Art Meets Science in Webinar Series and Exhibition

Public exhibition will be held December 16

Maryland Sea Grant will host an art exhibition on December 16 at its office in College Park, Maryland. This exhibition is presented as part of a joint project with Cultivate, an artist collaborative interested in artistic translation of environmental science.

Art may be used to connect, reflect upon, and understand scientific concepts in diverse ways beyond traditional scientific outreach. In summer and fall 2024, Maryland Sea Grant’s Art Meets Science pilot project presented webinars and engaged scientists and artists in networking and training events around art-science collaboration. The project kicked off with a selection of short online seminars featuring Cultivate artists speaking about their collaborative experiences, techniques, and works. The seminar videos are available online.

Maryland Sea Grant hosted a series of three webinars and a workshop designed to forge connections between artists and scientists, incubate new projects, develop best practices for collaboration, and consider how art may be used to translate science. The webinar series included a Networking and Collaboration webinar with scientists and artists introducing their interests and work, a Q&A and Connections webinar with questions about the online seminars and discussions about the early stages of collaboration, and a Creative Collaborations webinar with a creative exercise designed to inspire alternative ways of conceptualizing art. An in-person workshop brought together interested scientists and artists to consider future projects.

In October 2024, Cultivate installed an art exhibition in Maryland Sea Grant’s office. The Art-Science Collaboration exhibition features artwork from a selection of Cultivate artists, including Maggie Gourlay, Katie Kehoe, Susan Main, Murat Cem Mengüç, MJ Neuberger, Elzbieta Sikorska, Lynn Silverman, and Sue Wrbican. Artist names and works are listed below.

Join Maryland Sea Grant and Cultivate on December 16 to view the exhibition and celebrate the Art Meets Science project. The exhibition is open to the public from noon until 2 p.m. and will include remarks from Cultivate and Maryland Sea Grant. Visit Maryland Sea Grant’s website for more information and to register for the event.

Following the exhibition, Maryland Sea Grant will develop additional resources about project outcomes and best practices in art-science collaboration.

The Art-Science Collaboration exhibition features the following artists and pieces:

• Maggie Gourlay, In the Weeds, screenprint with natural dyes
• Maggie Gourlay, History Lessons, screenprint with natural dyes
• Katie Kehoe, The Survival Architect Assessing Wildfire Risk, 1 & 2, performance still
• Katie Kehoe, The Survival Architect Assessing Wildfire Risk, 2, performance still
• Katie Kehoe, The Survival Architect Prepping, 1 & 2, performance still
• Katie Kehoe, The Survival Architect Prepping, 2, performance still
• Susan Main/Participants, Yard of the Yard, video
• Murat Cem Mengüç, Yard Drawings (The Grid), inkjet print
• MJ Neuberger, Queen of the Discarded, archival digital print on rag
• Lynn Silverman, All Mixed Up, archival digital print
• Lynn Silverman, Christmas Forever, archival digital print
• Elzbieta Sikorska, Spiral, mixed media drawing, collage
• Sue Wrbican, Dragged, inkjet print

CULTIVATE is an evolving collection of interdisciplinary artists, writers, and researchers driven by investigations of land, place, and the commons. Projects include experimental and practical art explorations that wrestle with the qualities, perceptions, and layers of experience that inform and expand notions of landscape. Ideas from a full spectrum of voices across generations are supported using sustainable tactics. From the hyper-local to the global, Cultivate reflects individual and collective curiosity, intention, imagining, and engagement with the phenomena of landscape.

Maryland Sea Grant is one of 34 Sea Grant programs supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in coastal and Great Lakes states that encourage the wise stewardship of our marine resources through research, education, outreach, and technology transfer.