Request to form OBFS Ad Hoc ArtSciConverge Committee

Gothic Community Center.

In September, 2014, a Working Group on Art@FSMLs formed during the Wood's Hole Organization of Biological Field Stations/National Association of Marine Laboratories (OBFS/NAML) Joint Meeting. The group started this blog, and began to explore ways to facilitate and encourage art at sites of long-term environmental research.

Last week, OBFS held their 2015 Annual Meeting at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, CO, along with concurrent meetings of the Global Network of Mountain Observatories (GNOMO) and iDigBio.

Photos here.

The Working Group presented an update of activities, and examples of several field station and marine lab art programs.

The OBFS Board recognized the growing importance of supporting interdisciplinary field station use, and is converting the Art@FSMLs Working Group into a permanent Ad Hoc Committee within the organization.

Local resident

View presentations: 

• Intro and update (PDF)

Art@FSMLs update

View more presentations or Upload your own.

• Cedar Point, NE (PDF)

Art@Cedar Point

View more presentations or Upload your own.

• ArtLab, Mountain Lake, VA (PDF)

ArtLab at Mountain Lake, VA

View more presentations or Upload your own.

• Art at LUMCON, LA (PDF)

Art and Science at LUMCON

View more presentations or Upload your own.

* * *

Watch additional FSML art program videos:

Ann Carlson at Jasper Ridge...

Picture Jasper Ridge. A performance hike by artist, Ann Carlson. from Stanford Arts Institute on Vimeo.

Art at Cedar Point...


Art at Cedar Point from Kat Shiffler on Vimeo.

Survey results

The results of the recent survey of FSML art/humanities programs are in. You can view the complete results online here, or download

• Summary
• Complete results

You might also see Philippe Cohen's list of art programs at FSMLs for the 2012 OBFS Annual Meeting.

Here are the comments from the current survey:

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A few scientists work with artists in an episodic/opportunity-based way to encourage science-inspired art, such as river acoustics providing a "musical score" for dance. Occasional retreats by arts/humanities programs provide a forum for artistic composition.

11/13/2014 3:19 PM View respondent's answers

We offer an 8-week Environmental Writing and Great Lakes Literature course (300 level, 5 UM semester credits) and a non-credit , 5-day Art in Nature course (drawing and painting) for adults.

11/12/2014 11:49 AM View respondent's answers

Currently we: 1. Recruit art and writing classes to come to the Preserve 2. Develop service learning projects with classes to take on projects we need done 3. Collaborate and seek funding for cross-disciplinary projects (arts and sciences). We are interested in developing an art and science residency program. This will likely require new overnight facilities which we currently lack at all of our Preserves. In designing our new facilities, we are including working space for artists. One other comment -- I think FSMLs need to expand to work with all disciplines. For example, why leave out Business and Economics? Seems like we should work with those students as well.

11/11/2014 5:34 PM View respondent's answers

I love the idea of a working group centered on art.

11/11/2014 3:17 PM View respondent's answers

credit classes En Plein Air http://www.umb.edu/academics/caps/summer_programs/nantucket/art Ecopoetics (which explores the environmental and ecology through poetry). We feature nature poets frequently. Liz Bradfield is a whale scientists/naturalist poet and the bomb (http://www.ebradfield.com/) We have our own Nantucket Field Station Press, we sponsor writing workshops for adults and kids and integrated art, music and poetry exhibitions. Writing and poetry and art and completely integrated into our K-12 program (invasive crabs and HP Lovecraft art comics stories and poetry this past summer) and Ecopoetics, photography and En Plein art are taught at the collegiate level. We host weekly writing workshops and joint science and photography shows. Recently I did a oceanography lecture skewering Ernest Hemingway during a Literary Roast in Boston at the Oberon Theater surrounded by burlesque performers drag queens and poets.I have a list of 3-4 illustrators that offer science illustration. About 20 painters teach outdoor painting classes here and in the summer it is common for painters to be spread around. I'll put more on the blog about this,

11/7/2014 2:49 PM View respondent's answers

The Estate offers onsite studio space to artists through a residency program; in exchange, artists offer their time and talent to engage the public. Recently, we expanded the residency to include a focus on EcoArt (the intersection between science, advocacy/ecological intervention, and art practices). The Artist in Residency program currently welcomes professional Visual, Performing, and Literary Artists who are self-motivated and focused. The primary basis for selection of our artists is the strength and quality of the applicant’s work as it relates the Charles Deerings' environmental and cultural vision as well as a clear objective for the time of their residency. Both Artist in Residence Studio Residencies and Non-Studio Project Residencies are available and are competitively selected through a jury process using leading professionals from our family of galleries, collaborative arts and cultural organizations. The Residency acts as wonderful incubator for creative ideas, unique experiences, and collaborative opportunities that engage the public in the natural and built features of the site.

11/6/2014 10:35 AM View respondent's answers

We do not have an arts program but are very interested in creating one. What we do have is an interpretive class for undergraduates that is dual listed in the fine arts department and the Wildlife ecology and conservation department. It is co-taught by faculty in both programs.

11/3/2014 8:06 AM View respondent's answers

Because we do have the public in fairly often, the artists that are on display have their works for sale. We get a commission off the sales of their art work. We rotate artists every three months. We also have larger public events through out the year where we bring in artists for shorter periods of time. We tend to bring in musicians during monthly brunch events.

11/3/2014 6:17 AM View respondent's answers

We also cooperate with other sites to promote arts/humanities engagements with sites of long-term inquiry, including managing (at a low level) the Ecological Reflections webpage to share information - www.ecologicalreflecctions.com. About 20 sites are involved - mostly LTERs and some of these are also OBFS members and/or US Forest Service Experimental Forests. there seems to be a strong groundswell of these engagements and it would be good to share information and support one another.

11/2/2014 10:06 PM View respondent's answers

Sounds like there are a number of folks on staff game to assemble a blog post.

11/1/2014 5:36 PM View respondent's answers

would be great to have a network of field station art programs to learn what stations are doing and perhaps build into some interesting collective programs.

11/1/2014 8:48 AM View respondent's answers

We do collaborate with artists on occasion, but don't have a formal program. Some of our researchers are working on an art project to promote awareness and understanding of the ecology of the horseshoe crab which is a signature species of the Delaware Bay where we are located

10/31/2014 7:00 PM View respondent's answers

With the FAB! program, we bring art and biology undergraduate and graduate students together at the Seahorse Key Marine Laboratory on Seahorse Key for three days and have them engage in several integrative activities. The student activities are centered around important conservation issues such as climate change and global warming. The students then display the products of the activities at a public open house at the SKML. Our program is highly integrative and involves faculty from over three departments including Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, Fine Arts, and Humanities.

10/31/2014 3:53 PM View respondent's answers

we also are creating a partnership with a couple of museums to set up research/course outing to the lab for students and development. this work is centered around Childe Hassam- a famous artist from the 1800's who painted on our island. we are working with a group of art historians to put together a nationally touring exhibit of Hassam's work. this work blends a lot of geology and art history to create interpretive materials for this public tour.

10/31/2014 1:27 PM View respondent's answers

The Art @ CPBS program is just a year old. We have long term plans and it is expected to grow over the next 5 years.

10/31/2014 10:53 AM View respondent's answers

Art is both an excellent outreach tool, and also a fascinating line of inquiry into ecosystems (just like science). I wish we had the funding and staff capacity to do more. There is certainly a tremendous amount of interest from regional artists in getting involved in what we do. I also help organize art-science work for the LTER Network. That collective (see ecologicalreflections.com) is doing a lot of cool work.

10/31/2014 9:49 AM View respondent's answers

In addition to science-based conservation, education and research (especially in ecology. biology, geology, and hydrology) at the WKU GRP, we have a strong collaboration with the Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology at WKU. There is a 200-year-old house at the site that is an important touchstone with the community, and which Folk Studies people are working hard to restore - a labor of many years and many years to come. Anthropological work is also a significant ongoing partnership; documentation of cultural history is important to us. We do not have a formal arts program, but we include performance of regional music (bluegrass and old-time) at many events, expect to host a musicians' retreat soon, have hosted retreats of women artists (including photographers), and will be hosting a retreat for an international group of religion academics focused on human relationships with the environment. We have done a small amount of temporary environmental art (sensu Andy Goldsworthy) and would like to do more, AND we make a point of providing students and visiting children with notebooks and pencils for drawing, and encourage the use of our dissecting scopes for simple informal close observation of natural objects. Those explorations are a hybrid of art and science: we believe that heightened attention to the landscape, the soundscape, and the microscape feeds observation skills and processes that are at the root of both science and art.

10/31/2014 9:33 AM View respondent's answers

Many of our English and ART faculty will bring their various classes out to the Station for a day-experience in exploring nature, painting landscapes or touring the facilities. There is a growing interest in developing STEAM and STREAM K-12 outreach programs to complement our existing STEM programs.

10/31/2014 8:47 AM View respondent's answers

It may be interesting to partner with the Alliance of Artists Communities (recently started a working group on "Ecological Residencies" at artist communities. Contact Molly Rideout (Director of Grin City Collective, a local artist-in-residency program) molly@grincitycollective.org http://www.artistcommunities.org/conference/arts-ecology-preconference

10/31/2014 8:05 AM View respondent's answers

Welcome engagement with OBFS effort or joining a FSML group of other stations that have art programs. For example, would be fun to set up a network where artists can plug in and visit different stations each summer, or a central web resource where we can all display our "art at field station." We have great interest by artsists, but little structure for follow up or continued engagement. - Eric Nagy Mountain Lake Biological Station enagy@virginia.edu

10/30/2014 8:08 AM View respondent's answers

we are a new research station (one year of operation) and are still developing our programs. We are supporting faculty visits (including faculty in arts, humanities and social sciences) as they develop projects that could take place at the station. In addition to our scientific research projects, to date we have hosted art, scientific illustration and writing courses in addition to students from a range of other disciplines who are engaging in service learning activities.

10/29/2014 10:42 PM View respondent's answers

Some graduate students and some scientists at our institution want to participate in art/science projects with professional artists and believe the projects help public audiences understand scientific principles.

10/29/2014 12:28 PM View respondent's answers

Description of program already on the blog.

10/21/2014 3:52 PM View respondent's answers

Survey and our formation announcement sent to membership.

We've sent out an announcement and survey to the members of OBFS and NAML to inform them of the Art @ FSMLs working group, and to learn how many of us have an art/humanities program at present. Thanks for your help drafting the message!

In case you somehow didn't get the memo, I've pasted the announcement below. Please forward to any other non-member stations you may know of, as well.

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New Working Group on Art at FSMLs

At the September 2014 OBFS/NAML Joint Meeting in Wood’s Hole, Dr. Jerry Schubel presented on the new National Academy of Sciences publication. “Enhancing the Value and Sustainability of Field Stations and Marine Laboratories in the 21^st Century”. In his talk, Dr. Schubel took the FSMLs to task for often failing to connect new data and knowledge through to policy and action, something that becomes more and more critical to our facilities’ survival as time goes by. 

Many of us feel that art can create the emotional connection to science that is needed to link this chain of progression, and can provide unexpected new ways of perceiving problems, issues, and potential solutions. During a lunch table conversation, an official working group on art at field stations and marine labs formed.

The purpose of the working group is to explore the intersection of art and science, provide examples, and share ideas and resources. Integrating art into field science programs is new ground for many stations, and we can all use some aid in figuring out the deep potential of this partnership, and how art can improve our operations, connect us to new stakeholder groups, and help us achieve our missions in a changing physical and political climate.

The working group now has a blog at artsciconverge.blogspot.com. The list of participants is posted. If you would like to be added to the group, or to post something to the blog, please contact the current Group Coordinator, Faerthen Felix. 

At present, we’d particularly like to build a reference library of case studies for art at FSMLs. The blog already has a few examples, including Philippe Cohen’s list of programs from the 2012 OBFS art at field stations poster session; the H.J. Andrews “Ecological Reflections” program; and program descriptions from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln’s Cedar Point Biological Station and UC Berkeley’s Sagehen Creek Field Station. Please consider helping us expand this resource by writing up a brief case study for your own field reserve or marine lab art program.

We’d also like to establish just how many FSMLs currently have an art or humanities program. We’ve created a very short SurveyMonkey questionnaire, and we’d ask you to please take a few minutes to answer the queries about your program. If you just can’t spare the time, a simple e-mail saying, “Yes, our FSML has an art program”, or, “No, we don’t” is better than no response.

Thanks in advance for your assistance! Please don't hesitate to get in touch with me for more information about the Art @ FSMLs working group.

--Faerthen Felix, UC Berkeley - Sagehen Creek Field Station, ffelix @ berkeley.edu

Welcome!

At the September, 2014 OBFS/NAML Joint Meeting, a lunch table discussion started on the topic of Art at Field Stations and Marine Labs. We continued the next day. Thanks for your interest in starting a working group on the subject!

Here is the list of participants (with more recent additions by request). Send me what you'd like posted, or I can set you up as an editor. I'd like to see everyone first create a post about the state of/thoughts about your current art program--basically, the short introductions we did at lunch, along with any photos or links you'd like to share. That will provide a good point of departure for further discussion, and a record for future reference.

From left: Reed Bertone-Johnson, Felicia Coleman.

It would be great if you would use the blog to communicate within the group, rather than e-mailing around, but you can pull individual e-mail addresses from the conference roster for private exchanges.

If you'd prefer, I'll post the actual e-mail addresses here, just let me know. Gwen Pearson will post a link to this blog on the Organization of Biological Field Stations website. I'll ask the National Association of Marine Laboratories to do the same. If you know anyone else who might be interested in this discussion, please invite them.

Group participants (* indicates looking for, or playing a more active role):

NAME	AFFILIATION	CONTACT
Faerthen Felix*	UC Berkeley-Sagehen Creek Field Station (Group Coordinator)	ffelix@berkeley.edu
Martha Apple*	Department of Biological Sciences, Montana Tech of the University of Montana
Rebecca Atkins*	University of Georgia
Reed Bertone-Johnson	Smith College MacLeish Field Station
Jeff Brown*	UC Berkeley-Sagehen Creek Field Station
Christina Catanese*	Schuylkill Center
Philippe Cohen	Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve - Stanford University (retired)
Felicia Coleman	Florida State University Coastal and Marine Lab
Mel Dean	Hawaii Experimental Tropical Forest
Bill Dennison	University of Maryland
Kevin Duggan*	Consultant
Paul Foster	Costa Rica Bijagual Ecological Reserve
William Fox	Director, Center for Art + Enviroment, NMA
Jon Garbisch	Cedar Point Biological Station
Newton Harrison	Center for the Study of the Force Majeure
Susan Jacobson*	University of Florida
Isabelle Kay	UC San Diego Reserves
Julia Klein	Colorado State University
Ariane Koek	International Policy Advisor and Consultant
Craig Lukatch	Lacawac Sanctuary & Field Station
Nancy Lowe	SymbASA.org
Judy Lemus	Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology
Mary Beth Leigh	University of Alaska-Fairbanks
Claudia Luke	Sonoma State University Field Stations and Nature Preserves
Art McKee	Yellowstone Ecological Research Center
Michael Nelson	H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest
Erika Osborne	Colorado State University
Sarah Oktay	University of Massachusetts-Boston Nantucket Field Station
Kristin Pasquino*	Northern Forest Institute - State University of New York
Marianne Patinelli-Dubay*	Northern Forest Institute - State University of New York
Gwen Pearson	Wired.com
Mel Preston	Point Blue Conservation Science
Jane Rosett	Marine Biological Laboratory, Wood's Hole
Lindsey Rustad	Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest
Leslie Ryan	H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest
Jerry Schubel	Aquarium of the Pacific
Mark Schulze	H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest
Fred Swanson*	H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest
Sam Wisely*	University of Florida Ordway Swisher Biological Station
Kathleen Wong	UC Natural Reserve System

From left: Reed Bertone-Johnson, Mark Schulze, Isabelle
Kay, Jeff Brown, Judy Lemus.

From left: Judy Lemus, Jane Rosett, Jon Garbisch, Bill
Dennison.