Beall Center Art + Ecology Series: Ocean Research-Creation

Organized by Lauren Lees and Raechel Jasmine Hill 
Moderated by Jesse Colin Jackson
Sponsored by UCI Illuminations

Monday, April 11, 2022
4:30-6:30 p.m. PST
In-person: Natural Sciences I, Room 1114 — https://map.uci.edu/?id=463#!m/83373
Online: Zoom — https://uci.zoom.us/j/94921333559

In anticipation of Pacific Standard Time 2024—a forthcoming series of exhibitions focused on intersections between science and art—this panel conversation brings together artists, scientists, and curators pursuing interdisciplinary research and creation in, on, around, and about the ocean. Featuring Nyssa Silbiger (CSU Northridge); Cassandra Coblentz; Matthew Bracken (UCI), and Lisa Cartwright (UC San Diego). Moderated by Jesse Colin Jackson (UCI). 

Organized by UCI ecology and evolutionary biology graduate students Lauren Lees and Raechel Hill.

Ocean Research-Creation is the final event in the 2022 Beall Center Art + Ecology series, which previously featured Carolina Caycedo, Ian Ingram, and Hans Baumann. 

About the Panelists:

Nyssa Silbiger investigates how human-driven stressors, including climate change, affect marine environments—from organism to ecosystem level. As part of her recent NSF funded research, she has explored the impacts of human-driven stressors on coastal marine ecosystems in the Pacific Ocean. As part of this research, she has collaborated with visual artist, Lauren Shapiro, to create Future Pacific—an exhibition that combined art, community engagement, and science to convey the fragility of coral reef ecosystems in the Pacific. Members of the community pressed clay into silicone molds of coral reef textures collected by Dr. Silbiger and colleagues, contributing to the installation. As this installation aged, the unfired clay cracked and colors faded to mimic the degradation of coral reefs.

Matthew Bracken is a professor at UCI studying marine biodiversity and the linkages between marine communities and ecosystems. Dr. Bracken served in the advisory panel for Sea Change: Toward New Environmentalisms in the Pacific Ocean with the Orange County Museum of Art. As a marine ecologist, he is interested in linking science and art and has incorporated funding for art related to his projects into recent grant proposals.

Cassandra Coblentz has a diverse curatorial practice that champions the artistic process and forefronts creating meaningful, engaging experiences for audiences with works of art. As an independent curator she continues to take innovative approaches to collaborating with artists, curating exhibitions and building community. She has recently been researching a project for the Getty Pacific Standard Time initiative Art x Science x LA entitled Sea Change: New Currents of Sustainability, Art, and Action in the Pacific Ocean. For six years she was Senior Curator and Director of Public Engagement at the Orange County Museum of Art where she curated the 2017 California Pacific Triennial: Building As Ever and authored its accompanying catalog. She also designed and implemented the program concept for the museum’s temporary location, OCMAExpand, Santa Ana and curated twenty exhibitions within this framework and organized numerous public programs. 

Lisa Cartwright is Professor of Visual Arts and Director of the Practice Concentration in the Art History, Theory and Criticism PhD Program at UC San Diego. She holds other positions at UCSD in relation to design, gender studies, and communication and conducts collaborative research in feminist bioart, wind power, and land use photography. Lisa currently co-leads the Getty Foundation’s current Art + Science Initiative at UCSD, Oceanographic Art and Science: Navigating the Pacific. This project explores the visual and graphic basis of oceanographic work and its relation to art, communication, colonization and conquest, navigation, history, and more. The collaborative effort has already begun with a series of talks that highlights developing projects, such as Reclaiming Native Waterways from Kumeyaay Coast to Lake Cahuilla, Canoes: Conservation, Computation, Community, and Mosaic Ocean.