Don't miss our Speakers!
Let's not forget our guest speakers! These are environmental artists and experts, each sharing a unique message about how art and the environment can work in harmony. From forests and water, to oceans and biodiversity, our speakers will discuss the intersection of conservation and creative communications.
Although our speaker sessions will only be live April 5-10, recordings will be available after, and this site will always be here to revisit. We hope you enjoy and are able to learn something new in the process.
All events are in Eastern Standard Time.
Monday, April 5
OIR | RIO - To listen | River
ORO | To pray
COCA | To embody, to walk
SUELO | Soil / to grow
In his seminal work on Environmental Memory, Lawrence Buell (2017) stated the possibility that literature, the visual arts, and other expressive media might act as carrier for environmental memory over against the inertial force of what the environmental psychologist Peter Kahn defines as environmental generational amnesia. Kahn’s idea says “that each generation perceives the environment into which it's born, no matter how developed, urbanized or polluted, as the norm.” (2017). He affirms the what each generation comes to think of as 'nature' is relative, based on what it's exposed to. He argues that more frequent and meaningful interactions with nature can enhance our connection to -- and definition of -- the natural world. “environmental memory” then refers to our conscious or unconscious in-habitation of the planet, and thereby to the viability of earth’s environmental future. On the same line of thought Alfred Gells (1998), in his Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory, defines art “as the outcome and/or the instrument of social agency”.
The presentation will be also a visual journey through the works of visual artists of the south have been addressing these issues: among others Clemencia Echeverri, Mogaje Guhiu (Don Abel), Jeisson Castillo, Miguel A. Rojas, Libia Posada, Qin Ga, Carlos Uribe, Tirsa Chindoy, Rosa Tandioy, Vito Apüshana, Liao Zhang.
Miguel Rojas Sotelo
Deanna Pindell
Follies and Fortunes in Community EcoArt
Ecoart projects are most successful when they engage multiple multispecies communities. Deanna Pindell has led several collaborative projects in the USA, Cambodia, and with Native American communities.
She will share her insights on “what works and what doesn’t”. Bring your questions and ideas.
Uniting Art + Science to Conserve Our Changing Seas
Courtney Mattison is a Los Angeles-based artist who hand-crafts large-scale ceramic sculptural works inspired by the fragile beauty of coral reefs and the human-caused threats they face – particularly climate change. She will discuss her art practice in the context of using art to advocate for environmental conservation.
Courtney Mattison
Tuesday, April 6
Ann Rosenthal
Environmental Art: Awareness and Action
In “Environmental Art: Awareness and Action,” Pittsburgh artist Ann Rosenthal will discuss the evolution of her work over four decades, addressing such issues as nuclear war and waste, environmental toxins, climate change, and the extinction of the passenger pigeon. In parallel, she will highlight her community-based work with children and adults that ignite awareness and action through personal and collective artmaking. Woven throughout will be the inspirations and motivations behind Ann's work—creating community and healing the divide between nature and culture.
Science Communication Through Art
Art is one powerful way to connect with people about important topics like climate change. Jill Pelto will share how she is combining art and science to show the emotional stories that underlie data, and why she thinks that's important.
Jill Pelto
Judith Selby Lang & Richard Lang
Presenting the Plasticene
Over the years we’ve found creative ways to present our message about the plastic in the Plasticene. From the back of the bus to the windows at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art we’ve used traditional and non-traditional venues to connect with diverse audiences on the street and in the gallery. Using multiple media (film, photography, installation) we have extended our reach to audiences near and afar. We’ve presented to people of all ages, in hands-on workshops and to unsuspecting passersby who happen to encounter one of our public art installations. Along the way we’ve used beauty and good humor to ignite conversations about conservation. The images we produce invite people to take a look at how plastic has pervaded every aspect of our lives. When looking at one of our colorful images we want viewers to ponder as to whether the pull-tab, or the errant water bottle lid portrayed could have been theirs. We want everyone to take responsibility for their actions and to recognize that their choices do make a difference.
Wednesday, April 7
Eco-Anxiety, Climate Confrontation, "Building Better Worlds": Making Art on a Collapsing Planet
The presentation will be about my art practice the main thematics at work behind it. As well as an examination of the entanglements the practice creates and relies on especially with regards to non-humans and the scientific community.
Travis Mitzel
View the slides for:
OIR | RIO - To listen | River
ORO | To pray
COCA | To embody, to walk
SUELO | Soil / to grow
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Storytelling & Curiosity
"My journey through storytelling with photography, how stories have the power to shift perspectives, and what I'm up to next in terms of using fun-focused facets of my work."
Matthew Cicanese
Thursday, April 8
Artivism.
The role of the artist in a time of silence, is to sing out!
The questions need to be asked continually: Are we ok with things the way they are? Is the status quo acceptable? What is the vision for a future in which we can all call livable? How do we build a value system that allows for our survival? These questions and many more need to be asked by artists who care and want to build a culture of creative engagement rather than destructive numbing. Art can be a call to action and an invitation to deepen our human experience. Let’s discuss.
Donovan Zimmerman
Dreams of Unknown Islands
Miami-based artist-filmmaker Sasha Wortzel will present on recent artworks that explore subjects of ecological precarity, temporality, narratives of resistance, loss, and collective mourning. In their recent solo exhibition DREAMS OF UNKNOWN ISLANDS (Oolite Arts on Miami Beach), Wortzel references cycles of life be they natural, influenced, extracted or at times accelerated by human interference. Voices, sunsets, snake skins, shells and other layered textures are stand-ins for shorelines, boundaries and horizons that are remixed or reimagined using video, sound, sculpture, and installation. Wortzel's feature documentary in progress, RIVER OF GRASS, (coming 2023) brings audiences on a journey through the past, present, and precarious future of the Everglades, an iconic and imperiled American region unlike any other on earth. Ultimately these works reveal the ways in which America's origin story haunts and inextricably shapes contemporary life in Florida and the larger United States.
Sasha Wortzel
Friday, April 9
Listening Inside Rivers
Drawing on her Sound Map of the Housatonic River, Annea Lockwood considers how listening closely to the sounding energy flow of rivers nourishes us and inspires us to protect them.
Annea Lockwood
A Conversation with the Founder of Ecoartspace
Patricia Watts is the founder of ecoartspace, which recently became a membership platform for artists addressing environmental issues. From 1999 to 2019, ecoartspace operated as a bi-coastal nonprofit in partnership with Amy Lipton.
Join us for an interview and Q&A with Patricia about ecoartspace, it's mission, and how to make change in environmental spaces through creative media.
As a part of her presentation, Sasha shared this visual and audio experience that she created as a part of Seven Sunsets: a project in conjunction with 'Dreams of Unknown Islands', that invited six collaborators nationwide to activate seven minutes at sunset.
Click the buttons below to view the other six sunsets.
Follow Oolitearts on IG
View more of Sasha's work
Patricia Watts
Tide and Time -- Solastalgia and Sea Level Rise on North Carolina's Outer Banks
Tide and Time (2017 - Present) is a long term photography and reporting project that documents a tiny historic cemetery within the near the tiny village of Salvo on North Carolina’s Outer Banks that, due to human-caused erosion, increasingly violent hurricanes and sea level rise caused by climate change, is slowly washing into the Pamlico Sound. It tells the story of locals trying to preserve the cemetery, the eroding marsh ecosystem around it, and locals with deep connections to this sliver of land. The work explores ancestral connection to home and the psychological impacts of environmental change, including tourism and sea level rise, on one’s home.
Justin's presentation will explore this project.
Justin Cook
Saturday, April 10
Limiting Warming to 2°C: The En-ROADS Climate Workshop
The En-ROADS Climate Workshop is a group experience which allows participants to visualize the impact of different climate solutions in real-time, using the En-ROADS Climate Solutions Simulator – a user-friendly climate model developed by Climate Interactive and MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative. Join us as we learn about cross-sector climate solutions, explore fascinating model dynamics, and strive to limit future warming below 2 degrees Celsius.
Caroline Reed
Bonus Documentary
One of our guest speakers, Paisley Smith, was unable to join us this week. In lieu of a presentation she has shared this documentary.
Beyond Unceded Territories dives deeply into the perspective of artist and activist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun. Yuxweluptun, one of Canada's most outspoken and influential contemporary artists. He is of Cowichan and Okanagan First Nations decent. His work is highly political and confront issues of colonization, climate change, and oppression head-on. He recently collaborated on a virtual reality film, Unceded Territories, with director Paisley Smith, making issues of climate change tangible for audiences when they unknowingly embody the suited, evil 'Super Predator,' often depicted in his work. In Beyond Unceded Territories, Yuxweluptun shares his feelings honestly against a backdrop of climate and pipeline protests. Yuxweluptun uses his art as a tool to effect change – and change is coming.