Geologic Dialogues through June 2024
Part VIIl - Poetic Aesthetics
Thursday, June 20
United States: 10am HDT, 1pm PDT, 2pm MDT, 3pm CDT, 4pm EDT
Europe: 21:00 GMT Australia: Friday, May 17, 6:00am AEDT
The Geologic Dialogues series is organized around our recently launched annual online exhibition + printed book The New Geologic Epoch. For each event, member/artists included in the exhibition who are engaged with similar or complimentary mediums/topics, will present their work. For this eighth dialogue in June we will feature a range of artists who engage the human connection with land as poetic aesthetics.
Valerie Costantino, Bobby Haskell, Carol Padberg, Scott Sutton
Each presenter will have approximately 15 minutes to discuss their work, with Q&A to follow.
Gif Images: ©Valerie Constantino, Love Letters, Staghorn Coral, 2020–22, photographic diptych (original linen panel juxtaposed with deteriorated outcome), 8 x 16 inches; ©Robert Haskell, Sacred Objects, 2022, bronze, decaying wood, 2 x 2 x 2 inch; ©Carol Padberg, Questa, 2023, woven paper diptych, 16 x 20 inches each; Scott Sutton, mineral and plant pigments collected from the Rio Grande Basin Watershed, wall installation.
Member presenters
Valerie Constantino is an interdisciplinary artist and writer working with traditional and contemporary hybrid art forms. Seminal studies in textiles sparked her research into the essence of material existence, particularly as it illuminates the shared susceptibilities of all living forms. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is an exhibiting artist and a published writer with a record of notable awards in support of her creative work. Alongside her art practice, she has lectured at dedicated art institutions, college and university art departments, and autonomous community settings. In response to our collective earthly condition, Constantino writes: My concern for the indeterminacy of being has been at the heart of my artistic pursuits since the beginning. And I think now, its significance in lieu of the precarious states of global ecosystems and affairs is more apparent than ever. www.valerieconstantino.net
Bobby Haskell uses sculpture installations to create habitat in places that have been ecologically degraded by human activity. Their work combines traditional sculpture techniques with emerging conservation methods to explore new possibilities for nature in the built environment. Haskell holds a BFA in sculpture from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and an MPhil in human ecology from the College of the Atlantic in Maine. They currently work in both the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia and on the coast of Downeast Maine, drawing their inspiration from both environments. They show their work nationally, and their public sculpture work can be found at the Dorr Museum of Natural History, the Davistown Museum Sculpture Garden, and on the campus of Southern Maine Community College. Their residencies include Wildacre’s Environmental Artist in Residence program in North Carolina, and the Carving Studio and Sculpture Center’s Artist in Residence program in Vermont. www.bobbyhaskell.com
Carol Padberg is an interdisciplinary ecological artist, farmer, writer and researcher. Her initiatives explore resiliency through poetic intervention and pragmatic engagement. A through-line in Padberg’s studio practice is the activation of her experience in community art combined with innovative peer-reviewed inquiry. Carol Padberg is dedicated to interspecies entanglements as a way to build back lost human capacities for ecological connection. These entanglements have taken the form of an ecological neighborhood studio for teenagers that produced a Regeneration Cycle (2016) an intergenerational Pollinator Festival held in a city center (2018), and many Meeting Mycelia workshops (2019-2021) that featured wearable mycelial textiles activated with Oyster Mushrooms. Carol currently raises sheep in New Mexico on unceded Tewa lands. www.carolpadberg.com
Scott Sutton, also known as the Pigment Hunter, is an artist and educator creating and documenting his work with mineral pigments through the creation of natural paint. His interest in using mineral pigments first began back in 2001 while living in Taos, NM where he was making paints for other artists with pigments that he purchased. Sutton connected with the cultural lifeways program of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in Oregon where he worked for five years with tribal members on how to source and use local pigments for making paints that were used in the creation of art. The focus was to regenerate the use of mineral materials within the traditional ceded lands of their indigenous ancestors. In 2009, he moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico to attend the Masters of Landscape Architecture program at the University of New Mexico where he learned to read the landscape through the use of maps and GIS technology. Today, Scott combines all of these backgrounds and experiences to better understand the role of nature and culture in the creation of art and place. www.scottsuttonart.com
This event is free for members + one guest. $5 for non-members. All participants MUST REGISTER.
