I posted my first “Crazy River” substack on July 9th, 2023 about beaver damage. The substack is a personal view of climate change and its effects on the Western Catskills. You may subscribe for free. Paid subscribers get additional access with the ability to make comments.
Web Piece "Crazy River Umwelt Series: Part III"
This post is the third in a series of three on-line essays, thought experiments if you like, which expand the Crazy River Project to change the POV to non-human actors that are inextricably bound with the habitat in the Western Catskills. It focuses on the umwelt, which I realize is stretching the term because I am referring to a plant, of Japanese knotweed (Fallopia Japonica).
Web Piece "Crazy River Umwelt Series: Part II"
This post is the second in a series of three on-line essays, thought experiments if you like, which expand the Crazy River Project to change the POV to non-human actors that are inextricably bound with the habitat in the Western Catskills. It focuses on the umwelt of the white-tail deer (Odocoileus virginianus).
Web Piece "Crazy River Umwelt Series: Part I"
This post is the first in a series of three on-line essays, thought experiments if you like, which expand the Crazy River Project to change the POV to non-human actors that are inextricably bound with the habitat in the Western Catskills. It focuses on the umwelt of the black-legged or deer tick (Ixodes scapularis).
Web Piece "What's Your Golden Spike?"
This is the third web piece for Art Spiel connected to my Crazy River project. It is a more extended meditation on psycho-geology or how the geology of a place impacts our states of mind. It also explores the concept of the Golden Spike in stratigraphy as fact and metaphor.
Web Piece "The Lands of Kats Kill"
This is the second web piece on the Art Spiel website that relates to my Crazy River project. Written in a free-flowing style, it looks at the Catskills as a nexus of psycho-geology, historical accident, and personal reflections—all refracted through the lens of the climate crisis.
Web Piece "Invaders"
This web piece on the Art Spiel website is a mediation on the idea of invasive species. It should surprise no one that invasive species are the result of human activity. It’s just another aspect of our species shooting ourselves in the foot, as is the case with the climate crisis. I list 100+ “invasive” species, including our own, and include some photographs and images of my paintings.
Studio shot of me working on the painting Crazy River
Interview in Art Spiel
This interview in Art Spiel goes into the details of my Crazy River project that I conceived in 2017, and began to implement in 2019. It encompasses my writing, my painting, my climate salons, and other aspects of my work related to my experience of climate change on the West Branch of the Neversink, which I have known all my life.
Personal Essay in the Literary Journal Appalachia
I am pleased to include a link to a personal essay I got published in the journal Appalachia. The title is “Crazier River: The Neversink Goes Rogue in the Age of the Climate Crisis.” You can read it here. It is a meditation on the climate grief I feel towards the changes I have seen in the headwaters of the Neversink River, across three different timelines: geologic, historical, and personal.
Extinction Holiday Salon
It’s the end of 2020, the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and no one would blame you for turning your thoughts to the extinction of our species. Fifth in our series, the Extinction Holiday Salon on Tuesday, December 22nd took a look at that topic from the perspective of five artists who have made thinking about the Anthropocene and the climate crisis part of their practice: David Brooks, Rachel Frank, Jude Griebel, Elisabeth Smolarz, and Marina Zurkow. The salon took place over Zoom, and you can access the recording here, using this passcode: $485SK2B.
The artists touched on not just extinction but re-wilding (Frank), “nuisance” species (Griebel), the imperceptibility of climate change (Brooks), human-to-plant communication (Smolarz), and becoming other species (Zurkow). The answers, questions, and comments the artists and audience provided in the ensuing discussion were by turns funny, erudite, sad, and oddly up-lifting. As the discussion showed, the dilemmas we as a species face in the teeth of the sixth largest extinction now underway don’t have easy answers, but exploring them as happened that night created a sense of community.
Adam Naming the Animals, etching by G. Scotin and J. Cole after H. Gravelot and J.B. Chatelain, 1743.
What Are We to Animals? A Salon on Our Relationship to Animals in the Anthropocene
On July 9th our salon featured three panelists who have made careers out of thinking about our relationship with animals in the Anthropocene.
The entire salon is recorded on Zoom. You can access the recording here.
The password is 7g!9#?4K.
Artist, writer, and educator Thyrza Goodeve’s work has explored the maps, real and imaginary, that separate animals and humans. Her writings for Artforum, Art in America,The Guggenheim Magazine,The Brooklyn Rail, and other publications have ranged from cyborgs and Donna Haraway, to Carolee Schneemann and cats. In her presentation she talked about the strangeness and beauty of bats.
Interdisciplinary artist and educator Sarah Grass has shown internationally and most recently at the Spring Art Fair 2020 in Manhattan. Her presentation addressed her psychologically charged drawings of Dachshunds, humans, and other animals. The drawings were at once diaristic, political, ecological, surreal, and often very funny.
Naturalist, author, and artist James Prosek discussed themes from his recent exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery (and publication) and an article he is working on for National Geographic about the collapse of the fisheries in the Gulf of Maine. His exhibition Art, Artifact, Artifice at Yale is being extended until November 29th.
Confined to a settlement in Matamoros, Mexico, migrant refugees from Central America wait for their court hearings just across the border in Brownsville, TX. Photo: Reynaldo Leaños Jr./Texas Public Radio
Who Suffers Most from Climate Change? A Salon on Climate Justice
Please join us on Friday March 6 at 6:30, when we will be hosting the third salon in our series on climate change and the Anthropocene. This salon will focus on justice for migrants, many who have been displaced by climate change and/or economic forces that are causing environmental degradation. Panelists:
Artist and educator Simone Couto, an émigré to the United States from Brazil, will discuss “The Amazon Project,” an on-going social practice engaging an Amazonian community in Igarape do Camará Rio Negro, cidade de Iranduba.
Artist and educator Iviva Olenick will discuss "States of Emergenc(y)e," an art and performance series featuring quilts made with textile handcrafts (embroidery, cross-stitch, natural dyeing) incorporating government-issued emergency blankets to protest government-induced emergencies.
Educator and salon co-host Margaret Seiler will present on her recent trips to the Texas/Mexico border with Witness at the Border, a grassroots group advocating for humane immigration policies and justice for migrants.
Family hugging a redwood tree. Photo: WattleBee Project
Will Plants Save Us? A Salon on the Climate Crisis
On Sunday, November 17th, I will be hosting a salon entitled Will Plants Save Us? It will be a panel discussion featuring three artists whose practice addresses our relationship to plants in the Anthropocene: Donna Cleary, Alexandra Hammond, and Heidi Norton. If you are interested in finding out more, please contact me at hoveyb@gmail.com.
About the Artists:
Donna Cleary is a descendent of Irish herbalists. A profession made illegal under British occupation, she has reclaimed this familial heritage as her own. She worked as a registered nurse for 13 years. Cleary has exhibited at Petzel Gallery, Freight and Volume, The Knockout Center, Trestle, Chashama, Art in Odd Places in both NY and Orlando. Residencies include MASS MoCA, Mildred's Lane, chaNorth and Cill Rialaig in Kerry, Ireland. Her research at Cill Rialaig uncovered her ancestral legacy of herbalism, affirming her studies in plant medicine. She founded Spiral Herbal Remedies as social practice in 2018. Cleary also writes the blog Chronicles of a Witch in Training, sharing insights about herbalism and life.
Alexandra Hammond was born and raised in rural Northern California and now lives and works in Brooklyn. Hammond’s multidisciplinary practice spans painting, installation and conversational performances. Hammond believes that the imagination has the power to transform reality. She also believes that all things, including perception, arise from a common ground of being and are therefore in constant relationship with what is and what has been. In addition to her art practice, Hammond has a branding business that serves sustainable ventures in the fields of conservation, food and agriculture, knowledge production and the built environment.
Heidi Norton is an artist and writer whose 1970s upbringing as a child of New Age homesteaders in West Virginia resulted in a strong connection to the land, plant life, and nature. Norton is a professor at the International Center of Photography. She has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Elmhurst Art Museum, Northeastern Illinois University, among others. Recent publications include Art21, BOMB magazine and Journal for Artistic Research. Her work is in the public collections of the Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Joyce Foundation, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and numerous private collections.
Recent Brooklyn Rail reviews, October 2019 Soft Fascination: Heidi Norton, Jolynn Krystosek & Erin LaRocque at Elijah Wheat Showroom.
Another World Lies Beyond at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue.
Deep gorge created in Ulster County Route 47 when floods after Hurricane Irene blew out a culvert below the road, Oliverea, NY Photo: Daniel Case
What's Your Golden Spike? Salon on the Climate Crisis
In anticipation of the Global Climate Strike, my wife Margaret and I held a salon on September 11th, 2019 at our home titled “What’s Your Golden Spike?” or, in other words, when did climate change impact your personal life? The point of the salon was to raise awareness around the facts of climate change. “Golden Spike” comes from the term for the geologic marker to a new age, in this case the Anthropocene. For the salon we were very fortunate to have two guest speakers committed to this issue.
The first speaker was Lucky Tran, who calls himself a science explainer. Trained as a biologist, Lucky has since become a science journalist, policy advisor, and community organizer. Working out of Columbia University, he teaches other scientists the vital art of communication. Lucky believes scientists have to go from their labs to the streets and get in front of microphones. Otherwise, the din of the media will continue to drown out their warnings. In his talk at the salon, he traced his odyssey from Vietnam War refugee growing up in Australia to his current role as champion of climate justice. He urged everyone to attend the Sept. 20th New York City Climate Strike, which he helped organize.
The second speaker was public artist Anita Glesta. She presented her project, Watershed. Inspired by the destruction caused by Super Storm Sandy, Glesta developed a beautiful video installation that projects the images of fish in water. Since it premiered at New Museum's Ideas City Festival in 2013, versions of Watershed have appeared at London’s National Theatre in 2015, Ellis Island’s Custom House in 2016, and in 2017 at Red Hook’s public housing projects. Glesta chose all three locations to highlight their vulnerability to rising sea levels.
I rounded out the presentations by reading from “My Golden Spike for the Anthropocene,” the first chapter in a developing collection of personal essays
Banquet event at Mildred’s Lane in Narrowsburg PA
Mildred's Lane, New Website, and Brooklyn Rail Reviews
Mildred’s Lane
On the evening of Saturday, July 20th at Mildred’s Lane, I will present a paper that I gave at this year’s College Arts Association conference titled: “Mildred’s Lane, an Art Institute of Social Engagement.” For those of you not familiar with Mildred’s Lane, it is an art project that began as the co-creation of J. Morgan Puett and Mark Dion in 1998. Since then, Puett has taken ownership and greatly expanded its scope. Located in Pennsylvania just across the river from Narrowsburg, NY, Mildred’s Lane now hosts a thriving community of regular participants and guests. Its activities straddle many aspects of cultural production: food, fashion, and shelter as art; research center; private museum; archaeological site; artist’s retreat; and site-specific artwork. In my paper, I contend that Mildred’s Lane, transcending the categories of relational esthetics and social engagement, occupies a unique position in contemporary art practice. If you can’t get to Mildred’s Lane to hear my talk, you can download the paper here. But go to Mildred’s Lane.
New Website
Announcing my new website! It includes paintings, drawings, videos, a social practice project, and a blog. You can find out about my latest project, Crazy River, on the “About” page.
Recent Brooklyn Rail Reviews
The June edition of The Brooklyn Rail features two of my art reviews in the “Art Seen” section:
David Driskell: Resonance: Paintings, 1965–2002. This mini-retrospective at DC Moore for David Driskell, noted art historian of African-American art, makes the case that his paintings should be as celebrated as his scholarship.
Sarah Grass: Unmanned. Sarah Grass’s virtuosic drawings at Doppelgänger Projects propose a feminist utopia that empowers non-humans as well as the majority of the human species.
Tim Rollins and K.O.S., On the Origin of Species - Instinct (after Darwin), 2015. Ink and matte acrylic on book pages mounted on canvas, 60 x 84 x 1.5 inches. Courtesy Studio K.O.S., Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, and Seoul. Photo: Elisabeth Bernstein.
Tim Rollins and KOS: Love as a Revolutionary Force
Yesterday would have been Tim Rollins’ 64th birthday. In his memory, I am sharing my Brooklyn Rail review of Tim Rollins and KOS’ exhibit Workshop, at Lehmann Maupin, which ends June 14th. It is the first to follow Tim’s death in late 2017. One of the OGs of social practice, we see in (now) Studio KOS an example of love’s power to effect social change. Love as a catalyst in modern political practice goes at least as far back as Tolstoy’s Christian anarchism, and figures in Ghandi’s satygraha, the Liberation Theology of Latin America, The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King’s civil disobedience, Nelson Mandela’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and in our own era with the “commons” theory of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt.
In his own intellectual development, Tim acknowledged a debt to The Rev. Dr. King, as well as the Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire, whose Pedagogy of the Oppressed came from decades of working with the 20th century descendants of enslaved people in Brazil’s impoverished North East. I had the luck to experience Tim’s teaching style during my MFA program at the School of Visual Arts. Down-to-earth and funny, he had a knack for opening people up. I remember crying on his shoulder, all tears and snot, during a one-on-one interview. That experience changed my understanding of the student-teacher relationship. The outpouring of grief and affirmations, in print and online, following his death showed the depth of his impact on many lives.
What Tim did with KOS was a revolutionary act of love, and he thought of it that way. When he started KOS in the early 80s, he gave a collective voice to young men living in one of the most underserved city neighborhoods in New York City, if not the country, and took them to the center stage of the art world. Workshopfeatured a panel discussion that included some of the founding members of Studio Kos: brothers Angel and Jorge Abreu, Robert Branch, and Rick Savinon. They were unanimous that Tim’s intervention impacted not only their lives, but also the lives of their families and their friends, by bringing them opportunities and access. These new avenues for action strengthened the fabric of their communities.
Resistance can’t be just a struggle against hate and fear. We must affirm a counter-narrative about community, tolerance, and a sense of shared purpose across the many things that divide us. The road we are on is an existential threat to our democracy and out species. Tim’s empathy, risk-taking, and hard work forged new communities across barriers of race and class. Let’s follow that road instead.