Art and Nature Education
My passion is to integrate the arts and environmental studies to foster connection with nature for all ages and abilities. With an interdisciplinary M.A. degree in the Arts, Multi-Cultural Community Building, and Ecology at Lesley University, I guide students to explore subjects through scientific and sacred lens. They make meaning via hands-on creative projects as well as readings and discussions of traditional and cutting-edge content. Increasingly, I also am helping students to develop reciprocal relationships with the more-than-human-world through ancient yet contemporary practices. All this strengthens participants’ sense of place and well-being and encourages earth stewardship.
Here are a few of my favorite eco-arts projects from over the last 20 years:
The River Arts Project and Fish Headdresses started with participants making fish headdresses for environmental parades. It evolved into a grant funded program for low-income youth in Greenfield, MA who lived along the Green River. The young participants studied what made the river and its inhabitants sick or healthy and made fun, evocative fish headdresses to reflect that. They also wrote, danced, and did a clean-up and a river-keeper’s council on its banks.
The headdresses have gone on to have a life of their own in performances and rituals.
Nature Mandalas began as a way to offer people with disabilities something simple and satisfying to do together in nature. Picking up a stick, a stone, a flower or a shell and placing it with intention into a shared circular design on the ground is relatively easy, even for those who are movement or sight impaired. The Mandalas then take on added value as participants have the option to share how their object symbolizes their strengths and struggles. It also works well since the “materials” are always right on hand! The centering, tactile and community building aspects of making Nature Mandalas work well for everyone from children to teachers to Vietnam Vets.
This program continues to grow and serve different communities. It has become a yearly offering at the statewide Universal Access Fair run by the Mass Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR).
Another terrific project I developed collaboratively is called Treemendous. This workshop series involved high school and university students in learning about important ecosystem services such as trees’ carbon sequestration, its provision of food and habitat for various animal species and its shade-giving gifts. Then they made beautiful hand-made signs to share their growing knowledge of the trees with the public. The signs tare mounted on forest trails and in school yards.
Instead of taking the trees for granted or seeing them mostly as of commercial value for lumber, the students and passerby begin to have a true appreciation for these living, breathing beings all around them.
As you can see, my experiences in this field are diverse. I have worked with numerous environmental advocacy and environmental education organizations such as Greenpeace, Franklin Park Zoo, and Mass Audubon. I also have designed my own eco-arts workshops and taught them in a wide range of formal and informal settings, including in elementary and high schools and for conservation groups such as Friends of Alewife Association, and at art festivals and centers like Green River Festival and Earthdance. If you would like to see more of my experience, please contact me for my resume.
