Fall 2021 Studio Update
Hello Everyone,
It has been a while since I have reached out with an update. As we continue to navigate through the pandemic, I am grateful for your continued friendship and support. Your emails, FB and Instagram messages, texts, video chats, and phone calls have kept me grounded, even when it seemed there was no solid ground to stand on. I spent a large portion of the pandemic teaching remotely while traveling by campervan and sailboat. By embracing the vagabond lifestyle, I have continued my expeditionary practice while maintaining social distancing during these challenging times. Below are some updates about where you can view my work - in person, online, in print, and through Zoom!
New Academic Position
I am excited to share that I have been invited to spend the 2021-22 academic year as a visiting professor at Rochester Institute of Technology. Returning to my hometown of Rochester, NY, a city rich in photographic history, has been invigorating and deeply enriching to my practice. I am eager to reconnect with colleagues and friends in the area while I spend this year as part of a robust photo community.
Publications
Works from my series Shifting Halo have been included in two recent publications. Evolving The Forest from art.earth Books (UK) is edited by Simon Lloyd (Royal Forestry Society), Richard Povall (art.earth) and Jeremy Ralph (Timber Strategies). This book includes a wide array of voices celebrating the past and future of our trees, woods, and forests. Contributions from artists, scientists, policy-makers, foresters, NGOs, historians, philosophers, and others, are curated into three sections: ecology and forest management, creative responses, and philosophy & polemic.
My work is also included in Embodied Forest, an exhibition and publication from ecoartspace juried by Lilian Fraiji, curator of LABVERDE based in Manaus, Brazil. Artworks in this project examine mycorrhizal networks, canopy shyness, forest immersion, the rights of nature, trees as witnesses of history, colonial and capitalist extraction, trees as bioindicators and medicines, conservation, restoration, Indigenous knowledge, and cultural burns.
My cross-species collaborations with fireflies will be featured in Becoming-Feral, a modern bestiary due out this fall. This volume investigates the complex relationships between human and other animals in landscapes constantly being altered by global transformations of climate and capitalism. Becoming-Feral was compiled by Objet-a Creative Studio in association with The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Recent and Upcoming Exhibitions
Over the summer, my collaboration with South African artist Hanien Conradie, Dart, was featured on a billboard in NYC as part of the exhibition I Am Water. This public art exhibition was organized by Our Humanity Matters and ecoartspace in collaboration with SaveArtSpace. The show consisted of ten billboards sited in the boroughs of New York City to address our relationship with water. Dart was also exhibited in full video format as part of the Our Planet: Ourselves exhibition at ARC Gallery, Chicago, IL in June.
Works from my series’ Growing Light and Shifting Halo will be part of Extraction: Art on the Edge of the Abyss, a massive exhibition being produced independently within 46 art spaces nationwide from 2019 through 2022 with the purpose of focusing awareness and action on the wanton overuse of Earth’s resources. You can view my images in these two shows in California:
Art on the Edge: from Extraction to Restoration and Regeneration Part 1
Gallery Route One
Point Reyes Station, California
Art on the Edge: from Extraction to Restoration and Regeneration Part 2
Peninsula Museum of Art
San Bruno, California
Upcoming Panel Discussion
The Women’s Environmental Photography Collective, which I am a founding member of, has been invited to present at the Women’s Caucus for Art Conference Occupy the Moment: Embracing Our History, Enhancing Our Impact (which runs concurrent with CAA) in Chicago, IL February 17–20, 2022.
The Women’s Environmental Photography Collective, which includes Marion Belanger, Dana Fritz, Terri Warpinski, Judy Natal, Martina Shenal, and myself, has presented at numerous conferences and symposia since our formation in March 2020. To learn more about our work and goals, please check out this video of our recent panel discussion for the Penn State Studio for Sustainability and Social Action Symposium.
Wishing you all good health, joy, and a curious spirit,
Margaret
