Top-Page Section features a selection of both concept designs (hopefully for future projects) and completed projects, all with environmental themes. (scroll-down now)
Bottom-Page Section reveals projects in the various media I’ve worked in: printmaking, crafts, photography, wearable art, drawing, mixed-media art, kinetic art, interactive art, environmental projects, biophilia art, and the design and co-production of art-sci exhibition projects (mostly for ASCI (Art & Science Collaborations, Inc.) and held at the New York Hall of Science). This experience influences the style and functionality of my public engagement strategies today.
Click on *red titles* below for associated images and project details.
Agri-Culture: SOIL BigHats
I’m working on a new series of Climate Change BigHats to be conversation-starters and worn in public engagement PopUp events. This first hat is about eco-regenerative farming and that Dirt Is Not Soil. Others will be about livestock, pollinators, water, waste, and food innovations.
Climate Change Activist Pop-Ups
Instead of the body-language and loud voices of street marchers, Climate Troubadours will be silent, wear uniforms and big/dramatic Climate Hats, and use flash-cards to create an “opening” for thoughtful conversations.
Climate Troubadour Jumper: Too Hot
Covid-19 prevented my Climate Jumpers from making-it onto Main Streets or into city parks, so I re-envisioned this one as a graphic image for an outdoor activities ad campaign. Being outside was made even more important to our health during the Covid-19 epidemic!
Climate Change ThinkingCap: Composite
This was my first Climate Hat (2019). Click the link to see all four sides; each represents a devastating climate change impact: melting polar ice caps/rising sea levels, California wildfires, Houston floods, and HABs (Harmful Algal Blooms) along Florida’s shorelines.
This Climate Change EmergencyCap was inspired by the sentiments of the brave young Swedish climate activist, Greta Thunberg, who speaks truth-to-power and activated a global climate youth movement of millions.
Concept sketch for an indoor, interactive, multi-media installation experience designed to help shift public perceptions of their relationship to nature, its power, and our dependency on it for our “life-support” systems.
The local, national, and international community is invited to submit images and poetic, one-liner texts about the wind for an intriguing digital display in which the wind also powers the artwork.
Concept sketch for a community crafts workshop to enlist fisher elders on Small Island Nations to share TEK (Traditional Ecological Knowledge) with participating local “makers,” and might end with a new performative ritual celebrating endangered ocean species.
Teens become armatures and “listening-boards” of portable, temporary, “living sculptures” for city parks. After attracting people, teens ask “visitors” how they feel about climate change — the best way to begin a conversation.
Repurposing My Past
My previous artworks and projects, including art-sci exhibitions designed/organized/and co-produced for and mostly held at the New York Hall of Science, fall into the distinct visual art categories below:
Clicking on each Category brings you a page with several projects.
For a while, my mother was an amateur landscape painter and now I find that my surroundings living in NYC, after years in Vermont and New Hampshire, have crept into my art. Experiencing nature on forested dog walks, riding my bicycle cautiously on city streets, or waiting for a subway train, all allow time for observation.
My college training in printmaking and photography enabled NYC’s energy and structures to be reflected in my wearable cityscapes.
After years of working in 2D, I could not contain my desire to add textures and patterns to low-relief works and then small 3D art.
NYC is a 24/7 kinetic world! Experiencing George Rhoads’ audio-kinetic sculpture, 42nd Street Ballroom, showed me the power of movement and change in art. This led to designing kinetic art exhibitions and creating a large-scale aquatic sculpture with a solar-powered light system.
I learned a lot from watching children at NYC’s hands-on museums, which led me to designing and leading “maker” workshops with teens and families. Both informed my later museum commissions utilizing public interactivity.
Having a heartfelt purpose and exposure to the work of exceptional artists via my work with ASCI, enabled my design intuition for producing environmental projects and exhibitions.
Sometimes when I watch a docu-film about atrocities to animals (since they cannot speak for themselves), I feel compelled to express myself artistically, rather than keep my sadness and outrage inside!