name Minnesota comes from the Dakota phrase Mni Sota Makoce which means “Land Where the Waters Reflect the Clouds”. Minnesota is the traditional homeland of the Dakota and their rich history here is many thousands of years old. An important book on Dakota history and culture in Minnesota is Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota by Gwen Westerman and Bruce White. The many waterways of Minnesota hold special significance to the Dakota, including a creation story centering on Bdote (the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers), a location now surrounded by an international airport, an army fort, and many busy roadways and bridges. The Ojibwe people in Minnesota reached their current homeland by following the food that grows on the water (manoomin, or wild rice). This reminds me of the beautiful sight of vast stands of tall wild rice along stretches of the Mississippi River in northern Minnesota. Significantly, Indigenous Water Protectors in Minnesota have led the way in protecting waterways by working to stop the Enbridge Line 3 oil pipeline from crossing critical wetlands, lakes and the Mississippi River. There are innumerable lessons to learn about land and water stewardship from Indigenous neighbors. 

As someone who values the world’s ecosystems, your work consciously uses only natural materials (silk, sediment, and wax). What do you pay attention to when sourcing your materials?

I use natural materials because they are the most interesting and alive to me. I practice conscientious and respectful collecting as well as conservation methods during my processes. I use peace silk which is fairly traded, sustainably sourced and cruelty free. The moths are not killed when they emerge from their cocoons. The people who weave the cloth earn a living wage and are involved in the business of selling their silk. I often think of the people who weave and the moths who make the beautiful silk that I use to create my work.

Lastly, what ecosystems are you working with currently? What would you like appreciators of your work to know?
 
My hope is to tell a story of these natural waterways that ultimately will help protect them. My current work, Etudes: Waterways, Bogs, Kayaks, is largely relating to the peat bogs of Northern Minnesota. I was eleven years old when I first stood on a quaking bog and since then I have been in awe of these beautiful, biodiverse landscapes teeming with life. I would love for people to know and love peatlands. In addition to being amazing biodiverse ecosystems and homes to many plants and animals, they are a climate super-hero. Peatlands store 30 per cent of the earth’s soil carbon while only covering 3 per cent of the earth’s surface. In Minnesota, about 10 per cent of the state is covered with peatland.

Thank you, Moira. It has truly been an honor and deeply inspiring to interview you.