A two-day symposium at Hope College on Thursday and Friday, March 6 and 7, will explore the different roles that visual artists can play in promoting ecological sustainability.
The public is invited. Admission is free.
The symposium, “Art, Sustainability and the Environment,” is being organized by the college’s Department of Art and Art History and sponsored by the Hope College Patrons for the Arts. As explained in the event’s summary, the symposium will consider whether artists “can make a difference amongst the challenges of climate change, environmental degradation and human populations.”
The speakers will be the executive director of a residency program and three artists from the Midwest who will discuss their practices and engagement with a facet of the topic. The symposium will begin with a keynote address and opening reception during the afternoon of March 6, and continue with four sessions throughout the day on March 7 that will culminate in a roundtable discussion followed by a closing reception.
The symposium will open with a keynote address on Thursday, March 6, at 4:30 p.m. in Schaap Auditorium of the Jim and Martie Bultman Student Center. The featured speaker will be Andrew Ranville, who is co-founder and executive director of the Rabbit Island Foundation, which facilitates an artist residency on Rabbit Island, located in Lake Superior east of Keweenaw Peninsula, that challenges and celebrates the intersection of contemporary art, culture and environmental thought. The opening reception will follow the address, and will also be in the Jim and Martie Bultman Student Center.
The presentations on Friday, March 7, will begin at 9 a.m. with “Building for Future Generations through Ecological Preservation” in the John and Dede Howard Recital Hall of the Jack H. Miller Center for Musical Arts. The speaker will be Elizabeth Rose, who is a visiting assistant professor of art at Hope.
The day will continue with “Examining Human Relationships in an Urban Environment” at 11 a.m. in the John and Dede Howard of the Jack H. Miller Center for Musical Arts. The speaker will be Halima Afi Cassells, an artist who is the founder and codirector of the Free Market of Detroit, which explores ideas of freedom, work, value and disposability in a participatory context.
Following a break for lunch, the March 7 sessions will continue at 2 p.m. in Cook Auditorium of the De Pree Art Center with “Considering Materiality in Sustainable Art Practices.” The speaker will be Terry Conrad, who is an associate professor of printmaking, and also works in sculpture, at the University of Iowa.
All of the speakers will participate in the culminating roundtable discussion, “Adapting Sustainable Art Practices as an Expression of Faith, Spirituality, Care and Witness,” which will take place at 4 p.m. in Cook Auditorium of the De Pree Art Center.
The symposium will conclude with a reception from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on March 7 that will feature an exhibition of artwork by students enrolled in Art 195, Art and Ecology, which is taught by Elizabeth Rose, in the Elevator Gallery of the De Pree Art Center.
In addition to the symposium events, the main gallery of the De Pree Art Center is hosting the visiting exhibition “Limnologies,” a large-scale collaborative installation that culminates fieldwork while in residency on Rabbit Island by Aly Ogasian, assistant professor of art at Scripps College in Claremont, California, and Claudia O’Steen, associate professor of fine arts at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Combining their research and work on the island with hours of studio and material experiments, the installation deeply explores the interplay of water, weather and geology, as well as the effect of weather conditions and changing climate on human psychology. “Limnologies” is running Thursday, Feb. 20, through Thursday, March 20. The gallery is open weekdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Andrew Ranville makes work in and about diverse landscapes and communities; taking care to positively impact each when doing so. His practice regularly unites themes of ecology, geography and exploration. He became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in February 2016, and is a founding member of the Temporal School of Experimental Geography, a collection of itinerant artists and researchers whose practices explore and advocate for artist-led fieldwork.
Elizabeth Rose teaches printmaking and photography at Hope, where she has been a member of the faculty since July 2023. She creates work which connects geographically disconnected landscapes focusing on their shared ecologies: how each site is connected through climactic shifts, soil qualities and habitat range. She has been an artist resident at Mount St. Helens National Monument in Washington; Terra Nova National Park in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada; and Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior near the border of Minnesota and Ontario, Canada; among others. A Fulbright Fellow for 2019-20, she traveled to Krakow, Poland, for a research grant in printmaking
Halima Afi Cassells is an interdisciplinary community-engaged artist based in Detroit whose work explores relationship-building, as well as the value and disposability of fashion and other objects, and their effect on the environment. She was awarded the 2023 Kresge Arts in Detroit fellowship for interdisciplinary art.
Terry Conrad is interested in the community and social aspects of printmaking. Conrad’s art preserves a moment in the life span of the materials and signals a new start. This responsive art process pulls objects from the environment into the production of the prints, making them inextricable from the final artwork.
To inquire about accessibility or if you need accommodations to fully participate in the event, please email accommodations@hope.edu. Updates related to events are posted when available at hope.edu/calendar in the individual listings.
The Jim and Martie Bultman Student Center is at 115 E. 12th St., at the center of the Hope campus between College and Columbia avenues along the former 12th Street. Schaap Auditorium is near the building’s southwest corner.
The Jack H. Miller Center for Musical Arts is located at 221 Columbia Ave., between Ninth and 10th streets.
The De Pree Art Center and Gallery is located at 275 Columbia Ave., between 10th and 13th streets.