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.
We are seeking proposals from past Art of Nature exhibition artists that reflect on the concept and meaning of Community.
ART OF NATURE 2023: NESTING
Curated by our 2023 Artist-in-Residence Caleb Jamel Brown, we challenged artists to use elements of nature to expand metaphorically on the Great Blue Heron’s habitat and sensibilities. This unique collaboration displayed artworks that reflect on personal formative memories related to nature, the land, and home.
Thanks to YKK, Kaiser Permanente, Georgia Power, and Aprio for supporting our efforts to grow interest and support for this distinctive form of art.
For more details of Nesting: Art of Nature 2023, we encourage you to read The Saporta Report feature.
Bautanzt Here
"Hollow Bones: Signals" explores awakening to a strange world where performers are the aliens, encountering pivotal moments where they have to choose to embrace change and let go of the familiar parts of themselves and their prior life.
Choreographic direction: Nadya Zeitlin.
Performers & collaborators: Cailan Orn, Sammy Spriggs.
Name of Artwork: "Hollow Bones: Signals."
Soundscape by Darya Spivakova.
Orb by Dima Alexeev.
Eve Brown
Blue Heron Nature PreserveJames Delevett
The invention of the light posts allowed for society to continue even when the sun went down. That is why the main object of exploration is a lamp post. The intersection that is humanity’s involvement during Earth’s history being illuminated in the beauty that is clay. Fired clay will always be around longer than the course of human life. How and in what ways will clay be reclaimed by nature? This body of work is an attempt to give a glimpse into what the future of ceramic work may look like when nature reclaims what it wants to.
Julia Hill
The Rubble Series is an ongoing collection of abstracted representations of wildlife assembled from concrete rubble, salvaged steel, hypertufa, and other found objects collected from Atlanta‘s roadsides, rivers, creeks, and streams..... The Rubble Creatures feature abstracted, open forms with lots of negative space. They are sketches of full creatures, ephemeral beings that play with the viewer’s perception in a similar way to the natural camouflage of living creatures. (You may not notice them at first tucked into a grotto or shady alcove, but once you see them they are obvious). They are minimal sculptural forms and encourage some imagination to be used to see beyond the rubble.
Nneka Kai
Blue Heron Nature PreserveLarissa Brooke McPherson
My piece is a large chain-mail piece made of aluminum jump rings, patinaed copper scales, and found organic objects including but not limited to pine-cone pieces and moss. The piece is designed to form around a tree and act as a form of armor. This piece builds off of the idea of protecting organic objects and spaces and aims to start a conversation about how we can protect and preserve trees/organic spaces. This will also play on the irony of "why would a tree need armor."
Dorothy O’Connor
Suspended from a discarded root ball (I am often inspired by other’s yard trash), I propose to create a bird tornado made of wood veneer birds. .....
The root ball and the birds bring air and earth together. The tornado - often symbolic of a cycle of chaos and destruction takes on a new meaning and purpose in the Preserve. It is no longer in control but sways with the breeze and succumbs to the atmosphere and the creatures that encounter it. It nurtures instead of destroys.
Shana Robbins
I see myself as an eco-ally, supporting and highlighting different voicings and presences within the tapestry of sentience of this place. I am proposing a painted and hand-sewn bamboo silk banner that incorporates organic materials, such as water, soil, and handmade pigments from fallen plant life in Blue Heron.