Patterson Clark Named BES Artist-In-Residence for 2013

I am extremely excited to announce that Patterson Clark is the BES 2013 Artist-In-Residence.  Here is a description of his work, based on text provided by the selection committee, consisting of artists Lynn Cazabon (BES 2012 Artist-In-Residence) and Jann Rosen-Querault, along with Mark Twery of the USDA Forest Service.

For the past 10 years, Patterson Clark's artwork has been dedicated to developing a complete sustainable system for creating art utilizing non-native plants he harvests from the environment in which he works. This project, which he calls "Alienweeds," began from his desire to restore a measure of balance between the native and non-native plants growing nearby his home in Whitehaven Park in Washington, D.C.

Clark uses aspects of these plants to create papers, inks, brushes, pens, printing blocks, and cordage, finally resulting in playful prints which document the amount of labor and materials used in his meticulous processes. Clark is also a visual journalist: in 2009 he created the column "Urban Jungle" for the Washington Post. Each week, Clark highlights a particular aspect of the urban ecosystem in text and illustrations, incorporating the research of scientists he interviews and cites. 

The selection committee suggested that by spending time with BES scientists as an Artist-in-Residence, Clark can be a potential conduit for wider exposure of BES research. In addition, we hope his involvement in BES will stimulate the social and natural scientists, and the educators in the project to explore new avenues and stimuli of creativity.

His work, featured in national media outlets, is explored and sampled in the web links below:

http://alienweeds.com/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/metro/urban-jungle/?media=recent

http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/capitalcomment/washingtonian/spotlight-patterson-clark.php

http://www.npr.org/2011/02/28/134054004/the-art-of-war-on-invasive-species

Clark will participate in the April 11 BES Quarterly Project Meeting, focusing on past, current, and future interactions of science and art in BES, to be held at the USGS building.  Follow this link http://bes-news.blogspot.com/2013/04/bes-quarterly-project-meeting-11-april.html for more information, including the agenda of the meeting.  He will also attend a reception at the University of Maryland Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture (CADVC) from 5:30 to 7:30 that day.  Refreshments will be served, and the event is designed to stimulate communication between researchers and artists.  The BES community is heartily welcomed to this event.

Also in attendance will be Lynn Cazabon, BES's first Artist-In-Residence, whose work has been highlighted elsewhere in this web log: http://besdirector.blogspot.com/2012/08/lynn-cazabon-bess-first-artist-in.html  Lynn was featured in an exhibit of art linked to LTER sites that has been mounted at the headquarters of the National Science Foundation (http://www.ecologicalreflections.com/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2013/02/LTER-art-brochure-2013-2.pdf).

Please come to these events and help us explore the richness of connections between art and science in the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, Long-Term Ecological Research project.

Lynn Cazabon: BES's First Artist-In-Residence

Photographer and member of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County faculty, Lynn Cazabon is the first official Artist-In-Residence at the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, Long-Term Ecological Research program.  She began her contribution to the BES community by presenting a lecture on her ongoing project "Uncultivated" at the 2011 Annual Meeting. This year of artistic residency will culminate with an exhibit of her work during the BES Annual Meeting from 24-25 October, 2012.  This meeting will take place at Cylburn Arboretum, and all members, partners, and collaborators of BES are invited to attend. 

"Uncultivated"

Of particular relevance to BES, "Uncultivated" takes as its subject wild plants that thrive in urban environments and has been disseminated via public displays on billboards and transit shelters. The full project can be viewed at http://uncultivated.info.  Her thought provoking and creative images of Baltimore’s volunteer flora stimulated the awareness of the public about the often unappreciated plants around them, and how they fit into the metropolis.  Lynn's work has been exhibited widely in the United States and abroad. Examples of her other projects can be viewed at her website: http://lynncazabon.com.

A Deepening Commitment to Art

BES first involved artists two years ago, when the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange performed at the annual meeting and the community open house, as well as presented a talk on their work.  The stimulation of creativity and interpretive power of art for scientific concepts and subjects has become clear to us as a result of that effort and interactions since them.  BES has been exploring how to facilitate and institutionalize connections between artists of all sorts and the scientific and educational work of the project.  A committee comprising scientists, educators, and artists has helped to shape a vision for continued interaction between our scholarship, community engagement, and the arts.  This committee, chaired by Dr. Mark Twery, has designed an Artist-In-Residence program.  We will be posting more information on how to apply for a one year residency in the near future.

Exhibit at BES Annual Meeting

Meanwhile, check out Uncultivated on line, and join us at the Annual Meeting to celebrate the connection between science and art as embodied in Lynn Cazabon’s powerful images.  Her work is a great example of how science can benefit from art.  We are delighted that Lynn will donate the use of one of her photographs to BES.

(See an earlier Director's Corner post http://besdirector.blogspot.com/2011/04/does-science-need-art.html for Background on BES and art.)

A Moving Field Guide

Seeing the World

Science starts with noticing the world – what plants and animals do, the changes in vegetation over time – or in wondering what’s going on beneath the surfaces we see.  Careful observation continues as we devise instruments or methods to extend our initial view, guided by models and concepts.  Experiments are another window for observing new conditions, perhaps ones that don’t usually exist in the real world.

Whatever makes people notice the world and its denizens more closely, or even at all, advances science and the appreciation of scientific knowledge.  I was fortunate to recently see how dance opened the eyes of about a dozen 5^th and 6^th graders from east Baltimore.  Members of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in cooperation with Dr. Mark Twery of the Forest Service and Dr. Marla McIntosh of the University of Maryland led the young people through several activities that sensitized them to their immediate environment, familiarized them with the compass directions, and provided opportunities to observe aquatic and terrestrial situations in Patterson Park.

Moving To Notice/Noticing To Move

Those of us who are trained in science are used to paying close attention to the world, guided by years of experience under the tutelage of mentors and collaboration with colleagues.  After a while it becomes a habit, and paying close attention can be almost automatic.  But how do you get a 5^th grader to notice the environment and organisms?

Members of The Dance Exchange company had a plan.  Get the kids to relax into movement.  Get them to do some simple orienteering, and ask them to observe something special and personal along the way, pay attention to each kid.  Some of the company members had backgrounds in environmental education, and along with the visiting experts, engaged in discussions that refined or generated new understanding about life, energy, and leaves of giant oak trees, seed dispersal in little leaf linden, tasty fruit of Juneberry trees, and migration of birds.  The students also thought about the connections, some plausible and some quite fanciful, that might have led to the demise of a giant mulberry tree.  

The dancers and the kids invented movements to represent the insights they learned along the way.  The swirling motion of dispersing winged seeds, the shivering collapse of a dead tree, the upward swoop of water rising in the trunks of  trees, an imagined encounter with a bushy tailed skunk that might depend on one of the trees, and the left handed, right handed, and ambidextrous shapes of mulberry leaves were some of the observations and ideas that made it into the dances.  It was a special treat to see the creative “ah ha moments” as the professional dancers translated ecological facts and observations into motions – sometimes small, and sometimes grand in scope.  These moves were combined into dances that also embodied personal reactions to the local environment, memories of trips, and events in the kids’ lives.

Dancing To Remember

Over the course of a couple hours in the park, a goodly amount of ecological knowledge was imparted or reinforced.  The two groups of students and their accompanying Dance Exchange members collaborated to generate some impressive and engaging sequences of moves.  These dance sequences became the “Moving Field Guide,” a lively phrase created by Cassie Meador of the Dance Exchange.  The Moving Field Guide added a new creative dimension to the usual records of scientists: making notes, recording measurements of dimensions and processes in the material world, and interpreting those observations in the light of existing concepts and knowledge.  Thinking about dance movement as a way to facilitate the entry of novice observers into the complexities of ecological structures and processes was new to me.  It proved to be a powerful tool, and I suspect one that will help cement new ecological knowledge for the students who helped make the Moving Field Guide, Patterson Park, June 2, 2011.

Does Science Need Art?

Here’s something to think about, from a recent article in the Business section of the Christian Science Monitor, one of the “newspapers of record” in the United States (www.csmonitor.com/business/2011/0323/What-do-Apple-GM-and-P-G-share-Design):

The need to hire 100,000 more teachers in science, technology, engineering, and math to make American students globally competitive is so urgent that President Obama has called it a ‘Sputnik moment.’  Yet a growing chorus of educators say something is missing from the plan.

‘It’s necessary but not sufficient’ to focus on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), says Larry Thompson, president of Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Fla.  ‘You don’t go anywhere with STEM if you don’t have STEAM – and that’s [adding “A” for] the arts, the creative part. 

The article goes on to illustrate how major business enterprises have used design to promote competitiveness and engage consumers.  What does this have to do with science?  The same mind-stretching and creative generation of new ideas and exploration of the connections among existing ideas that powers art is a crucial part of the scientific process.

Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in The Matter of Origins. Photo by Jacyln Borowski, courtesy Liz Lerman Dance Exchange

On one hand, people connect art with free association, leaps between different images, and metaphor, while neglecting the role of discipline and planning.  In contrast, the popular mind thinks of science as a sterile, rule-based pursuit, devoid of or even hostile to creative process.  But the generation of the hypotheses to be tested, the application of new techniques or approaches, and the way studies are planned and laid out are all stages on which creativity acts.  Both scientists and society have given too little credit to the role of creativity in science.  Scientists as well as artists and writers keep journals for ideas, sketch and doodle networks of ideas and interactions, and use analogy and metaphor to generate their raw materials.

Art in all its forms -- from sculpture, through writing, to dance -- uses skills, talents, and habits that stretch the imagination and open the mind to new ideas.  So then a connection of art and science can be a part of a healthy diet for the sciences.  STEAM power, as President Thompson said.

The Baltimore Ecosystem Study is exploring this connection.  During the 2009 Annual Meeting performances and interactions with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange inaugurated our exploration of the connection between arts and science.  For more on this nationally known and environmentally and scientifically engaged dance company, see http://danceexchange.org/  Did the experience of resilience through the eyes of artists help the socio-ecological researchers think more clearly or creatively about the concept?  That’s hard to document.  But the opportunity to ask ourselves such questions as these seems important: What does my research have to do with art?  What images and connections does art suggest that have parallels in science?  What does my work say that can be represented in some artistic way?  Or perhaps simply the opportunity to open the mind, and take a chance on a new way of seeing a problem or a solution is good enough.

More interactions are planned with the Dance Exchange, which is headquartered in Takoma Park, MD. With the participation of USDA Forest Service researchers, members of BES, and school and after-school programs, members of the Dance Exchange will lead participating children in the creation of ‘moving field guides,’ a live, performative collection that animates local ecology in the Potomac watershed through a combination of movement, visuals and the act of outdoor walking.  The project will be implemented in the spring and summer of 2011 through a series of sessions involving artists, scientists, and  approximately 50 students ages 8-12.  See more on this activity in the BES News.

We’ll also be experimenting with the connection between art and science in future BES Annual Meetings.  Illustrated “zines” by secondary school students and photography are on the agenda for the near future.  Music is a possibility too.  A little mind stretching is good for the creative aspects of science.  A little art is good for connecting with the larger world too.  These are two needs of science that art can help satisfy.