Earth Day Symposium: Creatives Respond to the Climate Crisis
Earth Day Symposium: Creatives Respond to the Climate Crisis
Livingston Manor, NY – Catskill Art Space (CAS) will host an Earth Day Symposium: Creatives Respond to the Climate Crisis on April 26, 3-5pm in the second-floor, River Galleries at 48 Main Street, Livingston Manor, NY. Artists Lauren Daccache, Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky, Elizabeth Orr, Eleanor White and architect Mitchell Joachim of Terreform ONE (Open Network Ecology) for an Earth Day-inspired discussion moderated by artist and writer Hovey Brock, where they will be addressing how their practices engage with the climate crisis.
Joachim and Miller will begin the discussion with a presentation on their 2025 Venice Biennale collaboration incorporating music and architecture on the theme of kelp, a macroalgae whose forests are foundational to ocean ecology. They will engage in a dialogue about the theoretical and applied dimensions of living architecture, biomorphic urbanism, and the implications of synthetic ecologies, speculating on how these frameworks might inform the future of climate-responsive cities and planetary stewardship.
Concurrently exhibiting at Catskill Art Space, Daccache, Orr, and White, will follow with presentations on their respective practices and the narratives they pursue in their work that address the climate crisis. The many themes explored through their artworks will include international waste management, the destructive side of the move to the “green” technology of lithium batteries, and the impact of supply chains on the planet. The presentations will be followed by a Q&A session with the audience. After the session, all are invited to join Daccache, Orr, and White in the first-floor galleries to answer questions about their art on the closing day of their exhibitions.
About the Artists
Lauren Daccache (b. Dallas, TX) is a Lebanese-American visual artist raised in the United States and Beirut, Lebanon. She primarily focuses on long-term, image-based projects that explore the impact of time and age on people and places and the tension it creates between personal and collective memory. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and featured in publications such as Vice Magazine, National Geographic, and Der Greif.
Michell Joachim is the Co-Founder of Terreform ONE and Professor of Practice at NYU. Formerly, he worked as an architect at the professional offices of Frank Gehry, Moshe Safdie, and I.M. Pei. He has won many awards including: Fulbright Scholarship, NEA Grant for Arts Projects, Fast Company Design of the Year, and Time Magazine Best Invention. His design work has been exhibited in MoMA , MASS MoCA, Seoul Biennale, Venice Biennale, among others. Previously, he was the Frank Gehry Chair at the University of Toronto and faculty at Pratt, Columbia, Syracuse, Rensselaer, Washington (St. Louis), Cornell, Parsons, and EGS. He earned a Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MAUD at Harvard University, M.Arch at Columbia University, and University at Buffalo with honors.
Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky, is currently Artist in Residence at Yale University Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (2023-2024, extended). He is a composer, multimedia artist, and writer whose work engages audiences in a blend of genres, global culture, and environmental and social issues. Miller has collaborated with an array of recording artists, including Ryuichi Sakamoto, Metallica, Chuck D from Public Enemy, Steve Reich, and Yoko Ono amongst many others. His 2018 album, DJ Spooky Presents: Phantom Dancehall, debuted at #3 on Billboard Reggae. Miller currently lives and works in Roscoe, NY.
Elizabeth Orr lives and works in New York and Livingston Manor. Recent and forthcoming solo exhibitions include VIN VIN, Vienna (2023, 2021); 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA (2022); Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), Troy, New York (2016); and Bodega (Derosia), New York (2017, 2015). Group presentations, screenings, and lectures include Kunsthal NORD, Aalborg, Denmark (forthcoming, 2023); Sharp Projects, Copenhagen (2022, 2021); Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA (2019); CAC Brétigny, Brétigny-sur-Orge, France (2018); The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2017); Artists Space, New York (2015); Anthology Film Archives, New York (2018, 2016); and The Swiss Institute, New York (2016). In 2018, she received a Public Affairs Grant Program from the US Embassy, and in 2016, she won the MAAF NYC award for her video MT RUSH (2016). She has taken part in various residency programs, including EMPAC at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY), Shandaken (New York), Bemis Center (Omaha, Nebraska), Real-Time & Space (Oakland, CA), and Recess (NY, NY).Orr manages the estate of her late father, artist Eric Orr (1939-1998), and is on the board of KAJE, Brooklyn, NY. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, and graduated with Honors from the Bard MFA program in 2015.
Eleanor White is based in the Hudson Valley, NY. Her work has been included in exhibitions such as Prima Materia: The Periodic Table in Contemporary Art, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, CT; Mountain High, Valley Low: LabSpace, NY;Artists Draw Their Studios, Hewitt Gallery of Art, Marymount Manhattan College, NY; Another World, charity postcard sale, Frieze London; Cross-Pollination, Boscobel House Gallery NY; Tick, Tock, Time in Contemporary Art, Lehman College; Case Studies, Gallery Aferro, NJ; Materiality, Westchester Community College, NY; and numerous exhibitions at Kenise Barnes Fine Art. Her work is included in The Montefiore Fine Art Program, The Deutsche Bank Art Collection, and many private collections. Eleanor received her MFA from the Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, MD, on a full Jacob K. Javits Foundation scholarship. She earned her BFA. from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. She has participated in several artist residencies, including the Bemis Center in Omaha, Nebraska, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Sweet Briar, Virginia.
Long-term Installations
Following a major renovation and expansion, Catskill Art Space reopened in October 2022 with a long-term presentation of James Turrell’s Avaar (1982) in a custom-built gallery on the building’s second floor. A room-sized installation, Avaar is an important example of the artist’s early, wall-based “aperture” works, which function by creating two areas within a room. There is a “viewing space,” where one stands to see and experience the work, and a “sensing space,” which is an ambiguously defined area of diffused light. Avaar is one of the rare examples of Turrell’s aperture works to make use of white lighting only; no colors will be present in the installation. This work is in the collection of the Seattle Art Museum, which has granted CAS a special long-term loan to exhibit the work. The presentation at CAS marks the first time the work has been shown since the 1970s, giving audiences from the Catskills and beyond the rare opportunity to experience a major Turrell work that has not been seen in nearly five decades.
On the second floor’s central landing, Sol LeWitt’s vibrant Wall Drawing #992 unfolds in three sections, each consisting of 10,000 straight lines drawn in color marker, to create a mesmerizing arrangement of primary colors. On the fourth wall, presenting LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #991, straight, arced, and organic lines will encompass the wall in black marker and pencil. The conceptual, minimalist artist conceived guidelines for his two-dimensional works to be drawn directly on the wall. Much like Turrell’s Avaar, the LeWitt works were realized for CAS’s space; in this instance, they are generously loaned by the artist’s estate. This work was overseen by a draftsperson, who determines the length and placement of the lines, and executed by five artists local to the area over nearly two weeks.
The newly realized performance space on CAS’s second floor hosts British sculptor Francis Cape’s A Gathering of Utopian Benches—an installation of meticulous copies of benches built and used by communal societies. Cape’s installations have always argued that design and craft express belief. Utopian Benches, which has toured extensively throughout the US, was built from poplar grown near Cape’s studio in Narrowsburg, NY. To be considered both as contemporary sculpture as well as furniture that visitors can actively use, the benches reference the societies who first used them, inviting visitors to utilize them for exchange, discourse, and community. The installation, which is meant to be used by visitors both for contemplation and may be used for performance seating, overlooks an expansive wall of windows onto the Willowemoc Creek.
Ellen Brooks inaugurates an intimate gallery space, framed by a partially open staircase, with Hang (2022), an installation suspending over 30 feet of scrolls of film negatives from the ceiling. The artist hangs transparencies and negatives in all formats and from clips attached to the ceiling, mimicking the practice of film photography. Hanging negatives reference the surrounding natural landscaping, evoking a cascading waterfall with coils of film collecting on the ground floor gallery.
About Catskill Art Space
Catskill Art Space (CAS) explores contemporary art practices of emerging and established artists. Through exhibitions, performances, classes, lectures, and screenings, CAS fosters creative community in the Catskills.
Established as Catskill Art Society in 1971, CAS reopened in October 2022 as Catskill Art Space following a major renovation and expansion of its multi-arts center, located in the picturesque hamlet of Livingston Manor in the Western Catskills. CAS presents a rotating slate of exhibitions, performances and other events featuring national and regional talents, alongside long-term installations of works by James Turrell, Sol LeWitt, Francis Cape, and Ellen Brooks. Learn more at catskillartspace.org.
