A Wilderness Science and Art Collaboration

Aldo & Leonardo, a partnership between Colorado Art Ranch and the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, is a project to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act. The project is inspired by the scientific wisdom of Aldo Leopold and the artistic genius of Leonardo da Vinci. Our endeavor is an interdisciplinary collaboration of artists and scientists designed to celebrate the lands, resources and opportunities protected by the Wilderness Act. In 2013, we are hosting one-month residencies in six diverse wilderness areas. Artists will work alongside wildland research scientists and gain firsthand knowledge of the wonders, complexities and challenges of our nation's wildest places. The result will be a body of work that creatively illustrates the value of wild areas and honors the scientific efforts to preserve wilderness for the next fifty years.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Adrien Segal: An Artist With Ecological Expression


By:Ryan Mudgett
Photo credit to ~ adrien segal art.design.data.sculpture © 2013 
Mirroring the scientific process artist Adrien Segal expresses brilliant works of art that display tales of places where humans and nature overlap. Her imagination and sculpting skills serve as a platform to narrate the invisible by telling a story of place that is intuitive, and serves as a natural history lesson for the viewer. Segal’s work is truly inspired by data visualization, natural phenomena, and long term scientific research.  Her creative form of sculpture accurately represents trends in water use, alluvial flow, tidal datum, and other water related topics . Striving to use her art as a universal form of communication she is successful in transforming information that reveals trends or patterns in history by depicting them as three dimensional forms (Segal, 2013).

After examining her work I begin to notice a slight shift in my perspective of the natural world and how it is painstakingly introduced to the masses. By taking decades of scientific data and expressing the numbers and trends in her sculptures, Segal transforms the complexities of science into a form that many can understand.  Her work not only steers clear from bland graphs and charts but also brought me to an Aldo Leopold statement that can be found in his Land Ethic:

Photography courtesy Aldo Leopold Foundation.
  “The ordinary citizen today assumes that science knows what makes the community clock tick; the scientist is equally sure that he does not. He knows that the biotic mechanism is so complex that its workings may never fully be understood.” Aldo Leopold

Segal’s art work expresses a firm push of creativity that begins to represent the complexity of certain biotic mechanisms and how they respond to anthropocentric world.  It is up to the curious individual to view her work with desire and the will to learn more about her thought process and message. In respect to Leopold we can only act ethically to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in, and Segal does just that with her art work (Leopold, 1970).

Here is a snippet of Adrien Segal's Art.  I was taken back by her piece "Snow Water Equivalent Cabinet". 






Literature Cited
Leopold, A., & Schwartz, C. W. (1970). A Sand County almanac: with essays on conservation from Round River. New York: Ballantine Books.
Segal, Adrien (2013) “Adrien Segal: Artist Statement” http://www.adriensegal.com/#!statement/cihc accessed July,2013 adrien segal art.design.data.sculpture © 2013

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