‘How the Light Gets Out‘ collages on display at the See Here Now exhibition are part of the Extending Ecology collaboration between Rita Leduc (artist), Dr. Rich Blundell (ecologist) and Hubbard Brook Forest in America. Read on for more on this piece, on light, and extended ecologies.
In 2021, we (ecologist Rich Blundell and artist Rita Leduc) began Extending Ecology, an ongoing collaboration with Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, USA. Our Oika research is a shared experience of scientific and creative engagement, absorbing and extending nature’s healing, ecological dynamics through us, into culture, and toward “Beautiful Futures.”
An internationally renowned Long Term Ecological Research site, Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest rose to prominence in 1963 with the discovery of acid rain. Evidence from the forest led to the 1970 Clean Air Act and the threat was ameliorated globally. Thus, Hubbard Brook solidified its reputation as a forest where research leads to evidence, evidence to awareness, and awareness to planetary action. Through Extending Ecology, we have extended this legacy and the ecology of the forest into the cultural domain through visual art, media, writing, workshops, talks, publications, exhibitions, projects, and relationships.
Within Hubbard Brook Forest runs its namesake brook. In that brook, about a mile upstream from the forest boundary, is a gorge. In 2022, light caught by this gorge piqued Rich’s curiosity. Before long, we found ourselves at the foot of a magnetic pool of light.
The gorge has since become a required stop during seasonal baseline checks. Standing there feeling the concentrated glow, we study how the gorge attracts and holds the light.
We observe how we ourselves can’t help but fill up with the very same light, phenomenologically, emotionally, and cognitively.
“How the Light Gets Out” is a series of investigations into, and manifestations of, how the light in the gorge sparkles, spreads, and shares itself into the forest, through us and our work, and into the world. Featured in the PLACE Collective ‘See Here Now’ exhibition, collages made with visual data collected in the forest use composition, form, texture, colour, and gesture to research questions such as:
“What is it to be fully saturated?”
“What are shadows?”
“Why does light wane?”
We believe that taking the continuity of these questions seriously reveals how reconnecting with natural intelligence provides essential guidance for navigating our unprecedented moment.
In the context of the exhibition “See Here Now – Art in a Time of Urgency,” Extending Ecology extends into a new forest – Grizedale – with an equally historical past. This time, however, the lineage is artistic. After four years forging a novel creative path alongside Hubbard Brook’s scientific trajectory, bringing Extending Ecology to Grizedale is a refreshing dip into a longstanding stream of artistic heritage and camaraderie.
But to pin Extending Ecology’s trajectory to a disciplinary binary would shortchange Oika’s ontological point in favour of a trendy, epistemological one. What feels deeply – primally – exciting about bringing Hubbard Brook to Grizedale is not this contrast, it is the upstream common denominator that this contrast reveals.
Four years ago, a scientist and an artist cultivated common, fertile ground within a forest. What emerged – extended – from there was because of a kindred connection not to a scientific or artistic lineage but to a cosmic one.
When this is the case, “collaboration” takes on a wholly different shape. Outcomes are not created to appease categorical expectations; rather, they are born out of – and carry the Creative Life Force of – the very primordial light which we have been the beneficiaries of for 13.8 billion years.
Like the discovery of acid rain, the healing, ecological dynamics for which Extending Ecology provides evidence are not sequestered to the borders of Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest. Through visuals and conversation, “How the Light Gets Out” encourages others, wherever they are in this era of metacrisis, to learn from, become, and exude that light: “Here, Now.”
Find out more about Rita Leduc here and Dr. Rich Blundell here.
Rita’s previous blog on ‘Extending Ecology’ is here.
