JANN ROSEN-QUERALT: HEART BEATING BENEATH THE EARTH

JANN ROSEN-QUERALT: HEART BEATING BENEATH THE EARTH Published February 2023 ISBN: 979-8-218-13465-5 86 Pages, 21 color images, edition 130, paperback, Perfect Bound HBBE raises awareness about the impact of climate change on water by using visual art as a springboard for short writings, analogous to a “call and response” strategy. Photographs of Rosen-Queralts’ sculptures sited at local farms, parks, or her garden are the “call.” The “response” is what contributors create and compose. Over the course of three phases, these responses develop an ecosystem specific to the project; one of reactions and replies, which include a range of literary forms such as poetry, short essays, and fiction. The result is a network of people (30 individuals from diverse backgrounds and professions), building a lattice of responses and meditations and perspectives—much like the interconnected elements in any ecosystem. Jann Rosen-Queralt is a Baltimore based interdisciplinary artist and researcher whose artwork integrates structures, biological processes and ecological systems to trigger public action and awareness. Some LEEDS awarded examples are: Percolare, a sculpture that feeds a rain garden and Confluence, a kinetic sculpture celebrating water cleansing at a wastewater treatment facility. Rosen-Queralt has been supported by a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2018), a Marcella Brenner grant for research at the Center for Creative Photography (2022), and most recently an art and science residency in the Arctic Circle (2023). Last year, she retired from her career as an educator at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she taught for 43 years and for the last four was Director of the Rinehart Graduate School of Sculpture.