Food Safety and Toxins and Heating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Change

Craig Lubow talks with Craig Volland about Food Safety and Toxins and Mike Murphy speaks with Sara Taliaferro and Lora Jost about the upcoming exhibit, Heating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Change

Friday, March 25 Final Friday in Lawrence
Heating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Change: Exhibit. Lawrence Percolator (in the alley east of New Hampshire St between 9th and 10th Sts); Saturday and Sunday 12 – 5 pm.

Hang 12 / Exploring Climate Change: 5 -8 pm, Watkins Museum, 1042 Massachusetts St. In partnership with the Lawrence Percolator, which, in March, is featuring an exhibit of art responding to issues of climate change, the Watkins Museum will host “Hang 12”—a group of high school student artist who organized exhibits around Lawrence. Their installation, on display in the museum’s Community Room, will address the issue of climate change from their perspective. – See more at: http://www.watkinsmuseum.org/#sthash.LNMLpZi4.dpuf

Heating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Change — to feature art exhibit, month-long series
of educational and cultural events
LAWRENCE — “Heating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Change” is an art exhibit and monthlong
series of cultural and educational events scheduled for March and April in Lawrence,
Kansas. The project brings together dozens of local and regional artists, poets, educators and
performers working on climate change. A panel discussion in April includes a combination of
nationally active and prominent local voices.
The exhibit “Heating up: Artists Respond to Climate Change,” opens on Final Friday, March 25,
2016, 5 – 10pm, at the Lawrence Percolator located in the alley east of New Hampshire St.
between 9th St. and 10th St., behind the Lawrence Arts Center. The opening will feature three
brief performances. At 7 and 9 pm, Robert Baker will read poetry by Langston Hughes and the
band Ovaries-eez will perform. At 8 pm, local poets Dennis Etzel, Sandy Hazlett, Denise Low,
Topher Enneking, and Mary Wharff will read from their poetry. The exhibit runs March 25 –
April 23 and is open Saturdays and Sundays, noon – 5pm.
“We hope that the exhibit bolsters a community conversation about climate change and what we
can do about it,” said committee co-chair Lora Jost.
The exhibit includes the work of 42 local and regional artists with diverse viewpoints, some
working in teams. The exhibit includes art by professionals and non-professionals, among them
professors and students alike.
“We wanted to exhibit the work of artists who are already working on climate change as well as
to activate others to engage climate change as a new theme in their work,” said committee cochair
Sara Taliaferro.
Art in the exhibit includes paintings, prints, drawings, an artist book, sculptures, and
installations. Some of the art pieces concern the roots of climate change and the effects of fossil
fuel consumption on the weather, animals, and people. Some of the art pieces convey deep
despair. One artist’s work is a metaphor for creativity born from crisis. Additional art pieces
offer hope, visualizing ways to work together toward solutions.
Justin Marable’s prints, for example, with images of coal smoke, dinosaur bones, birds and
buffalo, illustrate how fossil fuel use and consumerism affect the earth and animals. Damia
Smith’s colorful, intricate, enameled copper images reveal how burning coal in the United States
brings drought and famine to north Africa. A painting by Haskell Indian Nations University
student Geraldine Walsey shows a woman looking to the past through winged eyes, “searching
for the beauty of what nature once was, and now is rarely seen today.”
Laura Ramberg’s ceramic cloud vessels evoke sharing food and other resources as a way to
reduce the need and greed arising from our reliance on fossil fuels. A team of artists (KU
Professor Matthew Burke and then students Samuel Balbuena, Cameron Pratte, Vi Stenzel, and
Cortney Wise) contributed a functional beehive that, once launched, offers a home for the
dwindling honeybee population. Marin Abell’s whimsical 9-foot long flat-bottomed trolling
motorboat, complete with serpent heads, is made with Eurasian Milfoil (an invasive aquatic plant
that threatens lakes) and runs on distilled Milfoil ethanol.
Jill Ensley’s interactive board game playfully asks serious questions about our future: “Will the
last iceberg melt? Will the pollinators die off? Will you opt to take in those climate refugees?
Do you believe we can step back from the edge, or that it’s too late?”
Exhibiting artists include: Marin Abell, Angie Babbit, Rena Detrixhe, Jill Ensley, Neil Goss,
Lisa Grossman, Eleanor Heimbaugh, Lora Jost, Dave Loewenstein, Justin Marable, Nancy
Marshall, Molly Murphy, Laura Ramberg, Hirsuta Pilosa, Michelle Rogue, Kent Smith, Damia
Smith, Sara Taliaferro, Garret Tufte, David Titterington, Nicholas Ward, Ethan Candyfire,
Georgia Kennidee Rikie Boyer, Kyuss Hala, Kayla Kent, Cleta LaBrie, Lori Hasselman, Alyx
Stephenson, Geraldine Emily Walsey, Katie Manuelito, and KT Walsh. Three teams of the
following artists have created collaborative works: Samuel Balbuena, Matthew Burke, Cameron
Pratte, Vi Stenzel, and Cortney Wise; Amanda Monaghan and Pablo Cerca; and Amanda
Maciuba, Tim O’brien and Mary Wharff.
The exhibit and related events are sponsored by two Lawrence community groups, the USDACLawrence
Field Office and Lawrence Ecology Teams United in Sustainability (LETUS), in
collaboration with Haskell Indian Nations University (HINU) and the Lawrence Percolator. (See
USDAC-Lawrence Field Office at http://on.fb.me/20riNAM, the USDAC national office at
http://www.usdac.us, and LETUS at https://lawrenceecologyteams.wordpress.com/about/.)
The “Heating Up” project grew out of a local event in 2014 that brought together these
sponsoring groups with leaders from the Haskell Indian Nations University community, on a
march and art event against climate change. The success of the 2014 event helped inspire the
current collaboration.. (See link for 2014 collaboration http://usdac.us/newslong/2014/10/16/the-peoples-climate-march-makerspeaker-party-lawrence-ks).
SIDEBAR EVENTS I (additional related events)
***“A Change in the Weather: Writing From Climate Change Art,” is a free all-ages
writing workshop on Saturday April 17, 2-4pm at the Lawrence Percolator. Please plan to
attend the whole workshop to help create a circle of deep sharing and reflecting. Led by former
poet laureate Caryn Mirrian-Goldberg and naturalist and writer Ken Lassman, participants
will consider their own “internal and external weather” in relation to climate change by dwelling
among the art exhibit as a key writing prompt. Facebook event page: http://on.fb.me/1Qr1led
***“How Can We Work Together on Climate Change?” is a panel discussion that is free and
open to the public on Sunday April 10, 3-5pm, Parker Hall, Room 110, at Haskell Indian Nations
University. The event includes five prestigious panelists, all local, with an exciting combination of
experiences and expertise on climate change, arts and culture, community organizing, and practical
steps to a sustainable future. Panelists include Saralyn Reece Hardy, Director of the Spencer
Museum of Art; Thad Holcombe, retired Ecumenical Christian Ministries Campus Minister at
KU and Moderator for Lawrence Ecology Teams United in Sustainability; Eileen Horn,
Sustainability Coordinator for Douglas County and the City of Lawrence and formerly with the
Climate and Energy Project and Interfaith Power and Light; Jay T. Johnson, Associate Professor
and Associate Chair of Geography and Atmospheric Science at KU and directs KU’s Center for
Indigenous Research, Science, and Technology; Dan Wildcat, professor at Haskell Indian
Nations University, Director of the Haskell Environmental Research Studies Center, and
Convener of the American Indian/Alaska Native Climate Change Working Group. The panel will
be facilitated by Sara Taliaferro with music by Alex Williams and art by Haskell students.
Facebook event page: http://on.fb.me/1L6z6l8
***”Mrs. Noah in Poetry and Dance” is a collaborative performance by poet Elizabeth Schultz
and dancer Joan Stone, on Friday April 15, 2016, at the Lawrence Percolator, with performances
at 7 and 9pm. The collaboration includes Stone’s insightful dance interpretations of Schultz’s
poems that reflect on the relationships among humans and animals, examining how catastrophes
disturb these relationships, how the resulting tremors connect us, and how we survive together,
learning from one another. Elizabeth Schultz, retired from KU’s English Department, has
published a large body of scholarly writings, books of poetry, short stories, essays, and a
memoir, and is a dedicated advocate for the arts and the environment. Joan Stone taught dance
history and choreography at the University of Kansas from 1982 to 2010, and through dance
explores nature, dance and politics, women as history makers, and the relationship between
gesture and word. Facebook event page: http://on.fb.me/1njVj3i
SIDEBAR EVENTS II (affiliated events)
***Spencer Cart “Landscape Transformations,” is a drop-in activity station sponsored by the
Spencer Museum of Art for families and other groups inviting participants to learn how to create
a landscape pencil drawing inspired by works in the Spencer’s Classroom Collection, and watch
it transform with water; Sat. Mar. 12, 2016, 1:30-4:30pm, Lawrence Public Library, 707
Vermont St. Spencer webpage: http://bit.ly/1wtRThC
***Hang12 “Effecting Change” includes art made from repurposed materials by teens,
coordinated by the Lawrence Art Center’s youth curatorial board Hang12. The public is invited
to the exhibit’s Final Friday opening on March 25, 5-8pm, Watkins Museum of History, 1047
Massachusetts St. The exhibit runs for a month and is open Tuesday – Friday, 10am-4pm (and on
Thursdays in April from 10am – 8pm). “Climate Change is an issue that impacts all of us. To
bring awareness to this subject we asked artists to use repurposed materials within their artwork
to take a stand on Climate Change and environmental issues.”
Hang12 Facebook page http://on.fb.me/1RL8ipR, Watkins website http://bit.ly/1Rsh4X7
***Eco Ambassadors “Haskell Wetlands Restoration Day” invites the public to join this
Haskell student-led workday of seeding and planting to help restore the Haskell Wetlands, on
Saturday April 16, 2016, 10am-2pm. Bring gloves and gardening/landscaping tools. Directions:
Come straight on Massachusetts St. heading S., continue S. past Indian Health Service.
Massachusetts St. turns into W. Perimeter Rd. so keep going and follow road around campus
until you get to the intersection of W. Perimeter Rd. and Barker Ave. Dr. Then turn right onto
Barker Ave. Dr. (you are going south), go straight and you will run right into the wetlands
access gate. Eco Ambassador Facebook page: http://on.fb.me/1WXzRNT

Image courtesy of Justin Marable

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