Come see my new work "Local Homes" and more at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Saturday & Sunday, April 21 & 22, 2018
10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Special events on Friday, April 20
With three days of science activities, the Unearth Science festival celebrates science and nature in ways that will encourage you to see, touch, hear, and explore.

https://www.chicagobotanic.org/sciencefestival

https://www.chicagobotanic.org/education/professional_programs/JMP_symposium

Meet Your Creek connects public art, place-based learning and ecological literacy. Over the course of 2018, beginning with a kick-off in November 2017, a series of participatory community events is unfolding around Longfellow Creek. Art events will occur in tandem with community events sponsored by Seattle Public Utilities to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Watershed Action Plan.

We are creating unique, hand-made Postcards from the Creek. Participants make their own postcard based on their own observations and understanding of Longfellow Creek. They are then invited to either mail the postcard to a friend or loved one, or to donate it to the postcard archive, which may be exhibited at a local venue. When we think of sending a postcard, we often imagine a scene of spectacular natural beauty, inspiring awe in national parks or famous sites.  By creating postcards from our own backyards, we find an opportunity to observe more closely the processes happening all around us. Mailing the postcard and sharing the images online offers a chance to share knowledge about our own local place and its inhabitants.

Funding for this project is provided by Seattle Public Utilities 1% for Art Funds, administered by the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture.

Last month I was in Italy creating a site-based work through the Eremi Arte program. It was a wonderful experience to be able to create work in response to and collaboration with such an amazing place.
I wrote this little bit about the process of working:
To fly in a plane, to go to a place with language you don’t speak, to be surrounded by strangers, to first arrive in a place after dark and wind up the curving road not knowing where, in a new time- this is dis-orienting. To re-orient takes time. To know a place may take months, years, a lifetime. So what is it for an artist to come to some place they don’t know- really deeply don’t know, and respond? This is a difficult question. I am most interested in artists whose process in some way responds to a specific situation/time/place. But why some artist, why here- why me? And what danger is there in this approach? How can we fail- the expectations of the hosts, my own expectations, the community, the place? With this feeling of uncertainty comes discomfort and fear. Look at the beautiful landscape! Look at the deep history, culture and spirit of this place! Now what will you do?
 
Actually this uncertainty and discomfort is probably very good, and very important. So I think an experience like this is good for an artist: mind-refreshing, fear-inducing, challenging. If a work comes together in a short time, and feels successful, it is also satisfying for an artist and community working together. However, we must also be prepared for a work to “fail” and for this process of failure to still have some value to those involved in it. For me it is also important that the discussion and presentation of the artwork highlight that it is contingent: arising from relationships between people, institutions, location, timeframe and context. The artwork is not the idea or vision of an individual expressed in the place, rather it is a confluence of forces temporarily arising in the place.
 
I would like to thank the organizers of the Eremi Arte program for creating a situation in which this confluence of forces can occur. I am thankful that enthusiastic students were willing to engage in an uncertain process. I am also very grateful that, because of the happy confluence of people, place and ideas, we have created a work which I believe has some depth, presence and sensitivity.
 
Grazie.

My on-going work Village Green continues to evolve and adapt to new locations. In each installation, we create "personal biospheres" that are unique, immersive environments of living plants, soil and micro-organisms specific to the locale. The visual form of the house changes meaning as it is placed in reference to different contexts, and each venue undertakes adoption and maintenance of the "biospheres." Versions of this work have been in Brussels and Buenos Aires this spring:

The exhibition "Notes on our Equilibrium: A Dialogue with the House of Jean Prouve II" at CAB Contemporary Art, Brussels has just ended, and they collected a bit of press:
Printed Press
Holistiquement votre, Marie-Claire, May 2017, page 62
Notes on our equilibrium, a Dialogue with the House of Jean Prouvé II, Le Vif, n°18, 5 may 2017, page 43
Notes on our equilibrium, Elle Deco, may 2017, page 44
A Dialogue with the House of Jean Prouvé II, Collect, n°472, may 2017, page 10 (FR/NL)
Is dat nu kunst? Het Niewsblad, may 2017, page 21
Bienvenue dans l’Anthropocène, La Libre Belgique, Suplément Art Libres n°21, week from 21 till 24 may
2017, page 2-3
Des Histoires pour Gaia, H Art, n°171, June 2017, page 10
Web Press
CAB Art center presents “Notes on our equilibrium”, artdaily.org, 23 june 2017,
http://artdaily.com/news/95394/CAB-Art-Center-presents-a-dialogue-with-the-house-of-Jean-Prouv--II-#.
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“Notes on our equilibrium”, Happening.media, 22 april 2017,
http://www.happening.media/category/magazine/en/articles/2788/brussels-the-exhibitions-to-see-in-thecoming-
months
“Notes on our equilibrium”, Art Viewer, 17 june 2017,
http://www.happening.media/category/magazine/en/articles/2788/brussels-the-exhibitions-to-see-in-thecoming-
months

​Meanwhile, in another hemisphere, "Naturaleza: refugio y recurss del hombre" is open at  CCK in Buenos Aires.
http://www.cck.gob.ar/eventos/naturaleza-refugio-y-recurso-del-hombre_1714

Meditations on Water at Jack Straw Cultural Center
Meditations on Water is composed of works by artists, inspired by the waters surrounding Seattle, as they partnered with City Meditation Crew to slow down and notice their environs one moment at a time. City Meditation Crew is a fictitious city department and performance art group who works throughout the United States. Meditations on Water includes an archive of photographs, sound works, and objects. We see and hear: City Meditation Crew paddling meditatively along the Duwamish River; Janet Norman Knox’s poetry about the disappearing viaduct; Susie Kozawa playing Pier 56 as an instrument; and a narrative by Linda Shaw embodying an attentive ferry passage on Puget Sound. Meditations on Water features handmade “river rocks” by Vaughn Bell and the passersby she engaged along rivers in
Washington. Bell will host a series of rock-making events at Jack Straw through the installation's run.
Opening with "Rock-Making" Event : April 14, 7-9 pm
Artist Panel: April 28, 7 pm

IRVINE, CA: The Great Park Gallery presents Balance, an exhibition that studies the evolving relationship between nature and humanity through installation art and sculptural work. The exhibition opens Dec. 3 and runs through Feb. 19. A free opening reception is set for Sunday, Dec. 4 from 1-3 p.m.
 
The exhibition features artists from the United States who examine time and patience including Vaughn Bell, Marissa Gawel, Isabelle Hayeur, Esther Traugot, Jedediah Corwyn Voltz and Andre Woodward, with highlights from Storm King Art Center in New Windsor, N.Y. With a sense of wonder, this group exhibition negotiates with environments while investigating their intricate details and exploring their nostalgic landscapes.
 
The public is invited to the Great Park Gallery at the Palm Court Arts Complex on Thursdays and Fridays from noon to 4 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. through April 10 to explore this free exhibition. For more information, visit ocgp.org or call 949-724-6880.
 
Since its incorporation in 1971, Irvine has become a nationally recognized city, with a population of 258,386 that spans 66 square miles and is recognized as one of America’s safest and most successful master-planned urban communities. Top-rated educational institutions, an enterprising business atmosphere, sound environmental stewardship, and respect for diversity all contribute to Irvine’s enviable quality of life. This family-friendly city features more than 16,000 acres of parks, sports fields and dedicated open space and is the home of the Orange County Great Park – the first great metropolitan park of the 21st century. For more information, please visit cityofirvine.org

In the fall several species of salmon move upstream in Seattle’s river and creeks to spawn.  In the urban environment, this is often unsuccessful. Walking an altered urban creek you can see why - it has been channelized in many places, making steep sides and few eddies and pools for the fish to rest in. The gravel that salmon require to make their nest (redd) and lay eggs in is missing in many places from these altered streams.  But the invisible threat to these salmon is what is in the water. Coho salmon especially are susceptible to toxins and sediment in the water that wash off of roads or from yards. They encounter this toxic water, especially after a storm, and die before spawning.

Thornton Creek
The mouth of Thornton Creek empties into Lake Washington. This urban creek has a few branches and headwaters beneath a shopping mall at Northgate. It flows between houses, parks, roads and schools to reach the Lake. The salmon that make it up Thornton Creek have already gone through the Ship Canal, through the Chittenden Locks, and up into the Lake.
 
We walk Thornton Creek in waders and boots, starting in the lake and moving upstream. We walk against the flow, and sometimes we are waist deep, other times in shallow water. Under roads and in backyards, walking in the creek provides a new view of the city.  We pass some wooded areas, lawns and back yards and fences and bridges. Only when we reach Meadowbrook Pond and Thornton Confluence does the channel spread out again, becoming a place of pools and riffles.
 
On a day in late October we find three salmon: a mostly eaten carcass near the mouth of the creek, one unspawned, dead, and one living fish hiding in a resting spot where the creek flows around an island in suburban back yards.

Piper’s Creek
Piper’s Creek flows mostly through Carkeek Park and empties into Puget Sound. The environment of Piper’s Creek is urban- residential neighborhoods and business districts fill the watershed- but immediately surrounding the Creek are woods and park areas.
 
On a day in late November we walk Piper’s Creek, and count over 130 salmon, 50 or so of them living.  They are mostly Chum salmon.  In pools behind downed logs and rocks, groups of salmon are gathered.  The carcasses of already spawned salmon, most partially eaten by raccoons or other predators, can be found in the water and on the banks. Some salmon, already spawned and nearly dead, rest in shallows, their gills still slowly moving. The fish we see often appear battered and worn out. The females have rubbed the scales from their tails while using them to dig nests in the gravel.
 
Moving against the current, climbing over logs and brush, I think about what the view of the salmon might be underwater, what the experience might be. We enter a culvert, crouching in the dark and shuffling forward. The sound of water rippling amplifies, echoes. A sudden splashing and thrashing occurs as a salmon at the edge is disturbed by our movements and plunges off downstream. Each time this happens I am startled by the speed and power of the fish near my feet.

Earlier this year I reported on my Artist Residency with Seattle Public Utilities. I have spent the last 8+ months immersed in thinking about water, especially DIRTY water.

We turn on the tap, we flush the toilet, and we don’t think about where it goes. Likewise we watch the raindrops on the window or on the windshield, and while we are part of this flow it is often invisible to us.
 
The imaginative activity I have been undertaking while visiting storm water storage facilities, swales and SPU offices, talking to engineers and community members, has been to SEE this flow of water. This is an act of thinking at multiple scales, and its also an act of seeing what is invisible- water flowing underground.

In the process, I have been considering all the multi-species worlds that are wrapped up in this flow of water.  Micro-organisms are as essential to this story as salmon.  Hillsides of Himalayan blackberries, roadside swales planted with Equisetum. While humans are currently orchestrating this flow, we are by no means the only ones with a stake in it.

The direction of all this exploration is ultimately to think about public art- art in public- art of and for communities.  Its not possible to do this without considering deeply where we are, this place we inhabit, and how it has become what it is at this moment.  Coll Thrush’s book Native Seattle and Matthew Klingle’s Emerald City have been great leads into a deeper understanding of this place. Seattle Public Utilities’ work with environmental justice is leading us forward bit by bit. Likewise, the current work of artists around the world is a great inspiration. Artists are tackling the entangled worlds of humans and water, cities and many species, in deep and nuanced ways right now.
 
As I continue my work, I’ll be synthesizing research into an Art Master Plan, and rolling out various art projects of my own as well as supporting the work of other artists. Let it flow!

I’m currently in the midst of a residency in Seattle Public Utilities, Drainage and Wastewater Division. I’m learning about the work this division is doing, especially as it relates to the Integrated Plan.  The summary is that the City of Seattle is taking steps, mandated by the Clean Water Act and supported by the City’s own progressive vision, to improve water quality in our local water bodies. This means reducing Combined Sewer Overflow flows and taking other steps to improve the quality of water in our streams, lakes, and Puget Sound.
 
The practical outcome of this is a plan with multiple strategies for improving water quality.  There are solutions that take several forms- building storage facilities to capture wastewater that would otherwise flow directly into streams and lakes in a storm event, building a treatment plant to clean more water, retrofitting existing facilities to make them more efficient, and building green storm water infrastructure to slow the flow of storm water and let it infiltrate on site.
 
The engineering mindset identifies problems and then proposes solutions. SPU embraces innovative solutions such as Green Storm water Infrastructure- a more elegant answer to the engineering problem of CSO’s dumping dirty storm water and sewage into our water bodies when the system is overwhelmed. There is an aesthetic element at work here as well, and additional values that are gained in livability and other less measurable outcomes. 
 
I’m still in the investigative stages of my research here. The ultimate outcome of the residency will be an art master plan to guide 1% for Art public art investments for the next 15 years, as well as art projects that I will develop while in residency.  While initially I’m just wrapping my head around the scope of engineering projects and the range of sites and physical forms involved in this storm water work, I’m also reflecting on some larger questions that this type of art integration work brings up.
 
 A larger question that this residency brings into focus is a perennial one- the role of art: the how, what and why of it.  What does art bring to this situation that engineering solutions cannot?
 
To my thinking, embellishment and decorative functions of art are valuable, but are not enough here.  Perhaps education, in its most didactic sense, and interpretation are also not enough. (Do we need more signage to tell us how the water flows?- maybe so). We come then to other ways in which contemporary artists are working: proposing solutions, convening communities, igniting conversations. We come also to the less intellectual, less problem/solution-oriented aspects of art practice: its potential for somatic, sensory and emotional engagement.
 
This is not to say that art cannot function to solve a problem. I teach a course on Eco-Art at UW-Tacoma, and we look at a lot of artists whose work does this. There are examples of artists leading engineers (see Mel Chin’s Revival Field). However, these days I am often wondering to myself how to articulate the complexity of this “problem-solving” exercise. My students, who are primarily environmental science, business, nursing, or various other majors, are excited about art’s potential to make a difference. But too often the class identifies a problem and then seeks to solve it, or convey a specific “message” about it, in a way that is too simplistic. Ultimately I realize my questions are more related to this larger issue I encounter in both my teaching and public art work- a perceived or real schism between an engineering mind-set (solve problems) and an artistic mind-set (ask questions/make complex meaning/create experiences).
 
Which brings me back to the exciting work I get to do in Seattle Public Utilities. It is truly invigorating to speak across disciplines.  I am both challenged and energized by the chance to synthesize multiple viewpoints and channel dynamic proposals for art in the public realm. I want to make the most of this opportunity to promote a broad range of artistic approaches and collaborations - from social practice oriented work to site integrated, permanent public artwork.  The plan must also be sustainable and implementable over 15-20 years.  I’ll be doing more research and getting out to talk to more people in the community as the residency continues. Stay tuned!