This post was edited on October 17, 2020 for accuracy. Some facts/pronunciations in the original recording may be incorrect and differ from the text.
State of Nature: Picturing Indiana Biodiversity, was created and put together by the Director of Grunwald Gallery, Elizabeth “Betsy” Stirratt, along with the help of fellow professors, local artists, and the Indiana State Museum.
The experience that the audience gets is truly unique, as a scientist, conservationist, or just a curious townie.
With projected videos, large carcasses, wolves, or artwork, Stirratt hopes there is something for everyone to be able to appreciate Indiana’s natural beauty.
The exhibit began in August and will be open to the public on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 12 to 4 until November 18th on an appointment only basis. Appointments can be made by emailing [email protected].
Visitors are required to wear masks and maintain physical distancing protocols to participate.
The exhibit will appear for online 3-D viewing by the second week of October for a virtual walk-through tour.
When asked why this is something fellow hoosiers and students should experience, creator of the exhibit, Betsy Stirratt shared that Grunwald Gallery doesn’t do the same thing that science museums, or many of the museums in Indiana do, because it combines contemporary art with other things such as science or literature.
“We try to put a contemporary art in a context that makes them accessible and relevant” She said, and that the vision for this experience is to let the history tell the story.
Upon opening the doors to the exhibit, I am greeted by a quiet atmosphere, with cool air and grey and white walls, giving the light a softness to it.
At the center of my attention is a black projected screen. A lone, white tree stands in the middle, its branches bare. Slowly, a humming sound fills the space as white shadows of birds fill the branches until there are millions of them, flying upwards. The humming gets louder as the birds multiply. Finally, the birds leave the tree, one by one as the sound dissipates.
The piece I just described is a creation by combined artists Susannah Sayler and Edward Moris (Saylor/Morris) who work with photography, video, writing and installation to project aspects of nature, culture and ecology.
Eclipse, is a video that remembers the passenger pigeon, a species that went extinct over 100 years ago. The Passenger Pigeon is known for being the most abundant bird species in North America, flying in flocks so great that the sky would even darken as they passed overhead.
The National Audubon Society, a non-profit environmental organization dedicated to bird conservation, compared the Pigeons to a noonday eclipse.
On September 1, 1914, the last known passenger pigeon, Martha, died in captivity.
Saylor/Morris acknowledge this species, explaining how the video installation “evokes the once overwhelming, even frightening, numbers of birds as well as their delicate beauty, the sadness of their loss and irreversible disappearance.”
Eclipse is an accurate example for the rest of the exhibit, where each piece can gain thoughtfulness and compassion from the viewer. One person in the exhibit exclaimed, “It invited you to just feel its love” as they study a life size carcass replica of the Jefferson Ground Sloth, a species that has been recovered from Ice Age sites in the Midwest.
During the 19th century when Indiana University was being established, Indiana was covered with lush forests and diverse ecosystems. Fast track to the industrial age and now, urbanization has created a lifestyle of normalizing reliance on technology and as a result, the natural biodiversity of the state has gone neglected.
Nature Deficit Disorder was a phrase coined by author Richard Louv, from his book “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit...
