10th ANNUAL
ART OF NATURE EXHIBITION
ART OF NATURE 2024: COMMUNITY
April 20 – June 9, 2024
Blue Heron Nature Preserve is pleased to inspire nature lovers with Art of Nature 2024. Curated by this year’s Artist-in-Residence Dorothy O’Connor, this will be the 10th Annual outdoor exhibition along the Blueway Trail.
Community is the theme for this year’s annual outdoor public art exhibition. Community as a concept is an umbrella description for an essential ingredient in protecting wild places like Blue Heron Nature Preserve. It takes Community to save the land, and in turn Community is created by the celebration and protection of it. And there is Community in Art, in the practice, appreciation and the witness.
Previous Art of Nature artists were invited to submit new project proposals for this special 10th Annual exhibit.
In addition, we are partnering with the Georgia State University School of the Arts, with faculty members Pam Longobardi and Jeremy Bolen curating nature-inspired artwork will be on display from graduate students in the indoor gallery exhibition.
Join us for the Exhibition Opening on Saturday, April 20th from 1-3:30pm. It is free to attend, will include performances and artist talks, and is a wonderful opportunity to engage with the art and creators.
#1
Becca Rodriguez
Metamorph
Metamorph is a tabletop (or forest floor) life cycle role playing game, made to complete the journey from egg to fully metamorphosed frog. Players will encounter prompts via the simple system of rolling dice and landing on tile symbols to move forward (metamorphose), go back (mutate), or begin again (end life or lay egg). As players metamorphose and aim to return to their Ephemeral Wetland or Vernal Pool, they will encounter themes of biospheric devastation and ecosystem decline relayed through tiles with roadway and arms symbols, nodding to anthropocentric interference and imperial racialized capitalism. Installed on the Blue Heron Nature Preserve near the Amphibian Foundation’s mesocosms (outdoor experimental breeding ecosystems), this game is planted here to encourage thoughtful participation in our evolutionary future while recognizing human impact that often goes unseen.
#2
Julia Hill
@sculpturethings
sculpturethings.com
Sights
Sights is a teleidoscope made from salvaged materials collected from Atlanta’s forests and fringes. The interactive scope invites visitors to engage with a sense of wonder and curiosity, playfully seeking fresh and interesting perspectives, and expanding their relationship to the world.
#3
Nneka Kai
Once During the Sun
Nneka’s work explores the question of the free Black feminine form. Through various interdisciplinary approaches such as fiber, sculpture, and performance, she investigates how an embodied experience can obstruct, question, resist, and reimagine fixed structures.
This installation is inspired by how artwork can be a seed for understanding and shifting perceptions of our natural environment. By incorporating found material from the Blue Heron Nature Preserve, the artist seeks to construct a work that comes from the land while simultaneously transforming how we engage within the space.
#4
Bautanzt Here
Shielding Echoes
Shielding Echoes is a site-specific dance theatre performance exploring themes of protection, resonance, and the interconnected nature of the community in safeguarding mental data. A live musician will be present at the public opening on April 20th, adding an additional layer to the story.
Bautanzt Here projects are led by Executive Artistic Director Nadya Zeitlin. In her works, Nadya weaves dance and theatre into the environment, creating a unique language to tell meaningful and visually engaging stories in unconventional spaces. She gets inspiration from abstract visual art, industrial architecture, fashion, artists she collaborates with and spaces they produce in. Her goal is to create valuable art experiences for audiences, putting their routine on pause, suggesting them a gift of wonder and a food for thought.
Nadya’s practice is driven by her interest in expanding the definitions of where dance can happen, how public spaces can be perceived and interacted with, and who is considered a target demographic for dance. She aims to share the beauty and power of dance with a wide audience, including those who wouldn’t usually attend dance or art events.
Collaborators: Nadya Zeitlin (Choreographic Direction); Hiroko Kelly, Kendall Alexander, Raina Mitchell, Katie Watkins (Performers and Co-Creators); Dan Carey Bailey (Musician)
#5
Laura Bell
@laurabellstudio
laurabellstudio.com
Catch and Release
Catch and Release is a site-specific installation that considers our relationship to the natural world and to each other. The act of looking closely and contemplating nature can bring a sense of connection to something greater than the individual self and can remind us of our inextricable bonds to the natural world and the ways that nature benefits us as individuals and as a community, especially in times of divisiveness and anxiety. Catch and Release celebrates the unique and distinct habitats of the Blue Heron Nature Preserve with the goal of uniting visitors in a sense of wonder and contemplation at the wide variety of plant and animal species found amid a busy urban center.
The work consists of fabric panels hung from the trees in the center of the preserve between Nancy Creek and the Woodland Loop Trail. The technique of cyanotype is used to create imagery on the fabric. As one of the earliest photo processes, it has its origins in the creation of maps and architectural blueprints, as well as being used for capturing impressions of biological specimens in the field for close examination. Thus, the history of cyanotype is rooted not only in the communication of information, but also directly tied to the acts of study and contemplation. The distinctive Prussian Blue that is characteristic of the cyanotype, will lead visitors along the pathways of the preserve.
The imagery on the fabric panels in Catch and Release references the plant and animal species found in the distinct habitats of the Blue Heron Nature Preserve. The project is intended to encourage viewers to engage with the preserve through physical movement as well as through consideration and appreciation of the variety of plants and animals that are found in this unique environment. The importance of spaces like the Blue Heron Nature Preserve to the residents of an urban area is profound. They not only add to the beauty, life, and health of a city, but can also remind us of our shared humanity by uniting us in working to keep such places, and the flora and fauna that inhabit them, protected and thriving.
#6
Hellenne Vermillion
@hellenne.vermillion
Hellenne-Vermillion.com
A Drop in the Community Pond
Like a pebble dropped into a pond, each thought you have, each word you utter, each action you take radiates as unseen energy out into your community. Add a positive thought, speak a kind word, and practice generosity and compassion to add to the world’s energy. Be aware, because you matter.
Made of various colors of clay, a center clay head represents an individual whose thoughts, words and actions create a ripple felt throughout our community. Other faces are placed in concentric circles to create a ripple effect going out. A few faces are made of unfired clay to represent those people who were affected but have moved out of the community.
Hellenne Vermillion is both a clay and fiber artist who has presented several outdoor installation projects for the Blue Heron Nature Preserve. Her works in both clay and fiber (mainly hand dye painted silk) has been in many shows ranging from “Spirit Masks” to pre-historic Japanese Jomon inspired pottery. Hellenne also teaches clay hand building at the Chastain Arts Center and silk dye painting and other fiber related workshops at the Southeast Fiber Arts Alliance center and more.
#7
Diana Toma
@artbydianatoma
artbydianatoma.com
Interconnected
“With my mural project, I aim to beautify a 9 feet tall concrete cylinder cistern to give the trail it is located on, a friendlier feel. Transforming the rugged concrete surface into an old Venetian wall like type of surface, the mural is applied partially on the cistern, keeping part of the original surface, and building the imagery around stains, age spots and peeling paint like it’s always been there. The subject matter personalizes the forest’s soul, looking to showcase the interconnectedness of people, flora, and fauna, with a sense of humor and whimsy: a frog holds a wild daisy in its mouth and a slug attempt to reach a wild berry growing at the bottom of the ‘face of forest.'” – D. Toma
#8
Shana Robbins
@interspecieslover
shanarobbinsart.com
Sympoiesis
Sympoiesis was assembled with painted rocks from Nancy Creek, local flora, moss, fallen tree limbs, and other elements. This project situates the participant in a local co-creative habitat. As the elements— water, wind, trees, weather, soil—continue their cycles, art responds to and activates forms of kinship, collaboration, community, and care.
Through a range of mediums and techniques including performance art, earthworks, and paintings, Shana strives to spark moments of awe, reflection, and inspiration, nurturing an enfleshed sense of kinship and co-creativity with the more-than-human world. Her art serves as a catalyst for fostering communion and healing with the Earth and the diverse beings that inhabit it. Her ultimate aspiration is to contribute to the journey towards a more regenerative and mutually enriching existence on this planet.
#9
Alison Hamil
@AlisonHamilArt
alisonhamil.com
Ant Trail Crosswalks
Alison’s installation for this year’s Art of Nature features ants as an example of community in nature. Because ants are social insects that live in complex, organized societies, they show us how our power is greater when we work together, and how each individual has a job to do and is an important part of the whole.
One way that we can see ants working together as a community is through ant trails. Ants communicate with each other by releasing trails of chemical pheromones leading the other ants to sources of food. This is why we often see many of them walking together in a straight line.
To symbolize ants working together in this way, her installation consists of painted ant trail crosswalks in various locations throughout the preserve. The ants are painted in a line going across the pavement, connecting two ends of the walking paths together where they cross the road, adding a fun, meaningful, and useful element to enhance the Blue Heron trail experience.
#10
Sylvia Cross, Randy Taylor, Wes Cribb, and Nicole Haysler
@sycamoreplacegallery
decaturartclasses.com
Waterfall Communities
“Waterfall Communities is a waterfall installation collaboratively comprised of Randy Taylor, Wes Cribb, Nicole Haysler, and Sylvia Cross. It is inspired by the Art on the Hudson waterfalls of Olafur Eliason and Frank Gehry’s Falling Water. We created a waterfall on the Rickenbacker Side Bridge using solar power and a water submersible battery to power the pump and lights projected onto the falls.
We sketched the flora and fauna of the preserves communities to be projected as well.” – S. Cross
Indoor
Gallery
Heather Bird Harris,
Leslie Drennan and
Cheyenne Hendrickson
Canary in the Water
Canary in the Water is in partnership with Georgia State University’s Graduate Arts department, and was curated by Pam Longobardi and Jeremy Bolen. Featured artists are:
Heather Bird Harris
@heatherbirdharris
heatherbirdharris.com
Leslie Drennan
@_drennanb
lesliedrennan.com
Cheyenne Hendrickson
@cheye_nnehendrickson
cheyennehendrickson.com
