MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

June 26, 2023

This week we recognize Kellie Bornhoft  Kellie Bornhoft, and her multimedia work exploring climate change and its effects on the natural environment.

From Here to There as Place (Readings from Alexander Wilson), 2015(above)is a single channel video recorded from the inside of a car driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway between Tennessee and North Carolina. This work layers footage taken from multiple passenger. Some of the clips are reversed and the duration is altered. During the drive the narrator reads sections from Alexander Wilson's book "The Culture of Nature" that reference the controversial construction of the road. 

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Burnishings, 2018-ongoing (above) is a series of drawings made with forest fire burned bark as charcoal. The process involves visiting public lands scarred by fire and collecting small bits of charcoal. As Bornhoft travels to any public land thereafter, she identifies native species of trees and rubs the found charcoal across the paper placed up against the tree’s bark. The work is about reciprocity and touch in spaces otherwise driven by narratives of preservation and “leave no trace”. The work seeks intimacy and tangibility with the hopes of fertilizing and caring for native species in these spaces. Dust and bits of charcoal drop to the base of the tree as a sort of good-will offering. As the “public” stewarding these lands, she is curious about individual responsibility within one’s environment and rejecting estranged colonial ideologies.

Shifting Landscapes: Static Bounds (above), published in 2019, is a field guide that brings into question what it means to preserve a landscape for “the enjoyment of future generations,” when climactic forecasts predict that those generations will be fighting just to survive on this melting planet. The two notions cannot coincide in one narrative. Public lands drew Bornhoft in because of the myths imposed on them: myths of preserving an inhuman wilderness, myths of innocence in the histories of their conquering, and myths of their stability amidst a warming planet. The book accumulates field notes, images, and a de-territorialized mapping system to locate the reader within the traversed time and space.

By a Thread, 2023 (above) is a celebration of the Endangered Species Act, the most effective environmental legislation for the past 50 years. Though few animals have been delisted, most species avoided extinction because of the legal protection. This collection of drawn plants and animals depicts every species ever federally listed as endangered under the ESA that resides or resided within a 30-mile radius of my studio on the unceded territory of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe. Viewers are invited to gently sift through and touch the banners. The accompanying guide can assist in identifying species throughout the installation. The photographs referenced for the illustrations are sourced from the Creative Commons and often taken by citizen scientists. This guide credits the source image photographers with gratitude. The ESA has a history of embracing citizen science by allowing anyone to petition to list a species to the Fish and Wildlife Service. The illustrations were returned to the Creative Commons to increase accessibility and aid further study.

Bornhoft's most recent installation titled Tremors, 2023 (below) presented six speakers buried beneath one ton of sand, which amplifies a live seismic activity. Using an open-source ObsPy code and a Max patcher, the work synthesizes local seismic data into a sound wave that spatially varies between the six speakers. Viewers are invited to traverse the mound to feel the low grumbling vibrations of magnified Earth movements. Small porcelain rocks are mixed into the locally sourced sand. Installed with the work is a two-channel video. As a chance-operation poem, words borrowed from geology texts loop on each monitor at differing speeds to create an endless cycle of combinations. The intention is to bridge one’s understanding of how their presence on this moving-shaking planet is in flux—that the ground we think is static shifts beneath our feet. 

Kellie Bornhoft's (she/her) practice seeks tangible and poetic narratives needed in an ever-warming climate. Bornhoft utilizes sculpture, installation and video to delve into the whelms and quotidian experiences of our precarious times. Scientific data and news headlines do plenty to evince the state of our warming planet, but the abject realities of such facts are hard to possess. Through geological and more-than-human lenses, Bornhoft sifts through shallow dichotomies (such as natural/unnatural, here/there, or animate/inanimate.) Bornhoft is currently working in the Bay Area of California. She holds a MFA in Sculpture + Expanded Media from Ohio State University and a BFA from Watkins College of Art and Design. Bornhoft’s work has been exhibited internationally in museums, galleries and film festivals such as the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, North Carolina, Kulturanker in Magdeburg, Germany, and the Athens International Film and Video Festival. Bornhoft’s work has been reviewed in many publications including Frieze Magazine, Burnaway, INDYweek and ArtsATL.     www.kelliebornhoft.com

Featured images (top to bottom):©Kellie Bornhoft, From Here to There as Place (Readings from Alexander Wilson), 2015,single channel video, 4 min 31 sec; Burnishings, 2018-Ongoing, charcoal on paper, 200+ 11” x 14” drawings, dimensions variable (about 20’ x 9’ in the depicted installation); Boundless Sediments, 2020-2021, Two-Channel video, 11:53, plaster, TVs, speakers, wood, foam, and pigment; By a Thread, 2023, digital print on voile fabric, wood, 3D printed hardware; Tremors, 2023, speakers, amplifier, monitors, sand, porcelain, Python/ObsPy code, Max patcher, and cables; Portrait or Artist.

 

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

June 19, 2023

This week we recognize   Anne Krinsky   Anne Krinsky based in London, whose art practice, after twenty-five years turned to investigations of natural and man-made environments in 2017, created from archival and geographical research.

“Tide Line Thames,” 2016 (above) was a two-year project supported by Arts Council England, investigating the shifting riverscape and its architectural structures between high and low tide lines. The Thames in London, contained by high river walls, has a tidal range of up to seven metres. Krinsky exhibited the project's first phase of photographs, paintings, digital scrolls and projections at Thames-Side Studios Gallery, for Totally Thames.”

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“Tropical Thames,” 2017 (above) was an installation of eight large-scale digital prints on Dibond Aluminium panels, and was inspired by Thames architectural structures in southeast London– docks, piers and river walls shaped by centuries of shipping and trade. "Tropical Thames" also responded to the Garden's dramatic roof structure, designed by Foster and Partners, and to its plantings, some of which were species that first entered Britain through Thames docks. Designing the installation involved some time travel, to London’s trading past and to its potential future. In making this work, Krinsky thought about the urgent issue of climate change and the effects of rising temperatures and sea levels on the tidal river.

Krinsky created “The Ephemera Scrolls,” 2019 (above) in St. Augustine’s Tower in the London Borough of Hackney for the show Reading Stones. Artists were invited to make works in response to the history and architecture of Hackney’s oldest building, a 13th century clocktower. Through their respective interests in the land, the body and the cosmos, they explored relationships between time and materiality, on four floors of the Tower. Krinsky incorporated ten photographs she had taken of the River Naab in Bavaria in 2019, during the hottest June on record, part of her project documenting vulnerable wetlands and climate change.

“Anne Krinsky: Wetlands/Shifting Shorelines,” 2021-2022 (above) was an outdoor print exhibition inspired by vulnerable South Coast wetlands she photographed in 2020 and 2021. It was on view for six months at The Seafront Gallery on Worthing’s Promenade. Krinsky worked with projection, photography and digital print to design this series of 16 prints, in a range of river and coastal locations including Lymington, Keyhaven and Chichester, Pagham and Portsmouth harbors. Krinsky stated "It’s heartbreaking to see the overgrowth of algae, from agricultural runoff and dumping of sewage, that is engulfing South Coast wetlands." Information panels about Bird Aware Solent, The Solent Oyster Restoration Project and The Sussex Kelp Restoration Project were presented.

In November and December of 2022, Krinsky was a Visiting Artist-in-Residence at 18th Street Art Center in Santa Monica, where she undertook a period of research investigating the wetlands on the Los Angeles River Corridor and the Southern California Coast. A concrete channel built by the Army Corp of Engineers in 1938, confined the Los Angeles River for flood control, which chuted the water to the Pacific Ocean and wasting it for any ecological or agricultural purpose along the way. The river is flanked by highways, warehouses and railways and the anthrophonic sounds surrounding it are jarring. Krinksy made a series of video clips to document this urban interface with nature.

Anne Krinsky  is a London-based artist, born in the United States. In her practice she combines painting, print, photography and projection with archival and geographical research, to investigate overlooked structures in natural and man-made environments. Krinsky is fascinated by the passage of time and the ephemeral nature of the physical world. She exhibited her first project with a UK archive, From Absorb to Zoom: An Alphabet of Actions in the Women’s Art Library, at Goldsmiths University of London in 2015. Since then, she has made mutliple installations in response to archived collections in the United States, United Kingdom and India. Anne Krinsky is the recipient of multiple grants, including an Artists International Development Fund Grant, Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice Grant, two Artist Bursaries from a-n The Artists Information Company and two Arts Council England Grants for the Arts. The British Museum, Boston Public Library, American collector Graham Gund and Paintings in Hospitals England, have purchased her works, as have numerous corporate and private collectors on both sides of the Atlantic. www.annekrinsky.com

Featured images (top to bottom):©Anne Krinsky, Tide Line Thames 2016, River Walls, acrylic & collage on aluminum panels, 135 x 100 cm / 53 x 39 inches; Tropical Thames 2017, Sea Change / Seeing Double, Digital Prints on Dibond Aluminium. Tropical Thames in Crossrail Place Roof Garden, Canary Wharf, London; The Ephemera Scrolls 2019, St. Augustine’s Tower Hackney, London, 10 Archival Digital Prints on Platinum Etching Paper. Each scroll: 200 x 60 cm / 79 x 24 inches; Wetlands/ Shifting Shorelines 2021-2022, Worthing Seafront Gallery UK, Sea Kale 1, Digital Print on Dibond Aluminium Panel, 90 x 90 cm / 35.5 x 35.5 inches; Los Angeles Wetlands, video clips taken during Artist in Residence at 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica, California, fall 2022; Artist Portrait.

Can Art Change Attitudes Toward Climate Change?

A study found that people who viewed climate data in the form of an artwork were less likely to lean on their preconceived notions.

Elaine Velie 17 hours ago via Hyperallergic

A new study found that using art to convey environmental data eased political perceptions about climate change. As wildfires rage in Canada and New York City recovers from a week of smoke, the study’s findings could help scientists more effectively communicate their research at a pivotal point in the future of the planet.

Nan Li, Isabel I. Villanueva, Thomas Jilk, and Dominique Brossard of the University of Wisconsinand Brianna Rae Van Matre of the nonprofit EcoAgriculture Partners conducted the research, published May 31 in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. Li conceptualized the project two years ago when she heard artist Diane Burko speak during a webinar; the artist, whose practice centers on climate change, was pondering the real-world impact of her work.

Burko depicts the consequences of Earth’s warming atmosphere, such as melting glaciers and disappearing coral reefs, and often accompanies them with scientific maps and charts. Li and her colleague Dominique Brossard developed a study to answer Burko’s question — how does the artist’s work affect its viewers? The team chose Burko’s 2020 mixed-media work “SUMMER HEAT, I and II.” The graph at the lower left depicts the Keeling Curve, a visualization of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since 1958. The blue represents melting glaciers, and the red figure is Europe, which suffered an intense heat wave in 2020 when Burko created the work.

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“S’aline’s Solution” 1991 is a video Mare made many years ago, when she was 40 years old, as a testament to the painful yet powerful right of women to choose. She wanted to find a voice for the pain, an acknowledgment of the courage involved in choosing to have an abortion- a voice she felt had been silenced in our culture. The saline procedure is induced at the end of the first trimester with a local anesthesia of 200 milligrams of hypertonic saline solution. It is a fairly traumatic birthing process which includes dilation, contractions and a chemically induced early labor. It is an especially difficult procedure, an experience which she understood first hand. The video was greeted with much controversy. Many women felt Mare had played into the hands of the Right, appropriating “Back to Life'' imagery and humanizing the embryo. However she believes the piece stands up on its own as an emblematic statement about an issue that remains central and vital in these dangerous times: a woman’s right to choose.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

June 5, 2023

This week we recognize Amy Youngs  Amy Youngs, and her  expansive body of work at the interstices of technology and the natural world for over twenty years.

Cricket Call (above) from 1998, was a technologically-enhanced nature experience attempts to facilitate communication between crickets and humans. The cricket participants live in a glass-walled, human-like environment which, when a human participant is present, includes a televised human on their own scale. For the human, there is a telephone interface which receives the amplified chirping sounds of the actual crickets and sends voice-activated electronic chirping sounds to the crickets.

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"This living sculpture [Farm Fountain 2007-2013, above] is designed to inspire participation in lowering greenhouse gas emissions through personal, local food production. It is a functional chandelier, water fountain, garden and fish farm—all in one interconnected, constructed ecosystem. Based on the concept of aquaponics, this hanging garden fountain uses a pump, along with gravity to flow the nutrients from fish waste through the plant roots." "This project is an experiment in local, sustainable agriculture and recycling. It utilizes 2-liter plastic soda bottles as planters and continuously recycles the water in the system to create a symbiotic relationship between edible plants, fish and humans. The work creates an indoor healthy environment that also provides oxygen and light to the humans working and moving through the space. The sound of water trickling through the plant containers creates a peaceful, relaxing waterfall. The Koi and Tilapia fish that are part of this project also provide a focus for relaxed viewing.”

Live Feedings, 2015-2017 (above) was a live feed webcam located in Young's office at the Ohio State University and broadcasted the activities of composting worms in action. The meals were made of waste foods that worms like—carrot pulp, asparagus ends, coffee grounds, banana peels—on a bedding of shredded newspaper and coco coir. The worm bin was illuminated with infrared light to protect the worms from visible light, which can harm them. Multiple LIVE Feedings occurred over four months, with the worm bin webcam live streaming 24/7.

Becoming Biodiversity, 2019 (above) is an augmented reality application that encourages participants to explore and experience local, ecological networks present in an urban park site. Cell phones and headphones are used to experience this artwork, which includes mixed-reality animations and storytelling as an overlay to the actual park. The experience is an embodied one, designed to connect humans empathetically with the biodiversity, symbioses, and unseen worlds in public park spaces. Fantastic ecologies exist everywhere on earth and at many scales, many of which are invisible to us. Though we mostly ignore and disrespect the non-humans in these networks, our lives depend upon them. This artwork is a guided tour which will allow us to inhabit the worlds of multiple species along the network, allowing them to become visible and “sense-able” to us.”

Grasping Permeability, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, 2019 (below) was a virtual reality installation that invited viewers to interact with images by grasping them with hand controllers. The images were a spatial simulation made from photographs the artist took at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in New York City. The experience was designed to alter the viewer’s sense of self in relation to the hollow virtual skins—the surface representations of place. A ring of phragmites plants provided a semi-permeable layer that could be touched by real and virtual hands.

Amy Youngs  creates biological art, interactive sculptures and digital media works that explore interdependencies between technology, plants and animals. Her practice-based research involves entanglements with the non-human, constructing ecosystems, and seeing through the eyes of machines. She has created installations that amplify the sounds and movements of living worms, indoor ecosystems that grow edible plants, a multi-channel interactive video sculpture for a science museum, and community-based, participatory video, social media and public web cam projects. Youngs has exhibited her works nationally and internationally and she has contributed writing to interdisciplinary publications such as Leonardo and the recent book, Robots and Art. Her work has been profiled in books such as Art in Action, and Nature, Creativity & our Collective Future. Youngs received a BA in Art from San Francisco State University and attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago on a fellowship where she earned an MFA in 1999. In 2001, she joined the faculty at the Ohio State University where she's currently working as an Associate Professor of Art, leading interdisciplinary grant projects and teaching courses in moving image, eco-art, and art/science. hypernatural.com

Featured images (top to bottom): ©Amy M. Youngs, Cricket Call, 1998, live crickets, plant, custom electronics, amplifier, telephone, video camera, copper, glass, fabric and wood, exhibited 2003-4 in the exhibition Bug-Eyed: Art, Culture, Insects curated by Patricia Watts at Turtle Bay Exploration Park, Redding, California; Farm Fountain, 2007-2013, exhibited at Te Papa, Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand, The National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China, Banvard Gallery, Knowlton School of Architecture, Columbus, Ohio, and Kontejner, Bureau of Contemporary Art Practice, Zagreb, Croatia; Live Feeding, 2015-2017, network webcam, live composting worms, plastic bin, food waste, paper waste, infrared light, video; Becoming Biodiversity 2019, exhibited at the New York Electronic Arts Festival, June 1 - August 11, 2019; Grasping Permeability, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, 2019, installation with Phragmites (common reeds), virtual reality experience + wetland particulates on paper; Self portrait of artist.

The ecoartspace June 2023 e-Newsletter for subscribers is here

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

May 29,2023

This week we recognize  Tali Weinberg, Tali Weinberg and her art practice merging climate data with textiles.

"While petrochemical pipelines run through the earth, petrochemical-derived medical tubes are pipelines that run through and around our bodies. As the detritus of our human life on land runs downstream and then circulates back through bodies, watersheds are one window into the interdependence of ecological and human health. In the “Drainage Studies,” 2021 (above) temperature data for each of the 18 major river basins in the continental US is materialized as hand-dyed, color-coded cotton and coiled along bundles of medical tubing that are entwined together."

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"I translate climate data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration into abstracted landscapes and waterscapes, materializing the data with plant-derived fibers and dyes and petrochemical-derived medical tubing and fishing line. These woven datascapes and coiled sculptures merge a practice of record keeping with a practice of grieving, and merge an expression of scientific research with an expression of lived experience. This project started in 2015 as an investigation of the mechanisms through which we come to understand climate crises, from data and journalistic narrative to embodied and affective experience."

Bodies on the Line, 2014 (above) draws text from conversations with women activists from the San Francisco Bay Area, Weinberg's home at the time. The quotes used were originally selected in response to an exhibition space in Patterson, New Jersey, a town built on the manufacturing of silk by a labor force of working-class women who put their bodies on the line at work, and in defense of better work. With silk thread on silk organza, the artist hand-stitched fragments of these conversation in order to intertwine the material and labor history of the place with the struggles of contemporary women. In 2016, Weinberg was invited to evolve the project for the Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art in Zhejiang Province, China—another city built on the production of silk.

Water Bodies, 2019 (above) is a series of works that interpret annual average temperatures for oceans and lands, hemp-dyed with plant and insect-derived dyes, and petrochemical-derived fishing line. The strands of dyed hemp warp threads color-code 138 years of temperature for the earth’s surface. This materialization of rising temperatures is held together with petrochemical-derived fishing line to create woven patterns that mimic waves. While the fishing line’s reflective quality evokes the glimmering surface of a body of water, the combination of materials and data also suggests the link between climate crisis, extraction of petrochemicals, and the accumulation of toxic plastics in our bodies and ecosystems.

Memories of Future Fires, 2022 (below) is a series that explores forest fires; smoke inhalation; microplastics in our ecosystems, blood, and lungs; and loss of homes past and future. These hand-woven pieces start with photographs which the artist took in a fire-decimated landscape in the Pacific Northwest. She then re-materializes the trees with petrochemical-derived monofilament. In woven form, the trees also reference hearts and lungs as she looks to the connections between life sustaining circulatory systems inside and outside the human body.

Tali Weinberg  interweaves petrochemical and plant-derived materials, data, and landscape imagery to draw attention to the harms of ongoing petrochemical extraction, from rising temperatures and species loss to the buildup of toxic plastics in our bodies and ecosystems. Weinberg’s work is held in public and private collections and is exhibited internationally including at the Griffith Art Museum, 21C Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, University of Colorado Art Museum, Georgia Museum of Art, Center for Craft, and Form & Concept gallery. She has been featured in the New York Times, onEarth Magazine, Surface Design Journal, Fiber Art Now, and Ecotone. Honors include an Illinois Artist Fellowship, a Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Serenbe Fellowship, Windgate Fellowship to Vermont Studio Center, Lia Cook Jacquard Residency, SciArt Bridge Residency for cross-disciplinary collaboration, and a virtual residency at New York’s Museum of Art and Design, among others. She has taught at California College of the Arts and Penland School of Craft. www.taliweinberg.com

Featured images (top to bottom): ©Tali Weinberg, Drainage Study: Clot, 2021, temperature data for 18 major rivers in the continental US, petrochemical-derived medical tubing, organic cotton dyed with plant and insect derived dyes and mineral mordants, 8 x 15 inches; Gilded Valley, 2015, from the “Field Studies” series: Agricultural landscapes woven from California-grown organic cotton dyed with plant dyes and mineral mordants, 18 x 25 inches; Bodies on the Line, 2016, installation for Hangzhou Triennial Of Fiber Art, Zhejiang Art Museum, Hangzhou, China, 10 panels, each 42 in width x 80 in height; Water Bodies (Ocean), 2019, 138 years of annual average temperature for 71 percent of the Earth’s surface (ocean), hemp dyed with plant- and insect-derived dyes, petrochemical-derived fishing line, 35 x 50 inches (photo by Philip Maisel); Lungs, 2022, from Memories of Future Fires series, 86 x 112 inches (photo by Rebecca Heidenberg); Self-portrait of the artist.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

May 22,2023

This week we recognize  Barbara Boissevain Barbara Boissevain, and her work exploring the impacts of human activity on the environment.

In a series of images titled “Ghost Hangar” (above) Boissevain explored how “As caretakers of our environment we are bound to the missteps of our predecessors. Hangar One is an iconic colossal structure that is also the largest Superfund site in Silicon Valley. Rife with controversy, it was recently found to be leaking toxic chemicals into the San Francisco Bay. These aerial shots depict the resulting biological die-off of the wetlands in close proximity to the hangar. The intent of this work is to cultivate awareness and provoke meaningful discourse about environmental stewardship.”    click images for more info

“The trees will outlive us,” 2016 (above) explores  abandoned human structures as they decay and transform. Through the process of investigating these sites the artist looks for clues alluding to their pasts and imagined how they would be further altered by the passage of time. In post-production, she layers location specific elements highlighting the tension between the present beauty and the future evolution of these relinquished sites. This series began in 2016 when Boissevain began photographing a family farm located on Montauk Highway in Long Island, New York. The farm, homesteaded by her great-grandfather over a century ago, is no longer a working farm. The structures are being consumed by the forest that was there long before my family set foot on Long Island after arriving from Europe. This is an ongoing project and I will be continuing to seek-out and photograph locations undergoing this process of reclamation and transformation.”

Continuing the series “Les Arbres Nous Survivront (The Trees Will Outlive Us),” 2018-2019 (above) during the summers of 2018 and 2019, as an artist-in-residence in France, Boissevain began photographing structures being consumed by forest and forgotten by their former inhabitants (above). These sites include a decommissioned coal factory, a Château in Normandy that was used as a headquarters for the Nazi’s during World War II and an abandoned abbey most recently used as a convalescent home.

"Allégorie du Jardin,” 2022 (above) came about after Boissevain’s time spent living in France. The daily onslaught of disturbing news regarding our environment, combined with living in a place with so many layers of history all around her caused her to think very deeply about our species’ relationship to nature and how we have historically seen ourselves in relation to our environment. Looking for answers in the incredible gardens and parks in Paris where the history of man’s relationship with nature is visible around every corner. Spending hours In the giant historical archive, the library’s collections requested archival prints (hundreds of years old) of the very same parks and gardens she was photographing. She experimented with bringing together the past and present, by compositing archival prints with contemporary photographs of the same subject matter.

One of Boissevain’s most recent projects is a book titled “Salt of the Earth” 2023 (below), focusing on the environment for more than twenty years and highlighting the changes that she witnessed firsthand taking place in our environment. Boissevain remains driven to show the power art has to educate. Her intention with the book is to remind people that positive change is possible. In February and March of this year a kickstarter campaign ran for the production of the book, which will be a 110-page hardcover photo book with over seventy of her color photographs documenting the restoration of the San Francisco Bay's salt ponds back to natural wetlands. In addition to the images, the book will also feature essays by Laura Noble, a London-based art critic and writer, and John Hart, an award-winning environmental journalist. "Salt of the Earth" will raise awareness about the incredible transformation taking place in the San Francisco Bay.

Barbara Boissevain  is a visual artist and photographer whose work focuses on the impact of human activity on the environment. The theme of nature’s ability to regenerate and reclaim human altered landscapes is central to her work. Boissevain first studied painting at Parsons School of Design in New York, before immersing herself in photography, earning a B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute and an M.F.A. from San Jose State University. She has exhibited her work widely, including international solo and group exhibitions in the USA and Europe. Her work has been published in a number of publications including Lenscratch and The American Scholar. In 2021 her work was featured on NPR’s “The Picture Show” (in conjunction with the U.N. Climate Change Summit in Glasgow, Scotland) as well as on the PBS News show “Something Beautiful” in 2022. Her art has been acquired by numerous public and private collections around the world, including the Google corporate collection. For seven years, she was an artist in residence with the City of Palo Alto’s Cubberley Artist Studio Program in Palo Alto, California. In 2018 she was awarded an artist-in-residence in France at Galerie Huit in Arles, France (in conjunction with the internationally renowned Les Rencontres de la Photographie Festival). In July of 2022 she was invited to Atelier 11 for a solo residency through L’AiR Arts international residency program in Paris, France.www.barbaraboissevain.com

Featured images (top to bottom): ©Barbara Boissevain, Ghost Hangar series, images primarily shot in Silicon Valley; The trees will outlive us 2016, Long Island NY; Les Arbres Nous Survivront 2018-2019, France; Allégorie du Jardin  2022, France; Salt of the Earth 2023; Portrait of the artist.

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