MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

April 11, 2022

This week we recognize the work of artist  Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein.

"I am lucky enough to interview members of this community of long-standing environmental practitioners each month. Over the course of the last few years, this community and my own local community has inspired me to navigate my practice more towards elements of sustainability by teaching classes and workshops surrounding materials, sourcing, practice development and community resilience."

"Through this experience there have been some overarching themes that continue to reveal themselves in this quest toward a responsible and conscious practice. Topics that permeate throughout the systems surrounding arts and design practices like production, materials, and waste management that are often left out of arts curricula."

Carye Hallstein has developed a working list of guidelines for artists to refer to in continually striving toward eco-consciousness and sustainability.

"I have realized that the content of a work is only a small piece of the larger puzzle surrounding the conception and influence that a work has on our environments, our communities, and our own well-beings. No practice can be all these things, but if we each strive towards two of each of these goals for each category, we will be well on our ways toward really standing and acting in the interest of environmental justice and community resilience."

Carye Hallstein's Sustainable Practice Guidelines for the Arts is broken down into five categories: Materials and Sourcing, Production, Content, Influence, and Waste Management. Each category contains a working list of guidelines meant to accompany artists on their journeys towards the goal of sustainability. Examples range from choosing materials sourced from fair trade practices, to ensuring that the content of the work produced creates awareness for the environment or for an ecosystem, to striving to repurpose all waste produced from one's studio practice.

She will be teaching a course based on these guidelines from May 24th to June 6th (Tuesday/Thursday/Sunday) that will cover artistic practices from material to production to concept to waste.

Register for the course HERE.

Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein is a Cambridge-based internationally exhibited artist and educator who has practiced professionally since 2010 at age 19. She writes articles for ecoartspace, is a Royal Society of Arts Fellow, and works regularly for SMFA at Tufts University. Her studio, the "Edible Nest Studio" (founded 2021) in Cambridge, MA works to create whole systems and integrated approaches to the practice of both design and culinary fields. Exhibition highlights include: Maxim-Gorki Theater, Deutsches Theater, LA54, Uferhallen, RAW Temple, Der Kanal, BAT theater, TIK Theater, the MFA Boston, Piano Craft Gallery, Tufts university, Nature of Cities Festival, and Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute. edibleneststudio.com oachallstein.com

Featured Images: ©Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein, "Taste of Coconut Water (detail)" from the Taste Test Series (2021), "Pokeberry Sketch" from Lifespans: Natural Dyes (2021), "Orange Medley" from Lifespans: Fruits & Berries (2022), "Blackberry Love Circle" from Lifespans: Fruits & Berries (2022).

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

April 4, 2022

This week we recognize the work of artist Sant Khalsa.

"I am an artist and activist whose work derives from mindful inquiry into complex environmental and societal issues. It is my intention to create a contemplative space where one can sense the subtle and profound connections between themselves, the natural world and our constructed landscapes."

"Intimate Landscapes was my first series of photographs of the California environment, created in 1982-1983. These photographs were made in response to relocating to San Bernardino after growing up in New York City. I was hypersensitive to the dramatic change in my surroundings and felt displaced, yet I was intrigued by a new experience of space, light, and terrain utterly foreign to me. I began to photograph the landscape as a means of investigating, interpreting, and expressing my sense of place."

"I often refer to the Santa Ana River as 'my river.' Never intending 'my' to allude to ownership or control but rather an intimate relationship one develops over time with a lover or a dear old friend. The Santa Ana River serves as a source of vital sustenance for my body, mind, and creative spirit. The river is the life source that nourishes the earth and every living and human cell in the community I reside. The river has taught me the critical interdependence between humans and the natural world and inspires me to make art that reflects on my life experience and relationship with place.

Paving Paradise refers to the current state of the river and the conflicting terrain of natural riverbeds and dams, flood plains and tract home communities, riparian wetlands and concrete channels. I was first drawn to the Santa Ana because of its natural beauty -- the vast open landscape, the starkness of its often-dry riverbeds and the power of its occasional rushing waters. The river remains a source of creative inspiration as I continue to depict the critical role it plays within the region, my home since 1975."

New Book of Photographs by Sant Khalsa: 

Crystal Clear - Western Waters

Before Flint, before ever-expansive wildfires annually ravaged her home state of California and much of the west coast, yet after the popular introduction of bottled water to the American consciousness in the 1990s, Sant Khalsa discovered a store called Water Shed through her ongoing research on issues pertaining to water in the west, and photographed it. That was the first of what would become her series “Western Waters.” The sixty gelatin-silver photographs, made between 2000 and 2002, depict water stores in Arizona, New Mexico, Southern California, and Southern Nevada. At that time, Khalsa said of this work: “the photographs will serve in the future as a historical document of either a fleeting fad, or the foundation of what will become commonplace in our society.

Twenty years have passed since Khalsa completed this photographic project. Bottled water is an over $11 billion dollar industry, yet millions of Americans are daily affected by the lack of access to clean drinking water. The existence of these stores in the early part of the millennium played on human fears and desires—never-ending thirsts—that have become need in a very short period of time.

Preorder Sant Khalsa's second monograph Crystal Clear - Western Waters now from Minor Matters Books and your name will be printed in the book as a co-publisher.

Sant Khalsa's photographs, sculptures and installations have been exhibited internationally; her work is in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Center for Creative Photography of Tucson, Nevada Museum of Art, National Galleries of Scotland, and UCR/California Museum of Photography, and others. Khalsa has received fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, California Humanities, and California Arts Council. Khalsa was honored as the inaugural recipient of the Society for Photographic Education's Insight Award for her significant contributions to the field. Khalsa is Professor of Art, Emerita at California State University and one of the founding faculty of the CSUSB Water Resources Institute research center and archive. Her first monograph, Prana: Life With Trees (Griffith Moon), was published in 2019. santkhalsa.com

Khalsa hosts the monthly ecoartspace program Tree Talk: Artists Speak for Trees and is the founding director of the Joshua Tree Center for Photographic Arts.

Featured Images: ©Sant Khalsa, Intimate Landscapes ("East Highland, CA"), Paving Paradise ("Flooding Below Prado Dam," and "Flooding Below Prado Dam, 2005,"), Western Waters ("Montebello, California," "Los Angeles, California," "Somerton, Arizona," and "Covina, California"), and "Vishuddha (Self Portrait)."

Site 6, detail of Manzanita interior overlooking downtown Los Angeles, California. Photo by Ken Marchionno.

Citizen Seeds: A Public Art Project by Kim Abeles

by Alicia Vogl Saenz

A crane slowly lifts Kim Abeles’ large sculpture of a Coast Live Oak seed into the October night sky. The full moon glows behind clouds, Los Angeles city lights sprawl out in a stunning view. Abeles, an installation crew, a truck driver, a photographer, a park ranger, a county public art manager, and me are at the top of the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook, a California State Park and one of the sites of Abeles’ public art project Citizen Seeds. The park is surprisingly busy at night, especially groups of runners. I’m helping the ranger redirect people and answer questions so that Abeles and the crew won’t be interrupted. The crane arcs over the entrance to the trail, trees and bushes, then hovers over the concrete base dug into the ground to support the sculpture. Although the equipment is enormous, it is not noisy. I can hear rustles of wildlife and the din of cars below. The installation crew has set up bright lights so that the crane operator can precisely place the seed. The ground crew help with navigation, then secure the sculpture with adhesive. Once installed, this six-foot in length, ten-thousand-pound concrete Coast Live Oak seed appears to have randomly fallen next to the trail from an enormous tree. Kim Abeles is beaming with joy.    

Installation at Site 5 of the Coast Live Oak seed. 

Installation at Site 5 of the Coast Live Oak seed. The ground crew is navigating the sculpture placement. Nighttime Photos by Alicia Vogl Saenz.
 
Citizen Seeds is a series of six sculptures placed in various locations along three miles at the start of the Park to Playa trail. The sculptures are mixed media and portray six plants native to Southern California: Sugar Pine, California Black Oak, Coast Live Oak, Bladderpod, Black Walnut, and Manzanita. Abeles designed the seeds to have a visual presence from afar (sizes range from 6’ to 8’) and serve as a meeting place for trail users. The top of each seed appears to be split open, revealing a map and other design elements. Each map is fashioned in bronze, indicates its location on the trail, and includes the word “Here”. The sculptures then become wayfinding objects.

Detail of Site 5. Photo by Ken Marchionno.
 
“Here” also invites the viewer to slow down for a moment and take in the power of finding themselves immersed in nature while being in the center of urban Los Angeles. Walking has held a special space in Abeles’ artwork. She often walks, plotting areas and incorporates cityscape horizons to her projects and community or classroom workshops. Normally we pass by quickly in our cars. Walking offers participants a fresh viewpoint. Abeles writes in her description of Citizen Seeds: “When walking or stopping for a moment along a trail, we can imagine that there is no beginning or end, rather, a journey’s continuum.”  

Interior of the Coast Live Oak seed at Site 5. Photo by Ken Marchionno.

Each seed is unique and features differing design elements. Abeles writes: “The seed interiors speak to the metaphors of personal growth, the journeys we share, and our relationship within nature.” For example, at site 3, located at Kenneth Hahn Park, cast concrete medallions surround the edge of the interior. The medallions were designed by community members in a workshop led by Abeles and are their symbols of growth and journey. The community artists’ names are included in a plaque next to the sculpture.

Site 3, Bladderpod seed. Photo by Ken Marchionno.
 
Site 4 is a California Black Oak seed and is located near the new La Cienega Pedestrian Bridge and the Stoneview Nature Center. Disks of local animal and bird tracks encircle the seed. Tracks made by squirrels, red tail hawks, coyotes, and other wildlife. A concrete relief blueprint of the nature center represents “tracks” left by humans. The first time I saw this seed, I ran my hands along the disks and imagined all the critters. The large scale of each seed made me imagine a bird’s eye or squirrel’s view of a seed. Or, even perhaps, a lizard’s perspective.

Site 4, California Black Oak seed. Image of interior and labeled details of each animal track. Photo by Ken Marchionno.
 
Citizen Seeds is an exemplary public art installation. It has many facets that serve the user. The practical—a meeting place, wayfinding, mapping. Aesthetic—the seeds and their interiors are gorgeous. Impart knowledge and inspire curiosity—Southern California native flora and fauna, community values. Reflection and mindfulness—reminder to slow down, and be “here”. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that creating memories with those we love, respecting human life, and being present in the now are essential to a well lived and joyful life. Interacting with Kim Abeles’ Citizen Seeds inspires me (and I hope you) to remember that simple acts like walking in nature and greeting those I pass—animal, plant, people—can make your day meaningful.

What simple act gives you joy?

Site 1, Sugar Pine. Photo by Ken Marchionno

Alicia Vogl Saenz is a poet, Manager of Family Programs at Los Angeles County Museum in California, meditation instructor, bread maker, yarn lover who brings her love of Los Angeles, mixed immigrant background (ecuaczech) and queer identity to her writing and teaching. She blogs at www.aliciabird.me

“Project Precious Trash” (2016), Photo: Fredrik Sederholm

Preciousness Once Disposed, Reimagined: Johanna Tornqvist

Interview by Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

Johanna Tornqvist applies her studies in folklore and Swedish traditions to contemporary issues related to waste materials and ecological degradation. Her work has expanded to explore the health care industry by including pill packets as material. She uses her Swedish surroundings as well as her international experiences to draw parallels between aesthetics and contemporary lifestyle related issues. Both elaborate and haunting, her fashions sit at the precipice of an industry shrouded in ecological and ethical issues and solutions related to material choice. 

“Vingklippt” (2014), Photo: Fredrik Sederholm

what does the human of today have a superfluous of? Trash.

In your work, you create precious wearable objects out of disposed materials. What was your inspiration to begin this work?

I was educated as a fashion designer in the 80's, but soon left the fashion industry as I could not cope with their ethics. Further on, I worked with craft in different materials, and I became more and more interested in the ecological and ethical aspect of the fashion industry and wanted to merge this with my craft.

After my grandmother passed away, I found in her belongings all kinds of materials that she had collected over the years, as you did in the old times. These included buttons, ribbons and laces from old clothes and bedclothes. I thought to myself: she grew up in a time where everything was reused but grew old in a time when everything is bought new. I saw her collecting these objects as treasures and I wanted to make something out of them. Since they were only small and uneven pieces, the work became jewelry.
Later on, I became more and more radical in my thinking: what happens if I use only the material that we have nearby, as we used to in the old times? Back then it was wool, wood or clay, but what does the human of today have a superfluous of? Trash.

“Side Effects” (2017), Photo: Tomas Bjorkdal

I reflected upon how we sometimes need these medications to survive, or to as a way to have a tolerable existence, or just to cope with a modern way of life.

And nearby materials are so wide ranging! Recently, you have expanded this project to include medical waste materials. How have you forged the connection between jewels and daily medication, a life-saving necessity for many?

The project Side Effects came at first from the fact that there is an enormous amount of overabundance of disposable materials in the health care industry. As a result of my interest in waste management, I decided to dive into the world of disposable material related to healthcare. This was “in” before the pandemic, but it was very difficult to get hold of material because of potential contamination risk. So, the material I was able to access was medical trash we have in our households, mostly blister packs.
Due to illness in my proximity that I was personally affected by, I was aware of both the advantages and disadvantages of medication. I reflected upon how we sometimes need these medications to survive, or to as a way to have a tolerable existence, or just to cope with a modern way of life. Those little pills many of us take, are essential in many people’s lives. But there is a lot of disposable material around them and also a lot of transportation costs due to all the air around the blister packs. Medication and chemicals are also prominent in our oceans and in our drinking water. We are beginning to grip more and more the impact these have on our lives in many different aspects.

“Celestial Twin: röd kopia” (2012)

Nowadays I don´t choose my materials, I use what there is.

Your fashions often include bright and crocheted or knitted materials or wearable decorations that are reminiscent of folkloric Swedish aesthetics. How have your travels and historical research influenced the style you are creating? Is there something specific in the culture that interests you in the connection to upcycling?

I have always been inspired by folklore from all over the world. And also surprised by the similarity of many ornamental traditions in many countries even if they exist on opposite sides of the planet.

Recycling and upcycling have always been part of craft in folklore traditions and are considered a natural way of using materials. It is the present time´s way of exploiting and using up natural resources that is not normal.

My previous work had a lot of inspiration from different folkloristic traditions. But my work nowadays is more focused on the material I get and find and how I can embellish and make a nonprecious material precious. Nowadays I don´t choose my materials, I use what there is.

“Project Precious Trash” (2016), Photo: Fredrik-Sederholm

It is in the way you handle the material, that you make it precious.

The work you do is a wonderful example of upcycling rather than recycling as it gives the disposed objects a more precious life than when they started. How are you responding to the sustainability of the fashion industry?

Project Precious Trash was a project I made about clothes and consumption where I highlighted different aspects of the fashion industry. It’s a really dirty business, as many are increasingly aware, both in ethics as well as ecological and social sustainability. My aim has always been - how can we embrace glamor and adornment but still be part of a sustainable lifestyle?

For many years I have worked with the aspect of what we see as precious versus what we see as useless. And how our point of view has changed over the years.

I´m also interested in the aspect of craft and how today´s humans have largely lost their skills to work with their hands. Only the work of the brain is promoted. In this part of the world, we have therefore become completely dependent on what is produced at the other side of the world.

By using trash materials, I want to change focus from the material away from whether it is precious or not. Instead, I would like to highlight the work of the hands. It is in the way you handle the material, that you make it precious.

Johanna Tornqvist

The ecoartspace April 2022 e-Newsletter is HERE

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

March 28, 2022

This week we recognize the work of artist  Aviva Rahmani.

"Working with others across disciplines to effect ecological restoration and change environmental policy with art is a hallmark of my practice. I have engaged with both the scientific and the legal aspects of change to explore environmental justice grounded in environmental science to change systems. The most recent expression of that concern in my work has been The Blued Trees Symphony (2015-present), a series of installations across North America. That work has been realized with teams of local activists in corridors where fossil fuel infrastructure have been planned and in international venues to replace anthropocentric models with models from art which are more appropriate to the Anthropocene era."

Blue Trees Symphony is a spatial and acoustic outdoor installation across North America, embodying trigger point theory. The installation covers many miles of proposed pipeline expansions, exploring how art, science, and law can change environmental policies about fossil fuels. The installation is composed of trees marked with a painted vertical sine wave. Each marked tree is GPS located, indicating an aerial musical score for an overture. Using copyright law, the artwork on the trees is protected, subsequently protecting the land from eminent domain takings for pipeline development.

The Blued Trees Symphony launched on the Summer Solstice, June 21, 2015, with an overture in Peekskill, New York. It is now installed in many miles of proposed pipeline expansions. Individual trees were painted and musical variations of the score were performed to echo the theme of connectivity to all life. The paint for each vertical sine wave is a casein slurry of nontoxic ultramarine blue and buttermilk that grows moss (based on a Japanese gardening technique).

"Blue Rocks (2002) was an example of what curators Amy Lipton and Sue Spaid termed an ecovention, a place where art intervenes in environmental degradation. Forty large boulders painted blue, drawing attention to an obstructed causeway on Pleasant River, Vinalhaven Island, Maine. The ecovention included the painting of the boulders by the river and a “wash-in,” which came as a response to being subpoenaed from the town to clean the rocks, to educate the local community about estuarine health. The project included GIS mapping. The site choice applied Trigger Point Theory. My task was to investigate how the restoration of this small site could have regional impact. It was at a significant confluence of ecotones (transitions between systems)."

Blue Sea Lavender (2009) was a series of events and performances in Maine based upon a mythical plant. The one-day event explored the loss of species diversity in the Gulf of Maine mediated through the narration of Blue Sea Lavender who has “lost my children, my family, my community, my home.” The event included consecutively singing Puccini's Vissi d'arte in a public preserve over a six-hour period. The day before, large drawings of the mythical plant were created on the sand of two local preserve parking lots using branches, rocks and water, knowing that cars would destroy the drawings, as people have destroyed many species across the earth.

The event was a sequence of performances during the one-day “site-specific" show curated by Pat Nick on August 19, 2009. A subtheme of the show was the celebration of recently installed wind power turbines on Vinalhaven Island to serve the Fox Islands.

Aviva Rahmani is a Pioneering ecological artist who has worked at the cutting edge of the avant-garde since she committed to her career in art at the age of nineteen. She has devoted many years of her working life to teaching, inspiring, and leading others through her art to a renewed focus on ecological restoration as artmaking. Rahmani is at the forefront of her field in ecological art and exhibits, publishes, and presents internationally. She currently lives and works in Manhattan and Maine and has recently completed a residency with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council on Governors Island, New York. avivarahmani.com

Featured Images: ©Aviva Rahmani, "Blued Trees Symphony" (2015-ongoing), "Blue Rocks" (2002), "Blue Sea Lavender" (2009).

March 22, 2022

Keeper of the Waters

Susan Hoffman Fishman 

for Artists & Climate Change blog

For the last 50+ years, eco-artist and environmental activist Betsy Damon has devoted herself to community building – the coming together of individuals to achieve a common purpose. Since the 1980s, after a decade of engaging the public through public performances in New York City, she has worked at the intersection of art and science, focusing on the topic of water and on creating models for communities in the United States and China to know and become stewards of their own water sources. The brief descriptions below, highlighting four of Damon’s many exhibitions, ecological and sustainable design projects, publications, and organizations are only a brief glimpse into her prolific and important body of work.

Damon’s first major project on water came about after a cross-country camping trip with her children in 1983, during which she observed a number of dry riverbeds whose once flowing waters had been dammed and redirected. As a result of this experience and a growing reconnection to the natural world, she conceived of a project that would bring attention to the environmental loss that the dry riverbeds represented and serve as a living memory of the missing water. Damon was able to realize the project, called A Memory of Clean Water, when she brought together a group of master papermakers and local artists to create a paper casting covering 250 feet of a dry riverbed in Castle Rock, Utah. The stunning and powerful piece was installed in seven venues across the country from 1986 through 1991, including at the Danforth Museum in Framingham, Massachusetts; the University of Wisconsin at Madison; Everhart Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania; MoMA PS1 in New York City; and others.  

A Memory of Clean Water was pivotal to the evolution of Damon’s practice. During its creation, as she was working on her hands and knees placing paper pulp over rocks, she looked up and realized that the patterns of stars in the sky mirrored the patterns in the riverbed. Profoundly moved by this personal epiphany, she promised herself to learn as much as she could about water and has spent the rest of her life since then fulfilling that promise. 

Continue reading HERE

Book Review

Ecoart in Action: Activities, Case Studies, and Provocations for Classrooms and Communities

Edited by Amara Geffen, Ann Rosenthal, Chris Fremantle and Aviva Rahmani

by Thomas Wawzenek for New Art Examiner

Ecoart in Action is a new book, published this year, that contributes to the growing literature on artistic responses to global warming and its consequences. While emphasizing the importance of artistic expression, this book also examines and illustrates the interconnection between art, science, and social activism and why the three are needed to work together to enact change.

Compiled from 67 members of the Ecoart Network, a group of 200 internationally established practioners grounded in the arts, education and science, this book offers pragmatic solutions to critical environmental challenges that the world now faces. The framework in this book is organized into three sections (Activities, Case Studies, and Provocations) that examine diverse methods on how to create critical strategies in relation to environmental issues. Each contribution offers templates for ecoart practices that are adaptable within a variety of classroom settings and community groups.

There are 25 activities that make use of various mediums such as art, photography, collage and writing that allow participants to not only reflect on their relationship with nature but also experience the dynamics of working with others in a group setting. Many of these group projects heighten one’s level of critical thinking while utilizing the imagination when creating art.

While many activities are designed specifically for either children or adults, there are some activities that can be enjoyed by both. A good example of the latter is a banner-making project. In this endeavor, participants who live in an urban environment learn about native species such as plants, insects and animals that play a vital role in an urban setting. The participants express their new-found knowledge by composing and painting banners that can be presented as artwork in the community. This activity not only educates people as to how nature is often taken for granted in cities and large towns, but also engenders a sense of community pride. A more ambitious activity, that is geared for students ages 8 through 17, is an energy camp where students learn the basic scientific principles about energy production and how our consumption of nonrenewable energy impacts the environment. The end result is for students to use their creativity and problem-solving skills to discover innovative solutions by building a fully operational solar sculpture or a functional prototype.

Continue reading HERE

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

March 21, 2022

This week we recognize the work of artist  Cherie Sampson.

"For over 25 years my artistic work has encompassed site-specific environmental performance, sculpture and video art. Many of the works have been created in wilderness, rural and cultivated landscapes in the U.S. and abroad, inspired and informed by the unique geographies, elemental forces, built environments and cultural connections of place. At the center of my art is the presence of the natural world, physically and/or symbolically, and that of my body within those spaces. My performances occur in sculptural installations I construct in nature or other environments, for events attended by live audiences, or ‘staged’ exclusively for the camera in the form of still and moving imagery."

"A significant body of my work has been created in the boreal landscapes of Finland over a twenty-year period. In 1998, while living there for nine months, I initiated the making of video-performances, a practice that has continued to the present. These began as minimalist, one-take videos in analog format sited in diverse “found landscapes” (as one Finnish scholar described) such as mossy forests, arctic tundra and snow-covered terrain. Performing in glacially slow movement, my naked body became an extension of the landscape in an embodiment of temporality in nature – cyclical changes often not perceptible in the moment in gradual process, but as if after-images. With the advance of digital technologies these works have become more layered and mosaiced. While I maintain the integrity of the slow movement in real time in post-production, I now utilize more manipulation of the imagery using masking, mirroring and other techniques to further abstract the body and represent multiple gestures within a single frame. The bodies may appear at once human, animal and vegetative, reflecting patterns in the environment and contemplating the stirring and stilling of time through an interplay of fixed and moving imagery."

"Other performance works have occurred in a variety of settings attended by live audiences. These may take place within sculptural spaces I construct of local and natural materials in the environment, installations in indoor venues and/or public spheres. The projects often require significant preliminary and on-site research as they are informed and inspired by local legends, origins stories or myths associated with the locations in which they are presented."

"Classical traditions from both west and east have profoundly impacted my performance work, as widely varied as the folkloric “rune-singing” culture of Karelian Finland and the classical dance forms of India. For a decade I have been studying the South Indian dance form, Bharatanatyam. Its complex formal structure and mimetic storytelling methods have profoundly impacted my movement vocabulary in both the live and video-performance work. Currently I am working with the dance form's dramaturgy in the performance project, “every.single.one” that portrays my recent experience with hereditary breast cancer. In many ways, this is a significant departure in my work due to the medical and autobiographical nature of the subject matter. Nonetheless, the environment still plays a vital role. During treatment, I continued to make video-performances in the landscape and documented the healing process that included walks in nature, working in the garden, forest wildcrafting and swimming in a northern Wisconsin lake – my first full immersion in water several weeks after surgery."

Cherie Sampson has worked for over 25 years as an interdisciplinary artist in environmental performance, sculpture and video art. She has exhibited internationally in live performances, art-in-nature symposia, video/film screenings and installations in the US, Finland, Norway, Holland, Cuba, France, Greece, Italy, India, Spain, Argentina, South Korea, Hong Kong and other countries. Sampson is the recipient of a number of fellowships & grants including two Fulbright Fellowships to Finland (1998 & 2011), a Finnish Cultural Foundation Grant (North Karelia Fund), three Finlandia Foundation Grants and multiple internal research grants for artistic projects from the University of Missouri. She divides her time between the University of Missouri where she is an Associate Professor of Art and her organic farm in Northeast Missouri where she creates some of her art works in the cultivated and wooded environments. She is the current President of Artists in Nature International Network (AiNIN). Sampson received her Master of Fine Art Degree in Intermedia & Video Art from the University of Iowa in 1997 with a minor in Sculpture. cheriesampson.net

Featured Images: ©Cherie Sampson, “Burning of the Birch” (2018); "Limb to Limbs, Flesh & Home" (1998); "Let a Sleeping Bear Lie," (2016); "every.single.one" (2017), Photographic series/performances for the camera; "Mettä Vuoti Kuivat Kuuset" (2012); "Tufiarte" (2014).

Issue Twenty : Winter 2022 / Feature

RIVER FUGUES

By Margaret Cogswell

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Langston Hughes
“The Negro Speaks of Rivers”[1]

What is it to “know” rivers? As an artist I have been asking myself this question for over twenty years. Ever since an artist residency in Cleveland, Ohio led to my encountering the burning river history of the Cuyahoga River, I realized that all rivers have stories, and to learn of their histories was to explore and listen.

Simon Schama, in the introduction to his book, Landscape and Memory, describes this kind of exploration beautifully:

Landscape and Memory has been built around such moments of recognition as this, when a place suddenly exposes its connections to an ancient and peculiar vision of the forest, the mountain, or the river. A curious excavator of traditions stumbles over something protruding above the surface of the commonplaces of contemporary life. He scratches away, discovering bits and pieces of a cultural design that seems to elude coherent reconstitution but which leads him deeper into the past. [2]

In this essay, I will focus on my research on different rivers, sharing the meandering paths which have led me to explore these rivers and my creative responses to them in the form of mixed-media art installations that seek to reflect the complex relationships between land, water, and peoples. To contextualize the impetus for what developed into an ongoing series of River Fugues projects, I will offer some personal history. Although I was born in the United States (in Memphis, Tennessee along the Mississippi River), I went to Japan with my parents when I was 18 months old and lived there until I was 13 years old. Coming back to the United States at age 13 was like moving to a foreign country. Although I was bilingual and spoke English as well as Japanese, I did not know this country’s history, or understand its culture. My early efforts to better understand this country were through the study of literature. This led to my efforts to explore the intervals between words and what cannot be translated, and eventually to my work as a visual artist.

Continue reading here Open Rivers: Rethinking Water Place and Community