Earth Optimism Santa Fe connects globally and acts locally to feature the work of artists, students and scientists responding to environmental challenges and opportunities. We are a sister event of Earth Optimism, a global program coordinated by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC and connected to the UNM Art & Ecology's Decolonizing Nature Conference. Our aim is to celebrate the systems that keep our soil (and us) healthy.
Featuring electronics pioneer Leah Beuchley, LA-based bio artist Mick Lorusso in a collaboration with Joel Ong ,Marfa-based artist Elise Sibley Chandler, biologist Renee Bronwyn Johansen and bio art and design students Kaitlin Bryson and Sabrina Islam. The event will also mark the launch of a work by Navajo Nation-based photo muralist and member of the Justseeds collective Chip Thomas.
Presenter Bios and Projects:
Leah Buechley presents Burn Quilt: In all human cultures, rituals that employ fire provide a means to indulge rage and grief while constructing a path towards renewal. This project invites us to participate in a quiet personal ceremony that blends technology, fire, water, and earth. Buechley is a designer, engineer, and educator whose work explores intersections and juxtapositions–of “high” and “low” technologies, new and ancient materials, and masculine and feminine making traditions. Her inventions include the LilyPad Arduino toolkit. From 2009-2014, she was a professor at the MIT Media Lab where she founded and directed the High-Low Tech group. Her work has been exhibited internationally in venues including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Ars Electronica Festival, and the Exploratorium.
Mick Lorusso and Joel Ong, have created windows into the microbial world, where dirt samples from the regions incubate and breed curated microbiomes. Interactive elements perturb the dust samples, further revealing narratives and metaphors of environmental disruptions at a global scale, providing the context for a uniquely microbial perspective of the world. Mick Lorusso is a cross-disciplinary artist who interweaves musings on molecules, cells, societies, and environments. With early training in microbiology and education in art, he is a research fellow at the UCLA Art|Sci Center and an instructor for the Sci|Art Nanolab. Mick will present collaborative work with Joel Ong, Assistant Professor in Computational Arts at York University, Toronto., an alumni of SymbioticA and artist with the UCLA ArtSci Collective. Note: Each artist is 100 trillion bacterial cells and 37 trillion human cells with a variation of 53% over the population of standard 70kg males. They are composed of more than 10000 microbial species that form interspecies ecologies of microbiota.
GROUNDBREAKING DISCOVERY OF MUNDANE SUBTERRANEAN SEWER SYSTEM! While repairing the sewage drain in front of Biocultura, Elise Sibley Chandler uncovered a complex network of pipes penetrating the building. Subterranean infrastructure is exposed like arteries of a body prepared for surgery. As a hybrid conceptual transmedia artist/anthropologist, she is concerned with answering the question; how does our phenomenological experience of networks like pipes influence water and resource consumption and everyday behavior? Elise Sibley Chandler received baccalaureate degrees in both Studio Art and Anthropology with a certificate in Native American and Indigenous Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Her work has been featured in Austin and Marfa, Texas, Aspen, Colorado, and as a Water Rights Resident at the Santa Fe Art Institute in New Mexico.
Renee Bronwyn Johansen is an early career researcher specializing in mycology. She uses genetic techniques to investigate microbial ecology and biogeography and is experienced in all aspects of research project management including development, logistics and budget management. Her specific skills include field trip planning and execution (on both a local and international scale), fungal culturing, DNA sequencing (including next generation sequencing), phylogenetics, bioinformatics and public communication of science.
Mycorrhizal fungi are Earth’s nervous system, but they are not a Robbin Hood of the soil; rather, they act as mutually-beneficial symbionts. In desert ecosystems, where resources are limited above- and below ground, mycorrhizal fungi are critical in the continuation of life. Without their micro-highway, many desert plants (relied upon by other flora and fauna) would cease to exist. In effect, mycorrhizal fungi keep water and nutrients in the ground, and food in bellies. They support us all. Artist Kaitlin Bryson has researched this fungal community for many years since working as an organic farmer. As an artist, she draws comparisons to these hidden lives as a support system, to that of a tapestry or weaving. Mycorrhizal fungi have a woven history, permeating through our everyday lives. Her cacti weavings are one approach to expressing these phenomena.
What if the flora that we thrive alongside with takes the conductor's baton for symphonic composition? With a terrarium set-up comprising a basic forest floor landscape and digital technology for data transformation, Sabrina Islam aims to provide an instrumental "voice" to the players within the ecosystem of the terrarium in the composition of an organic, symphonic research project. called Composing Symphonies from a Closed-system Terrarium. Sabrina is currently an undergraduate student at the University of New Mexico in the pursuit of a Bachelor’s of Science in Biochemistry, with interests in public health, biomedicine, and art as a therapeutic bridge between worlds.
Mural by Chip Thomas, photographer, public artist, activist and physician who has been working between Monument Valley and The Grand Canyon on the Navajo nation since 1987. There, he coordinates the Painted Desert Project – a community building exchange which manifests as a constellation of murals across the Navajo Nation painted by artists from all over the rez + the world. These murals aim to reflect love and appreciation of the rich history shared by the Navajo people back to Navajo people. As a member of the Justseeds Artists Co-operative he appreciates the opportunity to be part of a community of like-minded, socially engaged artists. You can find his large scale photographs pasted on the roadside, on the sides of houses in the northern Arizona desert, on the graphics of the Peoples Climate March, climateprints.org, Justseeds and 350.org carbon emissions campaign material. Image by Chip Thomas
