In the pale pre-dawn light of September 19, 2003, my husband and I watched river water seep up between the floorboards in the wing of our house, something that had never happened in its 80-year history. The river was shimmering right outside the windows. I mean, right outside. It was the surge brought in by Hurricane Isabel.
This unforgettable moment leapt to my mind as soon as I heard about “Sensing Change,” April 3–6, an extended weekend of art, music, poetry, talks, and films presenting creative responses to climate change at Washington College and downtown Chestertown venues.
While politicians argue about the reality of climate change, we on the low-lying Eastern Shore live with a simmering worry in the back of our minds. Sea level is rising, storms and droughts are becoming more common and more intense, species are becoming extinct, and not much is being done about it.
“Amphibious Architecture”
above-water lights and underwater sensors monitoring water quality and presence of fish, a project of the Environmental Health Clinic, Natalie Jeremijenko
All this makes me desperate to sign in as an (im)patient at the Environmental Health Clinic. Combining art, science and activism, this New York University project approaches health problems in terms of their relationship to the environment. Luckily, there’s no need to go to New York to find out more because in the kick-off event of “Sensing Change” on April 3, one of its founders, the Australian visionary artist and technologist Natalie Jeremijenko, is coming to Chestertown to explain how the clinic works.
Recognizing that artists are always in the forefront of societal change, Washington College, the Chester River Association, Sunrise Solar, Inc., Kent County Arts Council, the Garfield Center for the Arts, and Massoni Art have joined forces in organizing this opportunity for the community to come together to learn and consider our changing weather and rising sea levels.
Beginning with Jeremijenko’s Thursday evening talk at the College’s Decker Theatre, expect high energy, humor, and groundbreaking creative thinking. A dynamic speaker and blazingly original thinker with a background in science and engineering, Jeremijenko will give Washington College’s Sandbox Spring Lecture, the latest event in the interdisciplinary Sandbox initiative, aimed at investigating the relationships between the individual, society and the environment.
The next evening, as part of First Friday, the new Sandbox Studio will host an open house, while the Carla Massoni Gallery will open an exhibit featuring nine artists whose work explores the beauty, vitality and fragility of our environment. At 7:30, the Garfield Center will show National Geographic photographer James Balog’s breathtaking Chasing Ice. Winner of a long list of awards including a Sundance Best Documentary Award, this film uses time-lapse cameras to capture a multi-year record of the Arctic’s rapidly melting glaciers and contains some of the most stunning images of glaciers ever captured on film.
On Saturday, the Garfield Center will host an artists’ panel moderated by Sandbox Director, Alex Castro, and John Seidel, Director of the College’s Center for Environment & Society, discussing the interplay of art, science and creativity, followed by a reading by Chestertown eco-poet Meredith Hadaway, the premier performance of Icelandic Sea Wall, an original musical composition based on Sandbox Distinguished Visitor John Ruppert’s photograph of the same name by Ken Schweitzer, Professor of Music at Washington College, and his students. The afternoon wraps up with excerpts from Goodbye Ice, Goodbye Island, a new film by Drew Denny documenting the rapidly changing landscapes and resulting cultural changes in the Maldive Islands and Greenland.
John Ruppert’s “Icelandic Sea Wall”
On Sunday afternoon, the College’s Premier Artists Series continues in the Decker Theatre with Beyond the Line of Blue. This multi-media concert weaves together themes of water, surrealism, time, and the unconscious with music inspired by poets Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe and artists Alexander Calder and Christopher Engel, as well as film and video projections by Alessandro Bonini.
In a newly released report stressing the urgency of climate change, the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science speaks to the public’s confusion over the seriousness of this issue. If you read the full report on the AAAS website, you’ll see it also points out the wealth of research and information available. With only a quick Google search, I found a Maryland Department of Natural Resources map showing that by 2050 the Chester River will likely be lapping at the foundations of my house on a daily basis. Check out your own situation at www.mdmerlin.net/mapper.html.
With the facts and figures so easy to find, all that’s needed is a good PR campaign to get the word out, and the arts are a great place to start. It’s only when we understand the problem that we can pull together and make the necessary changes. We just need to want to do it.
For a full schedule of “Sensing Change” events see: www.washcoll.edu/live/news/5311-a-full-weekend-of-sensing-change.
Write a Letter to the Editor on this Article
We encourage readers to offer their point of view on this article by submitting the following form. Editing is sometimes necessary and is done at the discretion of the editorial staff.