Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist: Margaret LeJeune

Mike Kamm Author

03/14/2025 Added

2 Plays

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Photographer Margaret LeJeune's creative practice explores the relationship between art, science, and environmental studies. As a lens-based creator, she produces works that probe shifting landscapes, symbiotic relationships, and the nature of the photographic medium. The School of Art, Art History & Design’s Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist & Scholar Lecture Series brings notable artists, scholars and designers to Nebraska each semester to enhance the education of students. The series is presented in collaboration with Sheldon Museum of Art.

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[00:00:00.000]I'm Dana Fritz, Hickson-Leed Professor of Art in the School of Art, Art History and Design,
[00:00:09.660]and I have to tell you that it's my great pleasure to introduce Margaret Lejeune,
[00:00:15.360]an artist whose work I have admired for years. Margaret's creative practice explores the
[00:00:22.000]relationship between art, science, and environmental studies. As a lens-based creator,
[00:00:27.000]she produces works that probe shifting landscapes, symbiotic relationships,
[00:00:31.420]and the nature of the photographic medium. In 2023, she was named the Woman Science
[00:00:38.360]Photographer of the Year by the Royal Photographic Society. Her photographs,
[00:00:44.160]installations, and video works have appeared in over 150 solo and group exhibitions
[00:00:49.000]nationally and internationally. She's been an artist-in-residence at several programs
[00:00:54.240]that promote collaboration between the arts and science,
[00:00:56.980]including the Changing Climate Residency at Santa Fe Art Institute,
[00:01:01.900]University of Wisconsin-Madison's Trout Lake Research Station, University of Notre Dame
[00:01:08.500]Environmental Research Center, Ives Lake Field Station at Huron Mountain Wildlife Foundation,
[00:01:14.600]where we were there together, and the Global Pneumatic Art Project. She's been the recipient
[00:01:20.840]of two Puffin Foundation Visual Artist Grants in 2014 and 2022,
[00:01:25.560]a Community Art Center, and a Global Pneumatic Art Project.
[00:01:26.960]She received an Arts Foundation Grant in 2018, and an Arkansas Artist Council Sally A. Williams
[00:01:31.800]Artist Grant in 2011. And she is a 2526 Cummings resident at the Griffin Museum of Photography.
[00:01:39.720]So new, it did not get on to my paper here. Margaret received her MFA from Visual Studies
[00:01:46.640]Workshop, and she is a founding member of the Women's Environmental Photography Collective,
[00:01:52.080]and the Vice Chair of the Society for Photographic Education, two organizations of
[00:01:56.920]which I am also a member. And I'm incredibly grateful for her work. And please join me
[00:02:03.600]in welcoming Margaret.
[00:02:05.040]See, can you hear me? Okay, great. Give me just a second to click this on.
[00:02:26.880]Okay, I'm going to put it here, but if I wildly gesticulate, I may have to pick it up off
[00:02:31.140]the floor. So, okay. I also have to change out of my regular glasses to my 45 plus glasses
[00:02:40.840]so I can see my notes.
[00:02:43.620]Well, thank you, Dana and Randy and our department for inviting me to campus to be here to give
[00:02:49.600]this lecture today. The title of my talk is Landscapes, Mirror and Matter. And during
[00:02:56.300]our time
[00:02:56.840]today, I will share with you how landscape has been a source of inspiration, a place
[00:03:02.160]of investigation and a means to generate conversation in my practice. I'm going to begin by sharing
[00:03:08.840]some past projects that will help illustrate the trajectory of my place based research
[00:03:14.700]and then share with you my current project, which is called 13 Hours to Fall, which is
[00:03:19.120]a work in progress.
[00:03:21.740]The first series I'm going to share with you is actually a portrait project about women
[00:03:26.800]hunters, which helped me to consider the complex relationship between women, hunting,
[00:03:32.220]and the land.
[00:03:36.280]So in the Modern Day Diana series, I explore issues of cultural and social norms while
[00:03:41.700]examining women's relationship to nature and violence.
[00:03:46.440]These images of female hunters inform and destabilize assumptions about hunting culture,
[00:03:54.040]normative constructions of gender, and the history of race.
[00:03:56.760]I began this series shortly after moving from Western New York to Arkansas for my first
[00:04:04.600]tenure-track teaching position.
[00:04:07.420]Many of my students were hunters who would hunt before class, arriving in the studios
[00:04:12.680]in camo and smelling like forest in their hair.
[00:04:17.060]I began to have conversations with these women about their experiences of hunting and soon
[00:04:22.140]began to create portraits of them in their homes and their hunting lodges.
[00:04:26.720]This project grew to include women across the United States who taught me about the
[00:04:33.600]many subcultures within hunting.
[00:04:36.760]The women who posed for me represented a wide range of hunters, from substance hunters who
[00:04:42.560]used every part of the animal as a way to honor the land, to big game hunters who traveled
[00:04:49.400]to Africa to bring home prize trophies such as the zebra in the photograph in the woman
[00:04:55.520]on the right.
[00:04:56.680]And then everything in between.
[00:05:00.100]Laura on the left, she was a student at the College of Environmental Science and Forestry
[00:05:05.380]in Syracuse, New York, who was taking a course in taxidermy, and she agreed to sit for me,
[00:05:11.860]but only if she could work on her school project while we were making the photograph.
[00:05:17.200]And this was quite a shock to me because I started setting up my lights, I'm shooting
[00:05:21.520]with a big four by five camera that you pull a dark cloth over your head, and I'm setting
[00:05:26.640]strobe lights, and she comes in and she says, "I hope you're not sensitive to smells."
[00:05:31.600]And she brings in a frozen deer head from outdoors and then begins to walk me through
[00:05:38.100]the taxidermy process, and as we are working under those hot strobe lights, the deer head
[00:05:45.000]is slowly thawing, we'll say.
[00:05:48.700]It was a very interesting experience.
[00:05:51.760]So over the years of recording these women through formal portraits, as you see here,
[00:05:56.600]and hours of conversation, I found myself thinking very deeply about the entanglements
[00:06:02.100]between humans and the environment.
[00:06:06.560]In 2023, my partner and I bought a blue water sailboat.
[00:06:11.000]That's a boat that can cross oceans.
[00:06:13.740]We've spent a good part of the last decade living aboard the boat, and my project Growing
[00:06:19.860]Light that you see here developed out of a particularly intense sailing experience on
[00:06:24.720]the Chesapeake Bay.
[00:06:26.560]After a long day sail from Annapolis down to Solomon's Island, we dropped the hook and
[00:06:32.460]got into our dinghy.
[00:06:33.680]And a dinghy is the small boat that takes you from the big boat to shore, kind of like
[00:06:38.440]a car.
[00:06:39.900]And we were going out for a celebratory dinner at the local Tiki Hut.
[00:06:43.740]Yes, there's a Tiki Hut in Maryland.
[00:06:46.560]I promise it exists.
[00:06:49.120]And when we started the engine to the dinghy, fireworks seemed to ignite from under the
[00:06:56.520]water.
[00:06:57.760]And as we drove to shore, this light display trailed behind the wake of the boat, and I
[00:07:02.260]was enamored.
[00:07:04.480]Fast forward a year, and we went back to the same location because I wanted to see if I
[00:07:08.280]could find this sea sparkle happening again, but it wasn't there.
[00:07:12.980]Thus began an interdisciplinary project in which I consulted with marine biologists in
[00:07:18.540]order to learn about bioluminescent organisms, how they affect the water, and how humans
[00:07:24.180]might affect them.
[00:07:26.480]I reached out to Dr. Edie Witter, who's a MacArthur Fellow and the founder of the Orca
[00:07:31.080]Institute, to see if she would meet with me to discuss my project.
[00:07:35.880]She shared with me her recipe for creating saltwater in the lab and techniques for culturing
[00:07:41.840]these very finicky organisms in the studio.
[00:07:46.260]The work we are viewing here is a triptych called Watershed Triptych.
[00:07:52.160]In this work, I use the light of bioluminescent organisms to illuminate
[00:07:56.440]USGS hydrology maps of the three largest agricultural watersheds in the United States.
[00:08:04.260]It is at the outflow of these watersheds that red tide events occur, and they've been happening
[00:08:09.380]in more frequency recently.
[00:08:12.440]Red tide is the name of unhealthy algal blooms which create enormous fish kills, pungent
[00:08:17.960]and harmful odors along the shore, together wreaking havoc on fishing and tourist industries
[00:08:24.540]and local populations.
[00:08:26.400]Scientists have determined that the cause of these increased red tide events can be
[00:08:32.340]excessive nutrients from runoff of large factory farming operations.
[00:08:38.380]In the United States, we're experiencing larger and more frequent hurricanes and storms, and
[00:08:44.460]the byproducts of these is that the storms are taking the large factory farming operation
[00:08:50.920]nutrients and washing them down the rivers and the streams and eventually out to the
[00:08:55.360]oceans.
[00:08:56.360]And so, this project was the first in a series of images that I used bioluminescent organisms
[00:09:02.740]as indicator species to discuss climate change.
[00:09:06.740]And as Dana mentioned, in 2023, I was awarded the Woman Science Photographer of the Year
[00:09:11.280]Award from the Royal Photographic Society for this work.
[00:09:17.360]Here are two additional cross-species collaborations with bioluminescent organisms.
[00:09:23.300]In this work, I'm relying on the help of fireflies.
[00:09:26.320]Firefly sightings have dropped precipitously over the last decade, both in terms of location
[00:09:39.080]and individual numbers.
[00:09:41.720]The noticeable absence of these glowing beacons in our hedgerows and our bushes and our prairie
[00:09:47.420]fields is a stark reminder of the unseen number of species lost due to pesticide use, habitat
[00:09:55.280]loss,
[00:09:56.280]pollution, industrialization, and agricultural intensification.
[00:10:02.600]To make this work, I very carefully trap fireflies at dusk in a box with a piece of large format
[00:10:09.840]film.
[00:10:11.100]And over the course of a few hours, the fireflies record their unique flashing pattern on the
[00:10:17.000]film before I release them.
[00:10:20.100]Upon closer inspection, the image on the left shows a multiplicity of wings that you can
[00:10:24.960]see.
[00:10:26.240]Over several antennae that are overlapped, and the image on the right-hand side curiously
[00:10:31.700]captures dozens of pairs of legs traversing over the surface of the film while the scene
[00:10:38.820]is being lit up with these brilliant bursts of green light.
[00:10:43.940]In creating these works, I hope to generate conversations about real-time changes occurring
[00:10:48.420]in our ecosystems.
[00:10:50.400]As an artist, I know that visual works can open dialogues with larger audiences that
[00:10:56.200]the scientific community sometimes may not be able to reach.
[00:11:02.140]In 2018, I was invited to be an artist-in-residence at the University of Notre Dame's Environmental
[00:11:07.880]Research Center.
[00:11:09.820]While I was there, I developed a series called Shifting Halo, which examines how climate
[00:11:14.640]change and logging practices are impacting the boreal forest.
[00:11:19.240]This woodland biome, also known as the Emerald Halo, circles the northern portion of the
[00:11:24.160]globe.
[00:11:26.160]Historic works draw attention to the damage caused by clearcutting, including the release
[00:11:30.420]of carbon stored in soil and trees, and the destruction of resident bird habitat.
[00:11:37.120]In the image on the left, I superimpose the visualized sound waves of a recorded call
[00:11:42.140]of the boreal chickadee over a photograph of the boreal forest with a road marker to
[00:11:47.400]signify the human presence and the silencing of the avian species in this shifting place.
[00:11:53.860]On the right side is a forest just outside.
[00:11:56.120]Outside of the environmental research center that has been clear cut by a local timber
[00:12:00.540]operation.
[00:12:04.300]In looking at the scientific literature, including climate maps, I learned that the boreal chickadee
[00:12:08.980]is facing loss of habitat for several reasons.
[00:12:12.360]First, logging is felling trees at a rate that we cannot replace.
[00:12:17.200]And second, our warming planet is forcing the boreal forest to march northward.
[00:12:22.960]The trees are literally shifting north, leaving a diminished habitat.
[00:12:26.080]For many creatures, together, these impacts have resulted in a population decline of the
[00:12:31.700]boreal chickadee by 15 to 20% between 1966 and 2019.
[00:12:39.140]Ornithologists project that the species will shift mostly out of the lower 48 as the climate
[00:12:43.680]continues to warm.
[00:12:46.340]On the left, we have an image of the landscape that has been marked for calling.
[00:12:50.320]And on the right, a photograph of one of the specimen shelves at the Environmental Research
[00:12:56.040]Center.
[00:12:57.100]The bird nest resting near the mousetrap seemed like a telling metaphor for our warming planet.
[00:13:06.060]Landscape photography crosses into many areas of discourse, such as environmental concerns,
[00:13:12.020]national identity, historical narratives, and myriad social and political issues.
[00:13:18.380]Landscape does not simply depict how we relate to the environment, but how we relate to one
[00:13:22.500]another.
[00:13:23.660]It is a field of research that is inherently
[00:13:26.000]interdisciplinary and intersectional.
[00:13:30.680]In my current project, 13 Hours to Fall, I examine the climate crisis through investigations
[00:13:36.100]of contemporary and future ghost forests on the Mid-Atlantic coast.
[00:13:41.200]Ghost forests, which are areas of dead and dying trees, are visible manifestations of
[00:13:46.980]the intrusion of saltwater.
[00:13:49.500]In this project, I consider how colonial capitalists, the ensuing extraction economy, and rising
[00:13:55.960]sea levels have dramatically changed this landscape over the last 400 years.
[00:14:02.380]According to Deborah Bright, landscape is not an open field of ideological neutrality.
[00:14:07.640]Rather, it is an historical construction that can be viewed as a record of material facts
[00:14:13.800]of our social reality and what we make of them.
[00:14:17.400]Whether it's aesthetic merits, I'm sorry, whatever its aesthetic merits, every representation
[00:14:22.440]of landscape is also a record of human values.
[00:14:25.920]And actions imposed on land over time, beauty, preservation, development, exploitation,
[00:14:35.000]regulation, these are historical matters in flux, not essential conditions of the landscape.
[00:14:42.640]If we are to make photographs that raise questions or assertions about what is in and around
[00:14:48.240]the picture, we must consider this action to landscape, right?
[00:14:53.040]Not in the sense of beautifying your lawn or the town square.
[00:14:55.880]But rather, the process involved in representation.
[00:15:00.080]Photographs are, in a sense, composing images of not only what lies before our eyes, but
[00:15:04.880]also what resides in our consciousness.
[00:15:09.600]This project is interdisciplinary and intersectional at its core, informed by environmental history,
[00:15:15.800]including the marginalization of indigenous peoples and the appropriations of their lands,
[00:15:20.820]as well as the imprint of slavery and white supremacy in this region.
[00:15:25.840]Timber industries, plantation farming, and climate change have extensively altered this
[00:15:30.740]region.
[00:15:32.460]Results of this shifting landscape include massive tree deaths, diminished carbon storage
[00:15:37.120]and biodiversity, and critical impacts on the local community.
[00:15:42.060]The cultural and historical geographer, D.W.
[00:15:45.600]Mining, in his essay, "The Beholding Eye," espouses that landscape is not all things
[00:15:50.320]to all people, but a highly differentiated discourse on representing space.
[00:15:55.800]In his essay, he lays out that there is not a single interpretation of the human relationship
[00:16:00.320]to the land, but instead one might view the landscape as a place for development, while
[00:16:05.360]another sees it as a place for preservation or a puzzle of intricately connected systems.
[00:16:11.440]Through 10 different examples, Mining argues that one's perception of the landscape is
[00:16:16.140]intimately connected to our cultural, social, political, and economic positions.
[00:16:23.500]So what is my position?
[00:16:25.760]My perspective as a sailor privileges me with a unique perspective as an aquatic dweller.
[00:16:33.000]My interest in this region developed out of numerous sailing trips through the area.
[00:16:37.580]I've spent a significant amount of time navigating the northern Atlantic Ocean from Maine to
[00:16:41.920]the Caribbean.
[00:16:43.800]While sailing the intercoastal waterway, which is a human engineered channel that allows
[00:16:47.920]boats to transit from Virginia to Florida, I was really struck by the amount of dead
[00:16:53.000]and dying trees in North Carolina.
[00:16:55.720]The map on the left hand side here shows the two waterway routes through North Carolina,
[00:17:01.700]and the image on the right hand side is from a fellow sailor that shows the sometimes narrow
[00:17:06.260]dredged channels that you can sail through in this intercoastal waterway.
[00:17:12.560]The map on the left here shows a close up of the area in which I'm working, which is
[00:17:17.500]called Dare County, which is right here.
[00:17:23.080]It's located just inside the Outer Banks.
[00:17:25.680]It's adjacent to Roanoke Island.
[00:17:28.040]A large portion of this area is contained within the Alligator River National Wildlife
[00:17:32.660]Refuge.
[00:17:34.340]The map on the right hand side shows the ghost forest in this area.
[00:17:39.220]And I want to mention that though I'm focusing on this particular region, ghost forests have
[00:17:44.020]been popping up all along the Atlantic seaboard from Connecticut all the way down to Louisiana.
[00:17:51.940]Over the last 40 years, this region has experienced a monumental ecosystem.
[00:17:55.640]Ecological shift.
[00:17:58.000]The two images here show the loss of the healthy forest, which is in green, from 1985 on the
[00:18:04.100]left to 2019 in this Albemarle-Pamlico Sound Peninsula.
[00:18:12.660]So I began the project in 2018 seeking ways to physically manifest my experiences in the
[00:18:18.300]ghost forest through a marriage of materiality and process.
[00:18:23.060]I began making salted paper prints.
[00:18:25.600]You see here using brackish water collected from within the swampy landscapes.
[00:18:31.100]And so I would use this combination of salty brackish water combined with silver nitrate
[00:18:36.420]to coat the surface of the paper and expose my images.
[00:18:40.840]And the salted paper process is an early photographic process that was the first one that could
[00:18:46.240]create reproducible photographic images.
[00:18:50.340]It's often attributed to William Henry Fox Talbot, and I decided to incorporate this
[00:18:55.560]salt printing method because of its intrinsic link to the sea, but also as a nod to 19th
[00:19:01.800]century landscape photographers.
[00:19:04.060]However, in contrast to some of those early image makers who sought a sort of permanent
[00:19:10.060]proof of ownership and power over the land through fixed photographic evidence, I embrace
[00:19:16.560]the impurities and the fluctuating salt levels in the water, which means I'm intentionally
[00:19:22.260]creating unstable and nonarchival images.
[00:19:25.520]So, this intentional destabilization of the image helps to sort of emphasize the continually
[00:19:33.020]shifting understanding about this environment, and I'm trying to ask the viewer to confront
[00:19:38.180]the myths surrounding photographic representations of place.
[00:19:44.020]Over the last six years, I have literally immersed myself in this salty landscape.
[00:19:49.020]I have photographed well-sailing, well-cultivated landscape, and I have photographed beautiful
[00:19:55.480]while hiking, kayaking, driving, wading through miles of marshy terrain and swamp.
[00:20:03.420]This direct observation has allowed me to use all of my senses, the smells, the touches,
[00:20:09.660]the hearing, right, to map out the swamp and to bear witness to this ever-shifting place.
[00:20:16.920]In addition to the ground truthing, I've mined documents from a variety of sources, including
[00:20:22.640]the Outer Banks Historical Society, NOAA.
[00:20:25.440]Several of the North Carolina University Library systems, the Alligator River National
[00:20:32.000]Wildlife Refuge, North Carolina King Tides Project, and the David Rumsey Map Collection.
[00:20:40.700]These scientific and historical documents have helped me to weave a timeline of change
[00:20:45.400]in the landscape that draws on human stewardship, geological shifts, and hydrological activity.
[00:20:53.440]In this image here, which is titled "Map Lines,"
[00:20:55.400]I began by capturing the landscape with a medium format digital camera.
[00:21:00.400]I then layer the digital image with an image of an early map from the 17th century.
[00:21:07.400]This juxtaposition asks the viewers to consider the ways in which landscapes are named,
[00:21:12.400]how ownership defines our relationship to place, and how maps must be viewed
[00:21:19.400]as interpretations of space that are constantly in flux, especially as rising sea levels
[00:21:25.360]are eroding away at our literal zone.
[00:21:29.360]In this piece, I collage an image I shot of the Ghost Forest on top of a merogram.
[00:21:35.360]A merogram is an antique analog map of tides, and I also superimpose planetary bodies
[00:21:43.360]which represent the phases of the moon, right, key indicators of tidal cycles
[00:21:48.360]which significantly affect the water levels in coastal regions.
[00:21:55.320]Land is invariably somebody's possession in a capitalist society.
[00:21:59.320]Landscape is inextricable from notions of ownership.
[00:22:04.280]As William Cronin points out in his essay, "The Trouble with Wilderness,"
[00:22:08.280]or "Getting Back to the Wrong Nature," the photographic collections from the U.S. Geological Surveys
[00:22:14.280]might be seen as a way of taking ownership of images of our country,
[00:22:19.280]a symbolic means of extricating the land from the Native American communities.
[00:22:25.280]The creation of national parks has been seen as a democratic gesture,
[00:22:29.240]while placing ownership and stewardship of these exceptional parts of our country with the people and their successors.
[00:22:37.240]As I mentioned earlier, a large portion of Dare County, in which I'm working, is part of the Alligator River Wildlife Refuge,
[00:22:44.240]though this landscape has had many previous stewards.
[00:22:50.240]This region is the ancestral lands of the Roanoke and Lumbees people,
[00:22:55.240]who were almost completely wiped out by disease, weapons, and displacement brought by the early European settlers.
[00:23:02.200]Nearby Roanoke Island was one of the earliest areas of English settlement and was the birthplace of Virginia Dare,
[00:23:08.200]the first English child born in the colonies in 1587.
[00:23:13.200]As Cronin points out, once these places were set aside with the fixed and carefully placed boundaries of the modern bureaucratic state,
[00:23:21.200]the wilderness lost its savage image and became safe.
[00:23:25.200]A place more of reverie than of revulsion and fear.
[00:23:29.160]Meanwhile, its original inhabitants were forced out.
[00:23:33.160]Their earlier uses of the land redefined as inappropriate or even illegal.
[00:23:38.160]The removal of indigenous stewards to create an uninhabited wilderness
[00:23:43.160]reminds us just how invented, just how constructed American landscape really is.
[00:23:50.160]Over the following two centuries, slaves from throughout the Atlantic
[00:23:55.160]world were brought into this region and were sold to white Europeans.
[00:24:00.160]Deep within these ghost forests are sites of former maroon communities, secret
[00:24:05.160]encampments formed by escaped slaves, as well as abandoned logging towns where
[00:24:10.160]enslaved and marginalized labor forces worked the lands in the 18th and 19th centuries.
[00:24:15.160]These two images show the labor force as well as the massive logging operations that
[00:24:20.160]happened deep within the forest. The timber industry relied on an extensive
[00:24:25.120]network of human dug canals to move lumber throughout the region.
[00:24:31.120]This troubling act of extractionist intervention has caused long term flooding issues
[00:24:36.120]throughout the peninsula. On a recent trip to Dare County,
[00:24:41.120]as I mentioned, this is an ongoing project, just a few months ago, I found that the roads
[00:24:46.120]I usually travel to access the landscape were covered in four to six inches of water.
[00:24:51.120]I had hoped that the flooding event was related to king tides,
[00:24:55.080]which is sort of the highest tide, but when I checked the tide chart, we were actually at a time
[00:25:00.080]when flooding was least likely. As I tread
[00:25:05.080]on this land, I'm surrounded by ghosts. While the dead white tree
[00:25:10.080]trunks serve as monuments to the forest disappearance and flag the invisible floodline
[00:25:15.080]of the salty tides, they also serve as a reminder of the extractive and exploitative
[00:25:20.080]violences perpetuated in this place. As the wells from
[00:25:25.040]the spring of capitalism and colonialism in North America, I'm interested in how land practices
[00:25:30.040]in the region have leached out and poisoned the land, literally and metaphorically.
[00:25:37.040]As I mentioned, over the last 40 years, the region has experienced an enormous ecological shift.
[00:25:43.040]More than 10 percent of the area's tree cover have become ghost forest.
[00:25:48.040]A five year drought that began in 2007 weakened an already stressed forest, and then in 2011
[00:25:55.000]Hurricane Irene's storm surge swept inland more than a mile.
[00:26:00.120]In the year following the hurricane, the effects of the saltwater inundation transformed more
[00:26:04.580]than 11,000 acres of land into ghost forest.
[00:26:09.380]This loss of trees significantly reduces the ecosystem's carbon storage capabilities, further
[00:26:14.920]fueling climate change.
[00:26:18.600]While this transition to marshland alone isn't necessarily detrimental, over time the marsh
[00:26:24.200]has overtaken
[00:26:24.960]as well, leading to areas of open water and land loss.
[00:26:30.040]Studies have shown that ecological collapse, such as the loss of coastal upland forests,
[00:26:34.780]can trigger an economic collapse.
[00:26:37.480]The loss of forests will reduce carbon storage, as I mentioned, will have effects on the agricultural
[00:26:42.380]industry and timber industries as the saltwater continues to move inland.
[00:26:50.100]As I explore the complex relationship between centuries of competing land stewardship and
[00:26:54.920]climate crisis, this project has evolved beyond a two-dimensional surface.
[00:27:02.020]I've been exploring diverse visual strategies with this project, including straight photographs,
[00:27:08.740]salt printing, photo montages, video work, and now these small sculptural works, which
[00:27:15.320]I'm calling photographic objects.
[00:27:18.420]They're somewhere between books and sculptures and photographs, and in constructing these
[00:27:24.880]works, I'm looking for ways to marry the historic ephemera, the charts, the surveys, the maps,
[00:27:33.420]and the scientific data with my own imagery.
[00:27:37.540]I wanted to create works that require the viewer to move around the image, to experience
[00:27:43.020]the relationship between the imagery and the visual data from multiple viewpoints.
[00:27:48.420]In bringing this information together in a non-traditional photographic format, I'm
[00:27:52.060]at, I examine the notions of the photographic frame, landscape as constructed space, and the
[00:27:58.640]planes of understanding which dominate current discussions of the climate crisis. These works
[00:28:04.320]reference architectural models and kirigami, which is a form of Japanese origami in which
[00:28:10.520]paper is folded and cut into 3D imagery. I rely on the use of double-sided printing in order to
[00:28:18.660]bring together these multiple images, these maps, these data points, you know, together in tandem
[00:28:23.960]with the fragile structure of the paper to hide and reveal information.
[00:28:29.000]I'm currently seeking funding sources to move these prototypes from paper objects, which are
[00:28:37.040]about this big, to life-size freestanding metal sculptures that perhaps will be public art.
[00:28:43.520]I'm eager to explore the possibility of dye sublimation printing on
[00:28:48.280]steel.
[00:28:48.640]In order to retain that sort of airy, fragile quality of the work, while creating objects that
[00:28:55.420]will change over time, like the salted paper prints that I showed you at the beginning.
[00:28:59.860]It is my desire to marry this materiality and process and content, and so I keep seeking out
[00:29:06.860]different visual strategies that echo these changes in the land and the research that I'm
[00:29:11.680]doing in this place.
[00:29:12.920]So as I conclude today, I'll leave you with this.
[00:29:17.200]I'm
[00:29:18.260]convinced that landscapes mirror and landscapes matter, that they tell us about what, they tell
[00:29:24.340]us the value that we hold, and at the same time affect the quality of the lives that we lead.
[00:29:30.480]The more one knows about its particular history, the more one realizes that the landscape is not
[00:29:36.600]quite what it seems. As we gaze into the mirror that it holds up for us, we see the reflection
[00:29:43.320]of our own curiosity. Thank you very much for your time.
[00:29:47.620]I'd love to open the floor for any questions or comments.
[00:29:59.440]And there will be a mic available as well.
[00:30:02.760]Thank you.
[00:30:09.440]Early in your slideshow, you had a triptych of those maps.
[00:30:16.400]Could you talk a little bit about that?
[00:30:17.600]Could you talk a little bit more about your process of incorporating those bioluminescent organisms?
[00:30:21.980]Yeah, should we go back and take a look at those?
[00:30:24.000]This one, sure.
[00:30:29.680]So when I began growing and culturing the bioluminescent organisms,
[00:30:35.360]I tried to do it in my studio at school.
[00:30:39.100]And the scientists that I was working with told me that these needed to be on a specific light cycle.
[00:30:45.520]And it was a really...
[00:30:47.580]It was a steep learning curve to try to figure out how to keep these organisms alive,
[00:30:53.620]which soon began to feel like my pets because I wanted to keep them alive as long as possible.
[00:30:58.420]And I was struggling in the studio to grow some of the organisms.
[00:31:04.060]I was able to grow ones in petri dishes a lot easier than I was able to grow the ones that lived in saltwater.
[00:31:11.200]And so I was fortunate that we had growth chambers at Bradley University that I could set,
[00:31:17.560]set a cycle that allowed me to control the humidity, the light cycle, the temperature, right,
[00:31:24.060]and prevent anything else from landing in the dish and growing, right, and causing a problem.
[00:31:28.660]So I, this is a really, what I did is I printed out the USGS maps in a digital negative format,
[00:31:37.980]and then I poured the water that had the sea sparkle in them, and I shook the,
[00:31:47.540]dish that had the sea sparkle because it only lights up when you, you know, like swim through it
[00:31:53.480]or your boat goes through it, right, and so I had a very quick moment to set that down
[00:31:59.480]and then photograph the light which was coming up through the dish through the map
[00:32:08.020]and be able to make an image of it, and as you can imagine, there were hundreds of pictures taken
[00:32:14.020]to be able to make this work.
[00:32:17.520]So I have also worked with these under microscopes and they light up for such a short period of time
[00:32:25.200]that I'm in the dark, I'm working with a microscope, I'm trying to get it underneath the microscope.
[00:32:29.840]It's been a real education in patience for me.
[00:32:47.500]Do you hunt too?
[00:32:48.500]I don't.
[00:32:49.500]I am not a hunter.
[00:32:51.360]I was telling Dana's class earlier today that I did not grow up around hunting and
[00:32:57.380]when I moved to Arkansas and my students were coming into my class I became incredibly curious
[00:33:02.220]about hunting.
[00:33:03.220]So I started asking them all sorts of questions, you know, when are you going out, you know,
[00:33:08.040]when's the best time of day, what do you have to wear, do you not wear perfume, like does
[00:33:12.200]that, you know, I had all of these very naive questions about hunting and my students were
[00:33:17.480]so forthcoming with information that I felt really drawn to learning more about this and
[00:33:25.800]as they allowed me to photograph them in their homes, I started saying I think I'm on to
[00:33:30.720]something here, I think this is interesting and then I started sending out those images
[00:33:35.720]to women's hunting networks around the country and essentially anybody who said yes or invited
[00:33:41.660]me to come, I photographed and I ended up in roughly 19 or 20 states.
[00:33:47.460]Photographing all sorts of different kinds of women hunters and I learned so much about
[00:33:53.400]these different subcultures that exist within the bigger umbrella of hunting.
[00:34:00.460]Yes, I was just wondering as you kind of marry
[00:34:17.440]the science and the art, kind of what is your process, you've shown very different art processes
[00:34:26.520]across that, I love the photography references as I see them going back to other photographers,
[00:34:35.360]but then your current work, what is your process of thinking of what the next art that you
[00:34:41.680]want to create is, because your scale is also seems to have increased.
[00:34:47.420]Over time, but just trying to think of that creative process is quite different.
[00:34:53.740]Well, it's not really quite different from the scientific process, but it is a process
[00:34:58.420]that intrigues me as to what makes you go to that next series.
[00:35:03.320]Yeah, I, you know, I talked to students a little bit earlier about this.
[00:35:10.080]I really follow my curiosity and my passion, and I feel like that is what keeps me focused
[00:35:17.400]and keeps me intrigued and working on something.
[00:35:20.500]And as I start asking the questions and I realize, you know, sort of the gaps in knowledge
[00:35:28.220]that I can't fill with taking 100 books out of interlibrary loan, I then often reach
[00:35:33.820]out to faculty or scientists at places and, you know, hope that they would be willing
[00:35:40.360]to share their knowledge with me or collaborate with me on something, and then I try
[00:35:47.380]to figure out how can I make work, like create visual ideas that marry together, right,
[00:35:56.260]the process with the content of the work, because I feel like that's so important
[00:36:00.680]to making work that to me feels resolved and successful.
[00:36:05.140]So, you know, what's next, I'm not exactly sure.
[00:36:11.540]I have some curiosity right now about women in the landscape, that's just like a small,
[00:36:17.360]small seed of where am I head next, but I recently had the opportunity to go to the
[00:36:24.880]Nevada Museum of Art, Art and the Environment, sort of research center, and it just sparked
[00:36:31.440]all these new ideas and made me realize I need to go there as a starting point for the
[00:36:35.920]next project.
[00:36:37.200]So my question is, for the aerial photographs of the forest, can you please explain your process
[00:36:47.340]of either getting that high or just the composition decision on that, like to get the roads in it?
[00:36:54.000]So I'd love to hear your process on that.
[00:36:55.780]Yeah, absolutely.
[00:36:56.940]As I was driving through that landscape, and I mentioned to you that 11,000 acres just
[00:37:04.400]in the last, you know, 10 or 12 years have changed over, I wanted to figure out a way
[00:37:11.000]to show the expansiveness of the ghost forest, and as I was shooting at sort of eye level,
[00:37:17.320]you only got, you know, this field of vision, right?
[00:37:21.300]And so, I really wanted to either do aerial images, drone images, something from a plane,
[00:37:29.220]but most of the area that I'm photographing in is a National Wildlife Refuge,
[00:37:35.360]and National Parks, National Wildlife Refuge, you're not allowed to use a drone over those sites.
[00:37:40.920]So, I had to get creative, and I did a couple of things that were, one was,
[00:37:47.300]simple. I went to the very edge of the Wildlife Refuge, and I parked my van, and I put the drone
[00:37:53.900]up, and I turned it, and I shot into the Wildlife Refuge. So, I was on the outskirts of it,
[00:38:00.280]you know, not on the outskirts, I was outside of it, very carefully outside of it.
[00:38:04.800]The other thing that I did, and I don't know if I showed these images, but before I brought my
[00:38:17.280]camera, I put a very tall ladder on top of my camper van and crawled up on top of it and shot
[00:38:24.120]like this. And it sounds nuts, and it was, but it allowed me to see what was possible by having that
[00:38:34.140]bird's eye view of the landscape that I felt was incredibly important to have at least a few shots
[00:38:40.380]that gave you the expanse so that you could really take in just how devastating this saltwater
[00:38:47.260]intrusion has been in this area. So I felt like that was really, really key. And I have a, I have
[00:38:54.340]one of the drones that is really not considered a drone because it's under a particular weight,
[00:38:58.240]but I still don't fly it over the region. But in terms of compositional elements and things like
[00:39:05.700]that, I find myself with the drone acting so differently than I do with my camera.
[00:39:10.900]It's like I can't, there's a disconnect between what I'm seeing on my little tiny
[00:39:17.240]screen, and the drone is up in the air, and there's always the worry about the drone
[00:39:22.860]crashing or something happening that I can't slow down in the same way that I do with my
[00:39:28.980]regular cameras. So I find myself shooting many, many, many, many, many, many more shots
[00:39:34.660]with the drone and making these minuscule changes, right? If you've ever flown a drone,
[00:39:40.640]you know you have these little tiny joysticks. I make the tiniest change, and I shoot a
[00:39:47.220]spend hours looking over the images to see what the correct composition is. Yeah. Hopefully
[00:39:55.600]I'll get better with the drone at some point. I need more practice.
[00:39:58.760]How many pieces of art have you made?
[00:40:04.260]Oh, that is a really good question that I don't know if I can answer. And the reason
[00:40:12.760]for that is because I started making art when I was...
[00:40:17.200]very, very young. My dad worked at Kodak, which is a place that made film and cameras.
[00:40:24.940]And when I was little, my dad would bring home these enormous rolls, like he would roll
[00:40:29.520]them out on the floor in the basement of photo paper, which as you know, if you're a photographer,
[00:40:33.900]he just exposed it all. But that was my drawing paper. And so I drew on photo paper as a kid.
[00:40:43.180]And I didn't even know what I was really doing. But I in some ways feel like...
[00:40:47.180]It was like leeching into me that I would become a photographer because I was on my hands and knees
[00:40:51.500]on this paper all the time. It's kind of funny that you actually mentioned about number because
[00:40:58.140]I drove here on a crazy cross-country trip and I picked up an exhibition on the way, but I
[00:41:05.420]also picked up a whole bunch of work I was doing at a residency.
[00:41:08.540]And I joked with a friend that I probably have three to 500 works in my van right now.
[00:41:17.160]And that is the only work that I made over a three-month period.
[00:41:21.920]So I don't know, someday I should count, figure it out.
[00:41:28.720]Oh, there's a question right in front of you.
[00:41:34.920]So all your work is about the effect of humans on the environment and the only image
[00:41:45.720]that you have with humans.
[00:41:47.140]And the only image that you have with humans is the one of the hunters.
[00:41:49.940]So they're all connected together, but can you speak a little bit about that relationship
[00:41:56.700]because you...
[00:41:57.700]Yeah.
[00:41:58.700]Yeah.
[00:41:59.700]Yeah, absolutely.
[00:42:00.700]That's a great question.
[00:42:01.700]I made several series about women in the environment.
[00:42:04.880]I did the women hunter series, and then I did an extensive series on women mariners
[00:42:10.940]because I lived on my boat for a very long time, I became really interested in the idea
[00:42:17.120]of living off the grid, self-sufficiency, those kinds of things, and after I probably
[00:42:25.160]had been making portraits, formal portraits for a little over 10 years, I decided that
[00:42:32.100]I needed the challenge of trying to make work about things without people in the pictures.
[00:42:37.840]And so I was trying to grow myself as an artist, to grow my sort of visual strategies, to think
[00:42:47.100]about new ways to use my medium.
[00:42:51.220]And there's several bodies of work in between all of these that I'm not showing you, in
[00:42:56.620]which I did some more experimentation with those kinds of things.
[00:43:00.520]But I should say that I'm right now thinking about including people in this series, the
[00:43:06.860]13 Hours to Fall.
[00:43:09.500]I just met with a journalist who I'd like to collaborate with to collect oral histories
[00:43:17.080]currently living on the peninsula that I'm working and who are being affected by the
[00:43:22.900]intruding water, the changes to their industries and their jobs, and be able to incorporate
[00:43:32.200]those somehow into this project.
[00:43:36.320]As you can see, it's taken many different iterations since it started, and I feel so
[00:43:41.520]free at this point that I just want to keep doing whatever comes to mind.
[00:43:47.060]You know, and I feel like I'm ready to bring portraiture back into my work.
[00:43:52.780]And so my next step is, well, let me just back up one second and say, I'd never want
[00:44:00.400]to be the person that just drops into a place and makes work as an outsider.
[00:44:04.720]Like, I don't feel like that's appropriate, and that's why I'm so invested in learning
[00:44:09.340]the history of a place.
[00:44:11.020]And that's why I've done such extensive research in this area, but I feel like at this point
[00:44:17.040]to make the project move forward most successfully, I have to include the voices of the people
[00:44:21.280]who are being affected by it right now.
[00:44:24.520]I can't speak for them.
[00:44:26.280]And so that's the impetus to bring the people back in, even though for me, I think of humans
[00:44:34.060]and nature as the same.
[00:44:37.400]We are nature.
[00:44:38.480]So to me, our footprints, our handprints, our breath is in all of this, right?
[00:44:44.020]Yeah.
[00:44:45.020]Yeah, you're welcome.
[00:44:47.020]So on that project, you showed a map that was the way your boat could go down the inland
[00:44:58.140]waterway.
[00:44:59.140]Yeah.
[00:45:00.140]And I'm assuming that that had something to do with why you picked this place to photograph
[00:45:04.080]or to do all this research in, but what was the original impetus of curiosity that got
[00:45:13.140]you to spend this kind of effort and this kind of time on this one particular project?
[00:45:17.000]Yeah.
[00:45:18.000]What prompted you?
[00:45:19.000]Yep.
[00:45:20.000]I was sailing down the intercoastal waterway, and we needed to drop the hook because it
[00:45:26.720]was getting dark, and it was pretty dark outside already.
[00:45:30.000]And we dropped the hook, and we spent the night in the intercoastal waterway, you know,
[00:45:33.620]no services around, just at anchor.
[00:45:35.900]And I woke up the next morning and was surrounded by dead trees.
[00:45:39.880]And I was shocked.
[00:45:41.880]And I wanted to know, I wanted to understand, what is happening here?
[00:45:45.980]Like, is this...
[00:45:46.980]Is this a natural phenomenon that occurs?
[00:45:49.280]Is this something that is happening in the water that is creating these dead trees?
[00:45:55.740]I just wanted to understand it.
[00:45:57.500]And as I checked a couple of books out of libraries about this region, and about pocosins,
[00:46:06.280]which is like the kind of coastal forest that this is.
[00:46:11.640]And then I read a book called by Timothy, Tim Silver, I can't remember the name of the
[00:46:16.960]name of it right at this moment.
[00:46:19.060]But it essentially dove into the environmental history of the region.
[00:46:23.800]And I was just hooked.
[00:46:24.960]I am not from North Carolina, I'm from upstate New York, my dad's from Louisiana.
[00:46:32.600]But I just became fascinated.
[00:46:34.820]And the more that I read, the curiouser I got.
[00:46:38.740]And over the last six years, I've probably gone to North Carolina to photograph on average
[00:46:44.860]three or four times a year.
[00:46:46.940]And I feel like I know this place through my eyes, but each time I go, I learn something
[00:46:55.940]new.
[00:46:56.940]One of my favorite people there is the archivist who works in the Outer Banks Historical Society,
[00:47:02.120]whose family, she has six generations of people who have lived in that peninsula.
[00:47:09.780]And so that's one of the ways that I, you know, just connecting with her and learning
[00:47:16.920]about her history there, all of that, all of those reasons, like, keep me coming back
[00:47:22.000]to it.
[00:47:23.000]Hi, Margaret.
[00:47:24.000]Well, sorry.
[00:47:25.000]Hi, Margaret.
[00:47:26.000]Hi.
[00:47:27.000]Thank you.
[00:47:28.000]Thank you for being here today.
[00:47:30.980]Wow, that was, like, fully loaded.
[00:47:37.060]I just want to, like, touch on scientific thought through the lens of artists, and I
[00:47:46.900]just think it is so valuable to have this multi-perspective on people, on the history
[00:47:54.860]of lands, and how people interact with that to make good scientific decisions.
[00:47:59.600]So I, like, really applaud your work for that.
[00:48:03.520]And I like how you touched on how a lot of environments all over the world are moving
[00:48:09.280]away from what's happening, like, we're gradually moving north and north and north, and a lot
[00:48:15.000]of environments that we love and that we know.
[00:48:16.880]Are disappearing or are absent now.
[00:48:21.520]And I guess kind of my curiosity is as these things start to move north or they cease to
[00:48:28.660]exist, where do you think that photographic archival sits next to disappearing landscapes?
[00:48:39.820]Can you just touch on that really quick?
[00:48:41.260]Yeah.
[00:48:42.260]What a great question and a tough one.
[00:48:46.860]Because art disappears all the time.
[00:48:52.160]I just heard a statistic that 90% of all art has already disappeared, whether it's due
[00:48:58.780]to archival issues, whether it's due to we think we have enough of that and we destroy
[00:49:04.040]it, or if you think about World War II with the bombings of major art centers and so many
[00:49:09.340]things being destroyed, or just the way that we devalue things over time, just shifting
[00:49:15.840]desires.
[00:49:16.840]I think that's for different art.
[00:49:20.080]I can't help but think of this artist, Dorna Doherty, comes to mind who's making photographs
[00:49:26.240]of seed banks and has been working in seed banks, and just thinking about how precious
[00:49:31.780]seed banks are for maintaining this future, thinking about a possible future.
[00:49:38.400]And I think that art is equally as important because it shows us where we've come from,
[00:49:44.720]how we reflected on it.
[00:49:46.820]It reminds us of the potential of humans.
[00:49:53.560]It tells us about where we were, what we understood, what enticed us, where our curiosities lie.
[00:50:02.300]If we think back to the civilizations that we consider to be great, we always look at
[00:50:06.780]their art.
[00:50:08.400]We look at the ancient Greeks, we look at the Renaissance period.
[00:50:11.120]We focus on these pockets where culture was so vibrant and intense.
[00:50:16.800]And so I think about making art as the most important thing is it ends up in an archive
[00:50:25.440]or it ends up in a collection that is protected so that future generations can think about
[00:50:32.420]and learn from where we were at this moment.
[00:50:36.260]It's our voice to carry forward.
[00:50:39.480]And I'm in a few collections, but how will climate change affect the way that we can
[00:50:46.780]maintain archives, the use of electricity, all of these things.
[00:50:52.960]My hope is that someone creates this fabulous solar-powered, totally green space.
[00:51:03.380]Perhaps it belongs in the Arctic where the seed banks are.
[00:51:07.680]I don't have all the answers, but that's my hope, is that we protect art the way that
[00:51:13.400]we protect many other important cultural entities.
[00:51:16.760]Thanks.
[00:51:17.760]Yeah?
[00:51:18.760]Speaker 2: I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the catalyst for the Women's
[00:51:24.080]Environmental Photography Collective.
[00:51:26.280]Ah, yes.
[00:51:28.220]Dana mentioned that in 2020, a group of us came together and we formed the Women's Environmental
[00:51:36.900]Photography Collective.
[00:51:39.900]This came out of my desire to have a place to...
[00:51:46.740]To share work, to share ideas, to share resources that I didn't have.
[00:51:55.680]When you're in undergraduate or graduate school, you have critiques, right?
[00:52:00.060]You're constantly getting feedback on your work.
[00:52:02.340]You get prompts to do projects, right?
[00:52:05.680]It's sort of this built-in structure for you.
[00:52:08.300]And then when you graduate and you leave that, suddenly that thing that maybe you dreaded
[00:52:15.140]becomes the thing that you really miss.
[00:52:16.720]And I desperately wanted a community in which I felt I could talk about the things that
[00:52:24.780]were exciting me, but also share ideas and try to elevate other women who were working
[00:52:32.800]on similar ideas.
[00:52:35.020]And so it was January of 2020 when I asked the first person who was Dorinth Doherty,
[00:52:42.680]actually who I mentioned, if she had ever...
[00:52:46.700]Shared these similar thoughts to me that she wished...
[00:52:49.360]Did she wish she had a space to get feedback?
[00:52:52.360]Dorinth is a very well-established artist, a Guggenheim winner.
[00:52:55.940]Her work is all over the world.
[00:52:57.760]But I was curious to know if someone with her prestigious background also missed the
[00:53:04.720]same things that I was missing.
[00:53:06.740]And she said, "Yes."
[00:53:09.020]Just like the way I reached out to Eddie Witter from the MacArthur Fellow and was intimidated
[00:53:15.080]at first and she said, "Yes."
[00:53:16.680]When Dorna said, "Yes," I realized that there was probably a lot of folks out there who
[00:53:20.800]also were craving this kind of community.
[00:53:25.200]And so we've now developed into a group of six women.
[00:53:29.140]We exhibit together, we publish together.
[00:53:32.020]We meet almost monthly over Zoom because we're in different parts of the country.
[00:53:37.120]Our careers are at different points.
[00:53:39.960]Some of us are retired.
[00:53:41.600]I recently resigned from teaching, I had been teaching for 25 years, but I stepped away
[00:53:45.840]to focus on my career.
[00:53:46.660]Dana is still teaching, Martina is still teaching, Terry Warpinski is emeritus from University
[00:53:57.120]of Oregon but recently opened a gallery in Wisconsin.
[00:54:04.940]The most beautiful thing I feel like about this collective is that we share resources.
[00:54:10.420]We say, "Did you see this grant that's available?"
[00:54:13.340]Instead of being competitive and hoarding it to ourselves.
[00:54:16.640]We are all working on environmental issues.
[00:54:19.420]We share these things with each other.
[00:54:20.960]We read each other's proposals.
[00:54:23.520]We realize that only one of us will get it but we still all apply and we help each other.
[00:54:28.760]And creating a space like that where you trust one another and you have each other's backs
[00:54:34.140]and you provide resources for one another, this is one of the most special things in
[00:54:39.800]my life.
[00:54:40.800]It is so amazing.
[00:54:41.800]Yeah, and I encourage all of the students in here to think about who do you want to
[00:54:46.620]be surrounded by and who do you want to keep as your sort of art fellows that you can share,
[00:54:54.080]work with, and share ideas with and uplift, right, because our community is small.
[00:55:16.600]Okay, thank you for all your amazing questions.
[00:55:23.420]They were great, and thank you for the answers and also great, and thank you for coming,
[00:55:29.740]and thanks everyone for coming, and it is now 6:30, so I think we're going to conclude
[00:55:35.020]and thank you, Randy.
[00:55:36.020]Okay, thank you.
[00:55:37.020]Thank you.
[00:55:38.020]Thank you.
[00:55:39.020]Thank you.
[00:55:40.020]You
[00:55:42.020]Thank you.

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Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist: Margaret LeJeune

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