Video: Art of Nature 2022; “Light as a Feather”
ART OF NATURE
NESTING
Blue Heron Nature Preserve is pleased to inspire nature lovers with Nesting: Blue Heron’s Art of Nature 2023. Curated by our 2023 Artist-in-Residence Caleb Jamel Brown, our ninth annual outdoor exhibition along the Blueway Trail 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.
"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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
The piece I am proposing is to be a gathering place for pollinators composed of both bio construction materials, corncrete and mushroom spore innoculated wood, as well as recycled metal. The intention is to create a sculpture that feels almost organic and at home in nature but also to provide a nesting area for birds as well as to attract bees.