The Biophilium's aquatic research began in 2017 with Quench, a weeklong field course on human relationships with water where we sailed, visited water treatment facilities and learned about shoreline ecosystems and the physics of water. The name changed to Submerge when we moved on line and focused on marine and freshwater biology.

We have had the pleasure of studying wild water with the following artists.

Click on images to see more about each artist.

Katie Hart Potapoff

Katie Hart Potapoff (She/Her) engages in a non-hierarchical approach through an interdisciplinary practice, working intuitively across processes and mediums such as drawing, installation, creative writing, fibre art, printmaking, metal casting, and clay sculpting. At the centre of her practice research is an exploration of the space in-between. She sees the creative process as an on-going and reciprocal dialogue; a liminal space of possibility to exchange ideas, shift perceptions, an invitation to inhabit a space that remains undefined.

Inspired by ideas of gathering, Potapoff’s recent work with fibre is an exploration into Ursula Le Guin’s essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, which borrows from anthropologist Elizabeth Fisher’s theory that the first ‘cultural tool’ was a gathering bag rather than a weapon. The organic fibre forms provide shallow depressions, pockets to hold gathered treasures. Some are empty, simply holding space, others enclose gold-leafed seeds.

Katie is currently completing her practice-led PhD at DJCAD, University of Dundee. She was recently awarded an Explore and Create grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to fund her residency on the Isle of Iona. Her website is www.katiehartpotapoff.com and she is on Instagram @hartofkatie

Cally Nurse, Newburgh Cupar, Scotland

I am obsessed with all things inter-tidal. For my recent Fine Art Masters at the University of Dundee I experimented with washed-up seaweed. Everyday and overlooked, I discovered that it is an extraordinary material. Neither plant nor animal, it is tough enough to stand up to crashing waves yet when dry it is sensitive to the slightest change in humidity. There are over 650 species around the UK coast and the increasingly warm sea is resulting in different species appearing.

People who have handled my seaweed creations describe them as 'intriguing', 'beautiful' and 'wonderful'. I make wearable pieces and sculptures by electroforming seaweed in copper, highlighting its intricate and varied shape and structure, transforming the ordinary to extraordinary.

Seaweed is one of the millions of companion species on the planet we need to engage with differently as a mode of collaborative survival. Wearing or displaying a piece of Sea Tang creates a direct connection to the diversity of marine life that thrives in the inter-tidal.

Hannah Rowan, London, UK

Hannah Rowan’s work explores the slippery complexities of water that draws together a liquid relationship between the human body and geological and ecological systems. She uses a range of media including sculpture, installation, performance, sound and video to explore the uncertain form of materials. She is informed by embodied research in remote environments such as the Atacama Desert and High Arctic. She is interested in exploring notions of bodies of water, vessels, animacy of matter and the temporal transformation of materials. Rowan is influenced by Hydrofeminist theory as a means for representing the interconnections of ecological systems, to chart the movement of water from the liveness of melting ice, across weather systems and within bodily fluids like sweat. Her work reflects on what it means to be intimately connected as Bodies of Water, layering a post-human feminist perspective on material science, embodiment and ecological collapse to challenge Anthropocentrism. She has an ongoing interest in working with submerged and embodied research methods, often working with hydrophones, tactile interactions and personal narrative, to understand water as a living archive. She has situated her research within the marginal ecosystem of mangroves, melting Arctic glaciers and fleeting interactions with water in the Atacama Desert, the driest non-polar desert on Earth.

Miriam Sagan, Santa Fe

     I am a poet, not a naturalist, but my poetry often creates a “map” of a place, incorporating geography, geology, archeology, ecology, natural history, memory, and perception. I am interested in borders, what earthworks artist Robert Smithson calls “The Slurb,” the collision between the human made and the wild.
       I recently completed a book entitled “Seven Places in America: A Poetic Sojourn.” It was published by Sherman Asher Press in fall, 2012. The seven places were the start of a journey to create a land-based or site-specific. poetry. It began in 2006,  as a writer-in-residence at Everglades National Park. The next place was THE LAND/An Art Site in Mountainair, New Mexico. I started with a long poem which then  result in a low-impact sculpture, a poetry pamphlet and postcard, and several lectures in galleries and academic settings. In 2009 I had a residency in Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. This Petrified Forest residency led directly to the production of a poetry postcard series of Three Views of the Painted Desert, which I donated to the park.   

Isabel Winson-Sagan, Santa Fe, New Mexico

A lot of my work lately has used the fleeting nature and movement of natural phenomena, such as water. I’m very influenced by the land art of the Southwestern United States, and have done several installation pieces that were designed to degrade. I also use water and ink to print unique abstract art in a process called “suminagashi.”

Meg Nicks, Alberta

As a visual artist, the intricate details of nature are captivating. Natureʼs flow and rhythms and the interconnectivity of its patterns and design are subjects for art. The mountain environment is my major focus, an apparently solid, but infinitely changeable environment, where life, tough yet fragile, prospers in a severe world. We must look closely to appreciate all that is here. Flowers, mosses, lichen. The black patterns on aspen trees. Salamanders and seeds. Even the rusting of artifacts left behind.

Microscopy brings what is invisible to our attention. This has always interested me.
Diatoms, trilobites, the Burgess Shale creatures and views through the microscope. To
be able to photograph and have access to what is often unseen or simply unnoticed would be inspirational and assist in building my personal photographic library for use in collage.

Wendy Parlow, Ottawa, Canada

The world is changing around us. Art is my vehicle to explore some of the major issues we face. It is also a way to engage with others into the discussion. In the early days of the pandemic my focus was on the detrimental impact of COVID19 on women. My current focus is water, in its many forms, and the various roles it plays in our life’s. 

Beth Shepard, Ottawa, Ontario

I am an Ottawa-based visual artist working photography, video, sculpture, printmaking, drawing and painting. For over a decade I focused on the representation of animals in art, especially animals in the industrialized food production system.  With the pandemic, I shifted my attention to my immediate environment – the shores of the Ottawa River. I realized that the destructive impacts of the human species on nature are everywhere. 

I have an MA in Art History, a BA in Psychology and a BSc in Biology, which provide me a variety of tools and perspectives for carrying out my research-based art practice. I explore the ecocritical constructs of “landscape” and “nature,” reflecting on how art can both hide and reveal environmental truths. My intention is to overcome natural tendencies to euphemize or forget the damaging environmental impacts of extractive colonialism, urban development, overconsumption and waste, and our continued dependence on fossil fuels and novel entities polluting the biosystem.

Some recent projects include Littorally Speaking: A Coffee Table Book; Plastic Shores, a print series depicting dead shore birds; Shoreline Lost and Found, a time-lapse video with spoken text; waste plastic sculpture, and print studies of endangered local species, like eels and turtles, and paleo-extinction.

Gail Bourgeois, Gatineau, Quebec

Five years ago, with an artist partner, I began working seasonally and in relation to bodies of waterwithin the bioregion of the Outaouais and Ottawa River watershed. We move from placeto place, listening to and learning from both the natural world and human activity. Through a feminist lens this practice shifts personal grief into agency. I am enthralled by the activity where water meets land. Shoreline encounters guide my thinking about how I might visually interpret these liminal places where rhizomes meet wildlife in the more-than-human complexity of natural systems.

Ashley Feagin, Battle Creek, Michigan

Ashley Feagin explores stories through photographs, installations, performances, and collaborations. Feagin’s work stems from an endless stream of internal questions. Feagin’s curiosities are filtered through her queer identity and Southern upbringing; she reimagines failure and questions all possibilities by embracing any medium that makes the most sense.

Currently, Feagin’s work is featured in a traveling two-person exhibition entitled “We Are Overwhelmed” featuring Feagin and artist Libby Rowe as they explore the dissolving walls between motherhood, their profession as caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Notably, Feagin has presented lectures for the Society for Photographic Education at both their regional and national conferences. Feagin received her BA in Photography from McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana in 2009 and received her MFA at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana in the spring of 2012. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Albion College in Albion, Michigan.

2019

Field Expeditions

Shelly Smith, Expedition Leader
Washington DC

My paintings are based on microscopic life I find in water samples taken from all over the world. My process includes collecting water samples, documenting the site locations, and observing the contents with a laboratory microscope. I work both from direct live observation as well as from a series of videos and pictures I record via my microscope camera.

The work I produce is inspired by the tradition of scientific illustration and popular decorative motifs. Done in pen and ink with gouache washes, the illustrated paintings reflect the protozoa, diatoms, algae, and other microscopic life that lives in abundance, hidden from the naked eye but a vital part of our living world. The jewel like beauty of microorganisms sparkles through in glistening colors and metallic sheen, with bold line work reflecting the outlines of these small creatures under a slide.

Sophie Durbin, Minneapolis

I am a multidisciplinary artist and curator interested in places, spaces and the body. I am inspired by the infinite capabilities – and horrors – of the nervous system. Other interests that inform my artistic practice include the study of lakes and tides, science-based somatic approaches to massage/bodywork/dance, modern vernacular architecture, medieval art history and idle walks. I have lived in Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and currently reside in Minnesota. The landscapes/cityscapes of the Midwest and Great Lakes play a significant part in my work. Ongoing projects include installations and performances situated in the fictional town of Corrty Pye, Michigan and activities & exhibitions at Pancake House, a multipurpose art space in Minneapolis, where I am developing an Early Spring Haptics Lab. The lab will be a series of experimental programs concerning interaction through touch. I am in the preliminary stages of development for a series of programs on limnology in the summer.

Jamie Ramsay, Chicago

My work combines photography, leatherwork, documentation and natural dying.  My photographic work has focused on the traditional cultures and their arts, sustainable and natural living, and the sustainable food movement.   Since picking up leather craft in the past few years, I’ve become increasingly interested in utilization of organic materials as a return to sustainable production of everyday goods.  I seek to resurrect traditional techniques that phase out environmentally pernicious materials like plastic and make use of materials from the earth.  Creating bags, housewares and functional goods from leather, cork and cotton has become an extension of my artistic practice as a photographer and documentarian.

In 2017, I went to Sweden to learn old world, organic techniques for tanning fish skin.  Fish skin tanning is an old craft that waned in popularity for many reasons, including its connotation of being a necessity for the poor, in lean, pre-war times.   However, it’s a less land-taxing form of leather, equal in strength to bovine leather, which also makes use of food production waste material.  Its sustainability has been a focus of my work in the last year.  I would like to research the aquatic environment to inform fish tanning and expand my work in more closed loop systems of creation that make beautiful, responsible and utilitarian materials from the sea.

Jennifer Croney Chernak, Philadelphia

Painting for me is similar to a contemplative hike, where attention to footing and vistas stretch my thoughts away from the busyness of everyday happenings. My landscape paintings are done outside, and my still lifes include the outdoors as seen through a window. My subject matter can include wind, heat, cold, rain, and sunlight -- all of which are of an essence not as solid as a tree or rock. This along with a bold use of color and energetic lines add an abstract feel to my work. Through my paintings, I honor fresh air and the freedom of expressing without formulas and the noise of technology. I begin a painting by establishing general shapes and gestures to show movement. Each layer of acrylic paint records moments in terms of light, shadows, and impacts from weather. The accumulation of layers reflects the passage of time. In the final stages of each painting, I make adjustments that become my emotional imprint. Such changes can include calming a space or adding definition to bring forth an area. The painting evolves and becomes a representation of the entanglement of nature and personal intention.

Susan Murrell, Oregon

My creative practice has recently focused on the universal and personal process of experiencing presence through absence— a struggle to know a thing from the hole it has left behind after it is gone. I am interested in finding fullness in the void and recognizing meaning or purpose in the space between. Considering the moral/cultural implications of negative and positive space(s) I aim to confuse the two. It is perhaps a small shift in perspective, but it has become an important inversion for me.

My work explores how our concept of landscape has changed through technology. The horizon traditionally defined our relationship to the world; now with our expanding perspective, we feel a kinship with microscopic images and aerial views of planets. Vestiges of built environments, architecture, or even graphic design and remnants of popular culture have been added to our visual language and create for us a sense of place. In this context, I consider myself a landscape painter.

Sidi Chen, Vancouver

 I was born on the shoreline of southeastern China by the Pacific and raised up among the Fuquan people –the people of “Giving back to the water from where we harvest”. Water has thus become the material of home, the habitat of the soul, and inspiration of art for me.  I’ve been travelling transcontinental the past 10 years, along the Pacific coasts, across Canada to the Atlantic Ocean, paddling down the Yukon River, and over hundreds of ponds, rivers, and lakes. Everywhere I go, I am drawn to the mythologies, tales, customs, rituals, knowledge, studies, and environmental issues of the water resources and the human and non-human communities. For me, water is the physical body that reflects the states of cultures and well beings of the residents in its watershed territories.

As a body archiving artist who uses the body as the unit of measurements, the device of receptions, storage of experiences, and translator of arts, I take every chance to throw myself into the water and merge into its system. I desire to learn its language, tempers, emotions, and the relationship between water and the creatures of its nurturing.

Barbara Bushey, Michigan

My work is an exploration of what is hidden and what is revealed—whether in a visual, emotional or historical sense. Working with layers, both physically and visually, allows me to explore this complexity.

In making quilts inspired by the Great Lakes, I used ancient shibori techniques to create images of rocks and water. The repetitive motions required of the techniques echo the repetitive motions of the Great Lake’s waves hitting the shore. The infinite variety of each unique wave and stitch is absorbed into the constant and enduring whole.

I am very excited to learn more about water, in all its different forms, and in the ways others interact with this precious resource. Water is life.

2018

Field Expeditions

Raimundo Nenen, Chile

After the publication of my first book of poetry at age 16, I crossed out my authorship
and disappeared behind multiple heteronyms, getting involved in various art and
everyday life collective projects. I celebrated the immanence writing poems and
drawing with chalk in the walls just before the rain. The artist dissolves in his art
and the art dissolves in the world. Worldly Art.

Draw attention to the alienation of human culture in general, and art in particular,
from our world (Earth); and to the consequences of this alienation. Rebind the
human body and culture with its territories. Bioregionalism as art. The exploration
of ourselves, our bodies, as geofacts: Intemperización.

And pornomancy: the dissolution of the fundamental binary categories of alienation
(and the imperial politics): the public and the private, through the intímate. To
intímate. To intimídate.

Ivetta Sunyoung Kang, Montreal

A phenomenon of being caught in-between the present and the past. This is what I essentially represent within durational art forms, mostly moving images. I am interested in visual transformation of ordinary objects and scapes into the state of being abstract as a lucid dream. It paradoxically awakens the linear perception of viewers and myself. The banal-becoming-abstract of video-making revitalizes the past moments captured in moving images in a site where audiences meet the pieces. Audiences’ imagination subjectively recreates the opaque imagery of what my own durational realm stimulates, based on their past and present.

With the long-existing values in my artworks, I have recently been shifting to be interested in
the decomposition of materials. Since a human perception is held by the way of seeing which I would call subjective framing, the ideas of reframing and recomposing my visuals as objective materials have been my major experimental subjects. Even though moving-images end up being caught in the audiovisual world, a single moving-image seizes potentials to turn into different substances as shown by an individual. In another word, there is no solid moving-image for my artistic belief that the dead moving-image is surely capable of returning alive in potential ways.

Allison Hunter, Houston TX

In my work the camera becomes a writing tool that records daily activities as a way to reference memories and poetic moments in time. I insert these moments into my work through video editing techniques and through projecting onto interior and exterior spaces as well as objects. In my past, I have presented my videos in a variety of ways, including guerrilla-style night projections, site-specific outdoor installations, and as part of a collaborative performance.

My interest in the “Submerged” residency stems from a new artistic focus on water, including the scarcity of drinking water and the effects of natural disasters such as flooding. Last fall, I lived through the effects that Hurricane Harvey had on the people, pets, and infrastructure of the city of Houston. I am planning a new series of video projections dealing with the trauma of that experience.

Kathryn Cooke, Alberta

As a long standing resident of the mountain community of Canmore, Alberta, as well as residing in the Columbia Valley Wetlands, outdoor spaces and in particular, the water systems of the Bow River and Columbia River, are exceedingly important to me. The subjects I choose to depict in my art are thus largely mined from these natural environments. My current artwork is also greatly influenced by my affinity for textiles. My drawing based works of art are painterly in the application of material however conceptually I am interested in weaving elements of our natural world together within a composition. The weave with its ins and outs, as well as its ups and downs, is a metaphor of life. The weaving together of different elements of life allows me to introduce a dialogue of relationships.
Water is critical to the existence of life. Life, whether plant or animal, human or other-than-human, is molded and shaped by the presence or absence of water. My  work  depicts relationships that living beings have with water and how our lives are intertwined and dependent on it.  I have explored this relationship using a variety of media including fiber  works,  mixed media and video/sound. At this critical time in our earthly existence, I feel strongly regarding all of our roles in preserving and protecting the health of our life giving water systems. My work thus extends beyond the immediate visual aesthetic to conceptual ideas of our relationships with the natural world.  

Lauren Ruiz, New York

Lauren Ruiz is a research based multimedia artist addressing ecological contamination and the corrosive effects of human activity. She is currently focusing on the amount of artificial materials that exist with human cells, and human adaptation and evolution in the age of the Anthropocene.

Ruiz’s work analyzes the social, biological and political effects of non biodegradable materials. Working within a climate fiction, specifically under the guise of a fictive corporation GLEI Inc. (Genetic Laboratories of Evolutionary Investment), she comments on the toxicity of our societal livelihood and the question of what occurs within the human body as a result. Ruiz hopes to provide an experience that questions the current state of the environmental and social climate through global and personal relationships to plastic. Her climate fiction based installation projects incorporate participatory and interactive elements that allow the audience to question their own role in the environmental downfall and what it means for the evolutionary future of humanity.

Miles Brokenshire, Toronto

Miles Brokenshire is a visual artist currently living in Toronto. He specializes in large format photography and capturing the performing arts. His view on the inherent spontaneity of movement blends into the nature of our surroundings, whether man--‐made or natural. What is often left behind in nature ends up becoming the lone dancer in the wind, in a constant state of change. We live in the moment of our contemporary existence.

2017

Field Expeditions

Betty Kirschenman, Alberta

I am the granddaughter of homesteaders on the prairies, living in the community they worked to establish over a century ago and appreciation of this land is an integral part of my art. Golds and earth tones, the colours of the prairies, are often overwhelmed by the blue drama of the enormous sky.  Transparency of watercolour is especially well suited for capturing the clarity of light, whether on land, sky or water.

Southeastern Alberta is in the Palliser Triangle, the driest part of Canadian prairies, originally labeled “uninhabitable” due to the arid conditions. With the exception of the South Saskatchewan River, the only water in our area consists of spring runoff, dugouts, wells and mostly alkali sloughs.  In the midst of fields and sandhills, the unexpected ruggedness of river breaks and coulees comes as a complete surprise. For some reason, “the river”, is almost always lurking in my art.  When I travel, I want to be near, on and in water, as well as paint it.   Why does water have such an allure for a prairie girl?  Absence?  Unpredictability?  Unfamiliarity?   Potential?  Reflections?  Power?  Colour?  Danger?  I would love to explore those questions! 

Edwina Cooper, Australia

As a sailor, a boat is the mediator for my oceanic experience. My practice is sustained by an interest in the relationship and interactions of human and oceanic space. The motivator of this investigation remains my sailing practice, as a method for experiencing the ocean. The threshold of air and water presents itself to us as oceanic surface, and it is my intention to consider how we engage with and quantify this otherwise foreign space. 
The focus of my practice has encapsulated our sustained attempts at fathoming oceanic space through measure and control, contributing to my understanding of oceanic phenomena. Through my practice as a sailor, I have identified the boat to be the mediator of my oceanic experience. The act of sailing, as well as its materiality, informs an intimate and embodied understanding of oceanic space. The work produced through this process is ‘rigged’, as a human response of control through relevant systems (such as forecasting and mapping), as comparable generalised quantitative documents of the uncontrollable.

I begin my work by drawing the shapes and markings from objects directly in nature.   I then take initial drawings back into studio, working from memory, imagination, photos and notes I have taken onsite until the drawings feel right.  Growing up in West Virginia, USA I spent time as a child fascinated by mountains, streams, creeks and rivers.  Canoeing, kayaking and white water rafting, the culture of landscape is a part of my being.  As an adult I get my water “fix” by swimming.  Recently I have been attempting to open water in the ocean at Brighton Beach.  The movement, color, light and fluidity, ephemerality of water fascinate me.  Capturing color, and movement through paint and light is my job as a painter.  Understanding nature and living outdoors affects my working process and helps me channel something outside of myself.  The body of work contained in the attached images were inspired by my time at an artist residency in New Orleans.  While at this residency I took kayaking trips to learn about the waterways of New Orleans and drew from the vast array of tropical plant life.  A past research project on color was done through a Fulbright Scholar grant in the Republic of Georgia.  I used rocks and plants from the landscape in the Republic of Georgia to make pigment.   Meeting other artists, scientists, writers and poets at artist residencies is also crucial to my development as an artist as it feeds and expands my working process.

Quench
August 2016

Krista Hoeppner Leahy,  NYC

I write about longing and transformation, in all its forms, and hope to catch the edge of the unexpected so that the reader might experience their own eddy of transformation.

The Quench residence feels vital and necessary to me as water, its use, and conflict over its use has never been more important in our world.  Specifically, I am working on a novel where how water connects the inhabitants and lands is central to the story.

I am expanding my previously published story "Killing Curses, a Caught-Heart Quest" into a novel.  The story is a mythopoetic fable combining established archetypal characters (a Quixote, a Midas) with new archetypal characters (a curse-killer, a walking tree).  The world features a dipping pool, waterfall, aqueduct, and ice geyser as some of the entry-points between lands.

Shu-Ju Wang, Portland

My work has largely been about the profound and sometimes catastrophic transformations of our lives. Since 2013, I have focused on the subject of water— water as giver of life, as identity, as tools for industrialization and exploration, as dumping ground, as power.
Work includes Water, a collaborative artist’s book of two poems with poet Emily Newberry; The Future Dictionary of Water, an on-going community engagement project; two solo exhibits of paintings & mixed media work, FLUID DYNAMICS in 2014 and IMBUE/IMBUERE in 2016. In 2015, I introduced Dictionary in the annual THE RECYCLED RAIN PROJECT where I invited the community to invent and define new words for our future relationship with water. IMBUE/IMBUERE included the work completed thus far, plus 2- & 3- dimensional work about life on the boundary of land and water. The community participation for Dictionary will continue through 2017 and will culminate in a book (an illustrated dictionary). Imbue––to saturate with meaning—derives from the Latin imbuere—to saturate with water. What can be more saturated with meaning than water? Life can not exist without it, thus all meaning in life is dependent upon it.