Scientists and artists are more alike than different, says a southern Alberta artist.
That has been proven through the success of the Field Notes Collective, a group of Alberta scientists and artists who are collaborating to explore various aspects of human interaction with the environment.
“It felt very natural,” Mary Kavanagh said about the project.
“In fact, I think artists and scientists, as scholars who ask questions and work through problems, have more in common than not in common.”
The collective was formed in 2008 with support from the Alberta Rural Development Network.
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It began with a symposium, dinner and tour of an agricultural research station that included scientists, artists and southern Alberta ranchers.
That was followed by a project in which several ranchers opened their homes and operations to artists so they could experience, observe and create.
Stage 3 is an art exhibit called Ecotone at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery until April 14.
“From urban encroachment to resource extraction, the multiplicity of responses offered by the many other artists included in this exhibition speak to the enormous complexities at play in our local environment,” reads a synopsis at the exhibit.
An ecotone is a zone where two ecological areas overlap, which SAAG curator Ryan Doherty finds apt to describe both exhibition content and the mesh between scientists and artists.
Scientists, like artists, are curious about the world and how it works.
“They think very creatively, sometimes, to open up the world. Artists are trying to open up the world as well, turn it upside down and find out how it ticks,” he said. “There’s a similar drive and a similar goal and a similar creativity that’s at the heart of it.”
Doherty said the art exhibition won’t be the end of activities by the Field Notes collective, although the next steps are yet to be finalized.
