AnthropoScene Schedule (2015)

Exhibition March 4 – 24
CAS Gallery. 1210 Stanford Drive. Coral Gables, FL

Panel Discussion March 4 9am-12pm
Ungar Building 230 C/D. 1365 Memorial Drive

Lunch/Gallery Tour March 4 12:30-1:30 pm
CAS Gallery. 1210 Stanford Drive. Coral Gables, FL

Workshops March 4 2-5 pm
CAS Gallery. 1210 Stanford Drive. Coral Gables, FL

Opening Reception March 4 5:30-7:30 pm
CAS Gallery. 1210 Stanford Drive. Coral Gables, FL

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
MARCH 4

PANEL DISCUSSION
UNGAR 230 C/D. 1365 MEMORIAL DRIVE. CORAL GABLES. FL
with artists
Daniel Dugas
Felice Grodin
Valerie LeBlanc
Lucinda Linderman
Deborah Mitchell
Skip Snow
Keith Waddington

8:30 am – 9:00 am Registration/Coffee Service
9:00 am – 9:15 am Welcome and plan for day: Gina Maranto and Keith Waddington
9:15-9:45 am Opening remarks: Skip Snow
9:45-10:00 Keith Waddington
10:00-10:30 Valerie LeBlanc and Daniel Dugas
10:30-10:45 Skip Snow
10:45-11:00 Break
11:00-11:30 Deborah Mitchell
11:30-12:00 Discussion with all artists moderated by Felice Grodin and Lucinda Linderman

WORKSHOPS AND EXHIBITION OPENING
CAS GALLERY. 1210 STANFORD DRIVE. CORAL GABLES. FL
with artists
Daniel Dugas
Felice Grodin
Valerie LeBlanc
Lucinda Linderman
Susan Silas
Skip Snow
Keith Waddington

12:30 pm – 1:30 pm Buffet Lunch and Tour
(Tour at 1 p.m.)
2:00 pm – 5:00 pm Concurrent workshop sessions
5:30 pm – 7:30 pm Opening reception: anthropoScene exhibition

anthropoScene is a semester-long exploration of this new era sponsored by the Leonard and Jayne Abess Center for Ecosystem Science & Policy and the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Miami with participation by Artists in Residence in the Everglades.

Miami Report – Valerie LeBlanc and Daniel Dugas (2014)

Report from a visit to Miami and the Everglades National Park – Valerie LeBlanc and Daniel Dugas, November 2014

Our visit to South Florida to screen video poetry at the Miami Book Fair International and a visit to the Everglades National Park was short.  Aside from the two days of air travel, we were there for just three days, really full days! To begin, on November 18, we screened several videos and took part in a panel discussion on the transformative effects that the July 2014 AIRIE (Artist In Residence In Everglades) residency had on our work.  While our FLOW: BIG WATERS everglades-based project is ongoing and will eventually include an installation with soundwalks and photographs, we were happy to screen a selection of the video works that we have completed to this date.

The panel discussion was co-moderated by Artist and AIRIE Executive President, Deborah Mitchell and Biologist Skip Snow.  The five AIRIE Artists who presented and took part in the discussion were: Gustavo Matamoros, Reed van Brunschot, Author Anne McCrary Sullivan, and ourselves. After brief introductions by Deborah Mitchell, Miami historian Dr. Paul George opened the conversation with details about the current and recent landmarks that stand and stood close to the Book Fair venue we were sitting within. Downtown Miami is undergoing many physical changes as new buildings replace older structures. Dr. George’s comments brought some of these changes to light. The evening took place at the SWAMP; the pop-up lounge utilized for showcasing social and cultural events during the Miami Book Fair International on the Miami Dade College, Wolfson Campus.

After the AIRIE presentation, Gustavo Matamoros and his partner, Miami-based Graphic Artist Claudia Ariano invited us to drive over to Little Havana’s El Cristo Restaurant to experience Cuban cuisine. The conversations continued in a range of topics that ran from contemporary art through a variety of cultural markers.

During two of our days, we walked around the Wolfson Campus and Miami’s downtown to become somewhat oriented with the city. We found our way over to the Miami Beach Mall for the opening of an umbrella of exhibitions at the ArtCenter of South Florida. The open studios and exhibitions for the 30 Years on the Road show spread out from 924 Lincoln Road, along the block to transform the experience from indoor venues to vitrines for sidewalk viewing. It is an ambitious undertaking that showcases retrospective and contemporary artworks embodying many genres.  Outside of 924 Lincoln, the Listening Gallery, in partnership with Subtropics.org is presenting the collaborative work: Walk-Run. On opposite sides of the entrance doors, Walk-Run features face to face moving images by Charles Recher. Combined with a soundscape by Rene Barge and Gustavo Matamoros, Walk-Run can be experienced differently depending on if you are up-close to it, on the sidewalk in front of the building, or at distance. Turning the corner to view other artworks presented in vitrines also permits variable exposure to the audio as the sound waves bend around the architecture of the cityscape. Owing to the nature of showing so many artists at one time, the opening reception moved along the block with conversations continuing inside in and outside of the studios. Walking this stretch of the Mall with Gustavo, we met and talked with many artists. We also took time to view examples of art deco along the Lincoln Road Mall.

On November 20, the final day of our visit, Deborah Mitchell invited us to drive out to the AIRIE lab to visit November’s resident artist Regina Jestrow.  Regina had generously organized an open studio reception in the lab where she laid out a sampling of the research she carried out during the month. It was a chance to talk informally with Regina, the other artists and scientists who dropped by, and several of the Park Staff that we had the pleasure of working with during July. We saw the beginning stages of Regina’s artworks utilizing imprinted rubbings and look forward to seeing the next stage of this new textile based work.

Back in Miami the same evening, we visited the Locust Project.  Showing in the Main Space is Daniel Arsham’s Welcome to the Future. In the project room,Salvadorian artist Simón Vega’s exhibition Sub-Tropical Social Sculptures is ongoing.We arrived in time for the Art on the Move presentation with Curator Dominic Molon in conversation with Vancouver-based artist Ron Terada. The subject of the discussion was Terada’s Soundtrack for an Exhibition.

Our on-the-ground introduction to the Miami art scene gave us the chance to scratch the surface of this diverse, multicultural city where Spanish is the predominantly spoken second language. Staying in downtown Miami gave us the chance to see the last days of the old Miami Herald Building as it underwent demolition. It will be interesting to go back and see what new masterpiece rises to replace it on Biscayne Bay. If one word could be used to describe the face and evolving culture of Miami, vibrant would fit!

This activity was supported by the New Brunswick Arts Board

And the MBFI / The Swamp

Miami Book Fair International (2014)

An Evening with AIRIE (Artists in Residence in Everglades)

Miami Bookfair International 2014

Tuesday, November 18th @ 7pm at The Swamp Pavillion

Look for the big tent at the southeast corner of N.E. 3rd Street and 2nd Avenue.

Science + Art:  Transformative Experiences in the Everglades

Despite its importance, abundance of wildlife, and great natural beauty, many people have never visited  the Everglades and only have a vague idea of it as a tangled swamp rife with pythons, mosquitoes and alligators.  AIRIE executive director and artist Deborah Mitchell and biologist Skip Snow will co-moderate a panel of five AIRIE artists on the transformative experience their residency in the Everglades has had on their work.  Audio composer Gustavo Matamoros, Visual artist Reed Van Brunschot, author Anne McCrary Sullivan, and multi-disciplinary Canadian artists Valerie LeBlanc and Daniel Dugas will share their recent experiences with the audience while a slide show of AIRIE art provides visual support for their moving narratives.

About the artists

LeBlanc and Dugas will debut their new project FLOW- BIG WATERS with a program of video poems. Based upon their research in the Everglades National Park, the project will continue through 2015 and will also include a series of sound walks and photographs. Researching and recording several aspects of this unique biosphere, this dynamic duo continues working on various aspects of this multi-facetted project. Using tools of writing, still and moving images and audio, the root of their desire is to share the aesthetic joy of being there in the moment. When completed, the project will be available online.

Matamoros will present Bats & Insects, a sound-scape audio composition on exhibit September 19-November 5th at the critically acclaimed Common Ground:  Artists in the Everglades at Florida Atlantic University. This Venezuelan composer is the driving force behind ISaw + Subtropics, the leading proponent of experiential music and sound art in the Southeast.

McCrary Sullivan has had poems widely published in literary and academic journals including The Gettysburg Review, the Southern Review, and Harvard Educational Review.  During and after her AIRIE residency, she accumulated thousands of hours paddling the waters of the Everglades National Park, which resulted in two books:   Ecology II: Throat Song from the Everglades and Paddling the Everglades Wilderness Waterway.

Van Brunschot is a visual artist who uses multiple mediums including sculpture, painting, performance and video.   Based on evoking memories of childhood, home life and a general commonality found in nostalgic experiences, her work examines transitions and places them in the public sphere.  Van Brunschot will discuss how her recent transformative residency experience has affected her studio practice.

About the Moderators

Biologist Skip Snow worked for the National Park Service for 38 years, the last 25 at Everglades National Park. He has evaluated the effects of water management on park wildlife, worked to reintroduce native species, and spent considerable time working on eradicating the Burmese python.  Since retiring in 2013, Skip has been pursuing a keen interest in the intersection of art and science, and continues to volunteer for the park as an emeritus wildlife biologist.

Artist and Executive Director of AIRIE, Deborah Mitchell, participated in the Artist-in-Residence program in Big Cypress in 2007.  Since then, environmental awareness and community outreach has been the focus of her multi-disciplinary work.  In addition to working with AIRIE fellows and organizing cultural programs, she curated The Preserve in 2012 and Flight: Aloft in the Everglades in 2014. Mitchell’s photographs can be seen in Swamplife, (Minnesota Press).

An evening with AIRIE in the Swamp Pavilion at the Bookfair will be an informative program which presents a nuanced look at the Everglades by letting AIRIE Fellows share their work and perspectives on the park with both local and international book lovers.

http://airie.org/2014/save-the-date-airie-at-the-book-fair-nov-18/

Everglades reverberations (2014)

The following writeup was originally published on the Knight Arts website on July 25th 2014

By Daniel Dugas and Valerie LeBlanc, AIRIE

We came from the north. As we approached Miami, the pilot said something about the weather while swerving to miss storm cells. A few hours later, after we had landed, the downpour started in earnest. The rain was heavy, the sky black. It was a big storm; actually it was the first tropical storm of the 2014 Atlantic Hurricane season. It later strengthened to become Hurricane Arthur and it was tracking northward. Hurricanes often follow the Gulf Stream current and affect the Maritime region of Canada where we live. But this one was going for the jugular; our town was right in the middle of its path. There were a slew of warnings posted on the Environment Canada website, tropical storm, rainfall, wind, special weather statement, and a tropical cyclone information statement. We followed the evolution of Arthur and worried for our house. At the last moment the storm veered left and the town where we live got a good soaking but not the anticipated deluge. It was pretty amazing to arrive in Florida just in time to witness the birth of a storm that slowly moved northward to die almost outside of our doorstep. It was a reminder of the interconnectedness of all things.

Hurricane Arthur, July 5, 2014, National Hurricane Center

We are here to do a soundwalk project; fictional stories, voices, swamp recordings. It is this concept of interconnectness that is calling for our attention. We are looking at the connections between: the Everglades National Park geography and its inhabitants; those living close to its borders; and those, like ourselves, who come here to commune with the environment. We recognize that ecologically speaking, our understanding and experience of the Everglades is a relatively short moment in time. As we research through the networks and components that is the Everglades, we try to understand something of where it all sits in the grand scheme of things.

Upon arriving, the first thing that we did was to try to visualize the park, to construct a mental chart of what exists where. In the first few days we covered as much ground as we could, recording ambient sound, the weather, and the insects. The mosquitos hit the shotgun mic with anger. We saw sunrises, sunsets, walked in the warm waters of the slough at Pa-Hay-Okee, attempted to hike among the mangroves at Christian Point Trail, immersed ourselves in the song of crickets, frogs, of rustling in the bush, of movement in the trees.

Daniel, Chokoloskee

The type of collaboration that we do is diverse. We have been collaborating for over twenty years on many projects. Often we work within a framework that allows for individual sensitivities to bubble to the surface, this is the case with our Everglades project. As we go out on hikes and explorations we experience the same location but from two different perspectives. Our individual takes are like stones thrown into a lake; the ripples of both, the points on intersections lie where the waves combine. That is often the place of creation.

Soon after arriving, we realized that we were in a world of layers. That we would have to see through the mosquito layer, the mosquito net layer, the humidity layer, the heat stress layer and the DEET layer. Every task becomes monumental, every clap of thunder, every raindrop intensifies, maximizes the experience.

We quickly learned to operate in the environment, to be there. Because audio recording demands silence and stillness, it is an obvious target for the hordes of skitters. In the spirit of adaptation, Valerie developed a Tai-Chi-like series of movements to repel them away from the microphone pickup area. This slow motioned waving of blue rubber gloved hands became the symbol of a certain level of peace.

Valerie’s Tai-Chi-like series of movements, Pa-Hay-Okee

Of all the layers present within the Park, it is the human presence that has become the focus of our work. Whether it is the recently abandoned Chekika Day Use Area, the HM69 Nike Missile Base,

Valerie and Daniel, HM69 Nike Missile Base

the shell mounds of the Calusa Indians on Sandfly Island or the Deer Pen ruins near Paradise Key, all of these traces reveal something about human interventions in this place. Trace elements become covered, overgrown, eaten or corroded as plants, animals and climate reclaim. Sites can be seen as momento mori, reminders of mortality, but they are also reverberations of life.

Deer Pen, Paradise Key, NPS archives July, 1934

Deer Pen, July 2014, left to right: Daniel Dugas; Hillary Cooley, Botanist, Everglades and Dry Tortugas National Parks and Valerie LeBlanc