The artists represent an international cross section of various disciplines including digital media, mixed media sculpture, performance, installation, photography, painting and film. Fritz Buehner (New York-Boston), Eduardo “Pincho” Casanova Arosteguy (Montevideo, Uruguay), Melo Dominguez (Los Angeles-Tucson), Heather Green (Tucson), Jane Marsching (Boston), Macarena Montañez (Montevideo, Uruguay), and Bently Spang (Montana). All have been working in the field of environmental art.

As Art Lab Creative Director, I coordinated with Biosphere 2 scientists Joost van Haren, Kolby Jardine, Greg A. Barron-Gafford and Sujith Ravi to facilitate interaction with the artists. On the first day of their three-day visit, the B2 scientists were invited to join the artists for an informal discussion about art and science interface over breakfast, lunch and dinner, prepared by Phillippe Waterinckx, founder of Tucson Community Supported Agriculture.

On day four, Art Lab Technical Director John Newman drove the artists to the Institute of the Environment where they met with Jonathan Overpeck, Co-Director, Institute of the Environment, and Gregg Garfin, Deputy Director for Science Translation & Outreach before proceeding to Coronado Ranch and Cuenca Los Ojos Ranch, located on the Mexican side of the border.

Under the direction of Valer Austin, the artists spent three days touring the ranch where they learned its history and of her extensive efforts to re-establish plant life and animal migration. An impressive system of gabions promoting water retention, essential to restoring the land, has been built throughout the ranch.

The group was joined by Diana Hadley, Associate Curator, Arizona State Museum, and Yar Petryszyn, Assistant Curator of Mammals at the University of Arizona at Cuenca Los Ojos where they led discussions on animal migration, drought and ranching in Southern Arizona. They artists also learned the history of the San Pedro River, the last significant free-flowing river in the region, considered to be of paramount ecological and environmental importance, particularly to avian migration.

“I sincerely applaud the organizers for bringing together such a diverse, wonderful group of people,” said Bently Spang, a Northern Cheyenne artist who recently had an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. “I truly feel that we created a bond between the group of artists and with the scientists and environmentalists that will endure beyond the parameters of this project.”

A festive gathering of the participants was held at the Tucson home of Cathrene Morton marking the close of the busy week. The artists then returned to their studios to assimilate their experience and produce a work of art for Art Lab. The works will be posted on the Rillito River Project website at www.RillitoRiverProject.org.

My experience being part of the Rillito River Project was an amazing one. Originally from Los Angeles and now a Tucson resident, The Rillito River Project exposed me to a lot of valuable information about the environment and inspired me to learn more. Our experience began at Biosphere #2. We spoke to many different scientists about their work and our group was given a tour of the biosphere. The thing about the Biosphere is that you have to think of it as a living thing you are able to walk through and semi control. It’s a very cool experiment.

After our 4 days at the Biosphere we headed down to Cuenca Los Ojos in the Chiricahua Mountains. We stayed at the Coronado Ranch, an amazing place. Valer Austin has many acres of land both on the U.S. and Mexican side of the border. She invited us to see what she has done to raise the water table and reestablish native grasses on her land by building simple rock dams called gabions. We also had a chance to see how the border not only keeps people from their natural migration but also keeps animals from their natural migration. Being on the Coronado Ranch and meeting with Valer was a very inspiring experience. We had the opportunity to see what one person can do to make a huge change for the better.

I learned a lot from this experience. With this new knowledge I would like to use my skills as an artist to share it with others. I feel that if people knew more about how climate change is effecting our environment they would be willing to make the necessary changes. The first project I have in mind is to create a painting of the Mexican Free Tail bat. It lives in Tucson six months out of the year and helps our local farmers control the bug population. It also eats mosquitoes and is a delight to have as a summer resident. I would then love to make my painting into a large-scale mural that the people of Tucson can appreciate and learn from. This is the project I would like to do as a direct result of my Rillito River Project, Art Lab, experience.

Its hard to make artwork in the face of these questions.  Complex, abstract reams of undifferentiated data about the future lack a felt reality.  The timescales are long and the sweep of effects broad, but it is in looking at the shorter timescales and local experiences that the abstract becomes real.  Those local discussions were riveting and even hopeful, whether learning of the work of how to fight the disastrous effects of the invasive species Buffel Grass as it spreads rapidly through Tucson and surrounding areas, so clearly shown by Lindy A. Brigham, Executive Director of the Southern Arizona Buffelgrass Coordination Center, or Valer Austin’s determined remediation of desertified land to restore biodiversity in the Chihuahuan Desert on her ranch Cuenca Los Ojos.

The Art Lab Biosphere project provided an incredible, rich, and surprising experience for discovering the key questions around climate change in the Southwest, challenges in working across the studio and the laboratory, and the importance of dialog and connectivity in research and community.    My project, Avian Field Stations, has a new research focus: grasslands birds in the Cuenca Los Ojos area.  I look forward to returning to Tucson and the Chihuahuan desert in the early summer to conduct field research, develop alliances with researchers, and test prototype works.

Scientist Yoost Van Haren led us on an enthusiastic and insightful tour inside the biosphere, where we learned about many experiments that aim to study these problems in the desert and others ecosystems beyond. Inside B2 I found the powerful loud fans unsettling, but interesting—the fans are placed throughout B2 in order to aid the trees—which must be lifted up with harnesses as there’s not enough natural wind to develop the strength to support their own weight. It made me think of the lack of native sounds in B2 as well. What happens to a tree without participatory insects and birds or even other species? Aside from the lack of physical wind, what happens to ecosystems with a lack of auditory phenomena? I thought of installing speakers inside the Biosphere with recordings of autochthonous sounds to see if it would be possible to measure any changes over time.

During the second half of ART LAB we were guests of Valer Austin at lovely El Coronado Ranch where we saw first hand how it is possible to restore landscapes that have been scarred with over grazing and poor management, ending the week with a hopeful and inspiring picture. The first afternoon and evening we gathered around the patio with biologist Yar Petryszyn to study a collection of mammal skulls and learn about bats. While seated in a circle passing around skulls a number of honeybees kept aggressively buzzing around and landing on me, making me feel a bit wary. Having kept bees for a season I was surprised by my unease around them. “They’re just honeybees! Why so anxious?” I asked myself. The next day along our walks studying gabbiones and trincheras, Valer stopped to show us a few native pollinator plants that were beginning to take seed and described the importance of disseminating information about planting and preserving seeds on both sides of the border. She impressed upon us the variety of pollinators, pollinator plants and seed dispersal methods, and reported that on her land alone there are estimates of 450 native bee species—quite a number indeed!

Valer showing us seed pod

By the end of our stay at the ranch I felt inspired to assist Valer in getting the word out about these pollinators and plants. But I also felt in awe of the sheer numbers of native bees. I remembered I read somewhere an estimate that the Sonoran Desert has over 1,000 species of native bees, making it one of the most diverse bee population in the world. Back home in Tucson, I decided to meet with a few native bee experts to learn more about native bees. UofA insect behavior researcher Jennifer Jandt and native bee researcher and coordinator of Pollinator Partnership Stephen Buchmann confirmed what I remembered and informed me that the largest threat to native bees is not lack of pollen or plants due to grazing or invasive species, but competition from—HONEY BEES! This surprised me and made me remember those pestering bees back at the ranch. My plan now is to create an installation about native bees that will include a bi-lingual take-away pamphlet about native pollinators and their plants that Valer can use apart from my project.

Seed Pod at El Coronado Ranch

Stephen Buchmann's native bee collection

When I think about how long scientists have been searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, I see in my mind’s eye the earth, a tiny, but brilliant blue speck sheilded by its fragile atmosphere against the vast fullness of  space as the rarest of things.

The world population is now 7 billion and the competition for resources among all living things fierce.

My personhood will always make me the center of my universe.  The visit to Art Lab, to Biosphere 2, the Chiricahua Mountains, and Sonora desert, with an international group of artists to meet extraordinary people dedicated to revitalising a land degraded through mismanagement was inspiring. Energized at home I can imagine that what may seem incommensurable can be rethought.

To be continued…

Coming soon !

“To” from Shelia Rocha on Vimeo.

The dance she performs is a dance done by the maidens along the shore of the the water.  It is an old one that is done in the presence of the single young men of her people.  Tatiana’s dance is placed in juxtaposition with the environment of the desert and the words of the Dine’ actors/dancers who come from the arid climate of Arizona where water is prized since it is often times scarce.

Water as celebration, as sustenance, as a dying relative in this 21st century is honored as an ancient being comprised of pure spirit in this performance piece that engages the voice, movement and music of Native people who currently reside in Tucson, Arizona.

I pulled down the receiver and put the phone to my ear.

“Hell-lo”? I said.

“Mr. Cauthorn is an S.O.B.,” was the reply, and the connection went dead.

I was too young to know what those initials actually meant, but I was acutely aware of the hostility on the other end of the line and the cowardly shame the crank caller may have felt after delivering their nasty payload to a child.

I was also aware that my father, Robert Cauthorn, wasn’t too popular at that time. A city council member, he had recently had contributed to a resolution that increased the water rates for people living in the foothills of Tucson. Many cities in the Southwest such as Tucson faced challenges not only in terms of water supply, but also the logistics of transporting water to higher elevations. This feat required extra energy and engineering, and the Tucson City Council members decided that this challenge warranted charging higher water prices to those living in the foothills.

But in general, residents in the foothills tended to be more affluent, and therefore more formidable when it came to protesting council measures that they didn’t like. The protesters weren’t even interested in arguing the point, they simply wanted to kick my dad and several other council members out of office. A man by the name of Fitzgerald led the whole, tea party-esque movement with the help of a connected lawyer. Fitzgerald (I forget his first name) was known as “The Color TV King” and sold them on the corner of Grant and Campbell avenue. I believe the sign is still there, as it may now be registered as some sort of landmark.

The Color TV King was in fact successful in throwing my dad out of office via a council recall. The council members scattered to the four winds. My family ended up in Florida very soon after. This ended being a positive development, as my dad was tired of getting a near poverty level salary while enduring the protests of people who either didn’t understand the rationale behind the water rate increase, or just didn’t care. To this day, Tucson foothills residents pay the same for their water as those that live down in the city. It basically amounts to taxpayer subsidized water delivery.

That bitter episode marked my first encounter with water supply issues in the Southwest. But that was just the beginning. A different type of water issue was rumbling on the horizon. It was brought on by population increases that were putting an increasing strain on the limited underground water supply. Golfing resorts like La Paloma and Canyon Ranch sprouted up and compounded the problem, as golf courses require tremendous amounts of water to be maintained.

These issues weren’t limited to Tucson. Las Vegas residents fought with California farmers for rights to the Colorado river. Farmers needed the river to water the Imperial Valley, some of the most fertile land on earth. Las Vegas needed the water to enable continued city growth. These were both perfectly good reasons to tap water from the river, but it didn’t matter how good the reasons were. There was only so much river. And nowadays if you travel to where the Colorado river naturally flows into the Gulf of California, you’ll find only dry sand. Fish species such as the Colorado Pikeminnow, one of largest species of carp in North America, are now effectively extinct in Arizona, Mexico and Nevada, and only found in the Colorado River headwaters in the state that gives the once mighty river its name. And in water starved Texas, tense negotiations continue with its northern, water rich neighbor Oklahoma. Texas may have oil, but you can’t drink it.

Please forgive the didactic tone for a moment. The term carrying capacity of a given environment is roughly defined as the amount of sustainable life it can support. How much food is available? How much water ? These variables have dictated where populations – both animal and human – have been able to settle in the past. But modern technology and engineering can now enable us to proliferate in areas where natural circumstances would previously never allow, effectively cheating the limitations of carrying capacities. We can turn deserts into golf courses, bring green Eastern style grass lawns to formerly rocky front yards, and pipe more water to new families who move to desert climates. But the water cost of doing this is huge, and it’s a game of diminishing returns. Now it’s no longer a matter of simply raising the water rates. It is getting to the point where cities like Tucson are in danger of running out of local water completely. Have we ever documented a situation where a large town simply runs dry? I don’t know, and certainly don’t know the solution beyond common sense conservation.

I also suspect that as Tucson’s water table drops, particulates and contaminants become less diluted and more noticeable, perhaps even dangerous. Polychlorinated Biphenyls, or PCBs, have been found at certain well sites in Tucson. I now live in Chicago, and am used to drinking the fairly good water that comes from Lake Michigan. I recently travelled to Tucson to visit my parents. My friend Jeff gave me a ride from the airport. We stopped and had lunch at a wonderful Mexican restaurant on 4th avenue. But when I took a drink of the water, it tasted like jet fuel. “What are you talking about?” my friend Jeff responded. “The water tastes fine.” And he proceeded to gulp down half a glass, looking at me like I was a lunatic. “You look so worried,” Jeff said.

But why should I be worried, I thought. All we have to do is negotiate with San Diego to construct a desalinization plant, and then run 400 miles of pipeline from the Pacifc to Arizona. We can pass on the gargantuan energy cost of desalinating and transporting this water to the Arizona taxpayers. They’ll understand, because the water must flow. Man – aren’t I a chip off the old block ?

As a participant in Art Lab: Border Biosphere Explorations, I spent a few days at El Coronado Ranch in the Chiricahua Mountains. Surrounded by hundreds of acres of grasslands restored by Cuenca Los Ojos Foundation, I began to learn the identifying characteristics and names of some of Arizona’s native grasses. This new knowledge transformed the field of grass in which I stood into a field of several kinds of grasses then into a field of Green sprangletop, Buffalograss Feather fingergrass, Plains lovegrass, Hall’s panicgrass, Poverty threeawn, Blue grama and many others. Looking closely enough to tell them apart, I saw these individual species of grasses for the first time.

During the residency I happened to be reading Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, a book by Lawrence Weschler about the artist, Robert Irwin. The paradox between my reading and my experience resulted in “Naming is Seeing | Seeing is Forgetting” a video about how naming and categorizing both sharpens and limits our perceptions of the world, whether we’re seeing as artists or scientists.