May 27,2020

Long-Term Ecological Reflections: Art + Science at BonanzaCreek, Alaska by Shelley Stonebrook

terrain.org/2020/lter/bonanza-creek-alaska

A growing network of long-term ecological research sites in the United States (and beyond)features collaborations among the sciences, arts, and humanities. From the hardwoodforests of New England to the towering old growth trees of the Pacific Northwest, we willintroduce you to a handful of these diverse places and explore what happens whenenvironmental scientists and artists hike, live, research, and create together with the longview of decades and centuries in mind. Terrain.org is pleased to partner with the SpringCreek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word on this series. Spring Creek Projecthosts a Long-Term Ecological Reflections program in Oregon that is designed to last 200years and is one of many organizations nurturing this loose-knit network of creative inquiry.Learn more at Ecological Reflections.

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It was a Friday evening in February 2017. Bundled up on a winter night, hundreds ofresidents of Fairbanks, Alaska, made their way down a normally quiet street dotted with oldindustrial buildings. Some were parked a mile away. They arrived at the unassuming WellStreet Art Co. gallery and poured in to catch Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest’s latestpublic exhibit showcasing works born out of arts and science collaborations. This particularshow, In a Time of Change: Microbial Worlds, drew 900 people for opening night.

“If you look at the population of Fairbanks, that’s 2.5 percent of the city!” says Mary BethLeigh, an environmental microbiologist and director of Bonanza Creek’s arts-humanities-science integrations.

A full house at the Well Street Art Co. gallery in Fairbanks, Alaska, on opening night of the MicrobialWorlds art-science exhibit.

Photo by Todd Paris.

This level of public engagement for a small-town Friday night event about a seemingly nichetopic sounds surprising until you dig into the profound impact the series of shows has hadon public perception of science and environmental issues. Bonanza Creek’s ongoing seriesIn a Time of Change has done much more than explore changes in a research forest—it’schanging minds and, in turn, changing how people see and act in the world.

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Artists Enter an Alaskan Boreal Forest

Bonanza Creek, a part of the National Science Foundation’s Long-Term Ecological Research(LTER) network since 1987, is a research site jointly managed by the University of AlaskaFairbanks Institute of Arctic Biology, the Boreal Ecology Cooperative Research Unit, and theU.S. Forest Service. It’s a wild place of black spruce, stands of alder, poplar, aspen and birch,bog and fen meadows, and bluffs that overlook the stunning Alaska Range Mountains—andit’s only a 30-minute drive from downtown Fairbanks.

The Tanana River and surrounding floodplain at Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest.Photo by Roger Ruess.

In 2008, Leigh, then a new faculty member at the University of Alaska, was able to launchthe first arts and humanities experiment at Bonanza Creek. Because of her background as adancer, choreographer, and musician, she was a natural fit for heading up this type ofprogramming. With support from Terry Chapin, the site’s LTER principal investigator at thetime, she organized a field trip of writers that headed into the forest to meet with scientists.

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“It wasn’t intended necessarily to amount to anything other than just an initial fieldexperience, and then the writers got so excited that they really wanted to do a performanceand turn it into something. So it grew,” Leigh says. Today, this type of programming is a keyoutreach feature of Bonanza Creek, and the site has hosted many visual artists, textileartists, theater performers, dancers, and writers and has organized a series of successful artexhibits and performances in the community.

Science-based art pieces on display at the Well Street Art Co. gallery.Photo by Todd Paris.

In a Time of Change

In 2010, a vision for Bonanza Creek’s arts and humanities activities began to coalescearound the theme “In a Time of Change,” the name of their first project from 2008. The sitehas since hosted four more major thematic projects in the series: Envisioning the Future(2010), The Art of Fire (2012), Trophic Cascades (2013), and Microbial Worlds (2017).

Each “In a Time of Change” project has had about 12 participants, though sometimes more.For the field trips, everyone meets on campus, drives together to the forest, and then useslogging roads to explore multiple stops, such as visiting an old burn area to talk about forestsuccession after fire. Bonanza Creek tries to maintain an Alaska focus in selecting people to

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participate in programming, so artists and writers are either local to the state or they’re partof a collaborative effort that includes at least one Alaskan.

Scientist Ursel Schuette talks with artists about plant-microbe interactions on a field trip toBonanza Creek Experimental Forest.

Photo by Mary Beth Leigh.

With the most recent Microbial Worlds project, Leigh designed a series of field trips that wereheld once a month for 16 months. This long-term approach to artistic engagement mirrorsthe mission of LTER. Each field trip started with Leigh giving the participants a minimicrobiology course, and she also often brought in a guest scientist to interact with theartists and cover a different aspect of microbiology.

“The repeated interactions built a sense of cohort and deepened their knowledge of thearea. People could really develop their interests. I tried to cast a lot of seeds, and peoplewould latch on to one thing or another. Then I could steer them toward experts in thatarena,” she says.

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Bonanza Creek site manager Jamie Hollingsworth drills a permafrost core for artists on a field trip.The group got to hold the permafrost core as Hollingsworth, along with scientist Teresa

Hollingsworth, explained the layers. This experience is referenced in an essay by Debbie Moderowas holding a “permafrost fudgesicle,” and permafrost makes many appearances in the artwork.

Photo by Mary Beth Leigh.

As part of the Microbial Worlds project, the group of artists took a five-day trip up to ToolikField Station, another LTER site in Alaska funded by the National Science Foundation. Thegroup went out on many treks with a guide and more scientists. One exciting outcome ofthe trip is that the folks at Toolik, who had hosted intermittent residency opportunities inyears past, felt inspired to restart their own arts activities at the site.

Nancy Hausle-Johnson, a tile artist who was on the Microbial Worlds trip, later completed aresidency at Toolik where she created a large tile installation in their dining hall. Leigh saysthis is typical of how the arts and humanities activities tend to spread and grow organicallyto more science sites.

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Artists paddle out onto Toolik Lake with scientists to observe and assist with routine watersampling. Artists also collected their own samples that they viewed under their microscopes,

resulting in pieces like the collaborative “Toolik Chain of Lakes” quilt series created by ReeNancarrow and Charlotte Bird.

Photo by Eric Henderson.

Seeking a Two-Way Exchange

A handful of Bonanza Creek scientists are a consistent presence during the field trips,including the site’s current principal investigator, Roger Ruess, as well as JamieHollingsworth, site manager, Teresa Hollingsworth, research ecologist and co-principalinvestigator, and Knut Kielland, a professor in the department of biology and wildlife. Weasked Leigh whether these interactions felt risky at first, and how scientists and artistsreacted to working alongside each other. When venturing into a “place of science,” she saysartists would sometimes express a bit of initial nervousness. What surprised Leigh was thatscientists, too, had some apprehension about interacting with artists. “They would oftensay, ‘Oh no, are they going to make me write poems or talk about poems?’” Leigh laughs. Butthese fears and disciplinary barriers fell away quickly on both sides.

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Part of what makes it easy for the artists and scientists to connect is the discovery thatthere’s overlap in their methods. This discovery often happens spontaneously on the fieldtrips, such as over lunch conversations in which the scientists and artists begin to recognizesimilarities in the processes of doing science and art.

View from the top of Bonanza Creek bluff at Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest looking out overthe Tanana River floodplain. This is a popular lunch spot on artist field trips with scientists.

Photo by Mary Beth Leigh.

During The Art of Fire, they had a series of short artist talks that were well-attended by thescientists, and there Leigh witnessed even more light bulbs sparking as the artists talkedabout their process. Everyone could see how it was so much like a scientific process:collecting data, experimenting with materials and methods iteratively, having things failover and over, and then finally landing on a path forward.

For many artists, working in a new setting and engaging with scientists changes thetrajectory of their work. One aspect of the Bonanza Creek forest that particularly resonateswith and impacts artists is the time factor. It’s an ecosystem in which fire is important, and

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because fire hits a reset button, plants return to the landscape in an observable sequencescientists can point out to artists.

“When artists spend time with ecologists, they start to see things on a time scale, not just asa snap shot,” Leigh says. Even though these artists may have been engaging with stunningAlaskan scenery their whole lives, they begin to understand and see a larger history andtimeline to the landscape. Because of this, some of their work takes on a clear temporaldimension.

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Renowned textile artist Ree Nancarrow introduced a time factor into much of her work after herengagement at Bonanza Creek. She created “Deceptive Beauty,” a piece that was on display at theMicrobial Worlds exhibit, in collaboration with aquatic ecosystem ecologist Katey Walter Anthony

to depict methane emissions triggered by permafrost thaw.Photo by Todd Paris.

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While examples abound regarding how working in a scientific research site affects artists’work, a question many ask is whether engagement with artists is also changing thetrajectory of scientific inquiry. Are scientists looking at things in new ways? Are theychanging their approaches because of their interaction with writers and artists? The answerseems to be yes, even though the outcomes aren’t always concrete or easy to measure.

“What I have seen is that scientists become much more energized and inspired frominteracting with artists,” Leigh says. “It’s been successful in helping the scientists get theword out to the public about their research field and research findings, so there’s thisoutreach function that it accomplishes. Artists ask really good questions that make usscientists rethink what we’re doing and why, and sometimes even notice things we mightnot have noticed.”

Leigh has observed that having artists around seems to especially affect graduate studentsand scientists early in their careers, especially those who may be wondering whetherscience is the right long-term path for them. “Some had artistic side interests that they feltlike they had to give up to be a successful scientist,” Leigh says. “And then to see, no, youdon’t—this could actually make your science better. Or, there’s a way that you can do both.”

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Artist Stephanie Rae Dixon and artist and scientist Eric Henderson collect microbial samplesnear the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on one of the outings the art-science group took

while staying at Toolik Field Station.Photo by Mary Beth Leigh.

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Shifts in Public Perception

Bonanza Creek began inviting audience members to fill out surveys at public events to get abetter idea of the demographics of attendees and what they took away from theprogramming. From these surveys, Leigh knows audience members have reportedincreased knowledge on the topic areas covered as well as changed attitudes, such aschanging their minds about predator control following the Trophic Cascades exhibit.

When asked why they thought shows like this have value, attendees responded that it helpsto pair visualizations with the sometimes-hard-to-understand scientific information beingshared. They also said the artwork evokes emotions, which scientific data rarely does.

“The public felt like there was value in that. They actually felt something about what theywere seeing, whether it’s wonder, empathy, or caring about environmental change,” Leighsays. “That’s really exciting to hear. I think one of the big challenges we have to overcomewith respect to things like climate change or other social-ecological issues is people caring.When you give them lots of facts, like, ‘There’s this much CO in the atmosphere,’ that’s notsomething that evokes emotion that’s going to lead to action.”

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This piece by tile artist Nancy Hausle-Johnson represents the emergence ofdominant microbes during permafrost thaw caused by climate change.

Photo by Chris Arend.

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In 2016, Leigh co-authored an article published in the Journal of Environmental Studies andSciences with fellow scientists Lissy Goralnik and Hannah Gosnell and philosopher MichaelPaul Nelson that drew partly from interviews and partly from these audience surveys toevaluate the outcomes of arts-science collaborations and outreach. They found that suchcollaborations have “great potential to catalyze relationships between scholars, the public,and the natural world; cultivate inspiration and empathy for the natural world; and sparkawareness shifts that can enable pro-environmental behavior.”

Looking to the future, Leigh wants to keep the momentum of “In a Time of Change” goingand also has her sights set on realizing grander ambitions. While public education andoutreach are perhaps the clearest benefits to artists working among scientists, she thinkseven more can be accomplished. “What we’re aspiring to is some kind of deep, long-termintegration and collaboration that can someday actually solve big problems by havingpeople from different disciplines work together to tackle them. And the public educationpiece is an important part of that—but it’s only one of many dimensions.”

To work toward that end, organizers at Bonanza Creek will continue to bring togetherthinkers and creators across multiple disciplines, who will set out on foot together throughan experimental forest, interacting, sharing, observing, and questioning. As the trees standwatch, ever-changing in the landscape, how will the artists and scientists change along withthem? How will their shared reverence for the place help them produce work that willcontinue to shape public perception and engagement? And how might they ultimatelychange the course of the future?

Bonanza Creek at a Glance

Location: Near Fairbanks, Alaska

Year arts activities began: 2008

Artists hosted: Alaska-based visual artists, writers, and performing artists

View more art: In a Time of Change: Microbial Worlds

Funding: $10,000 annually from site’s LTER grant; other one-time gifts from various sources

How to apply: If you’re an Alaskan artist or writer—or a creative who collaborates withsomeone in Alaska—look for program updates and upcoming opportunities on the ITOCFacbeook page. When a new program arises, the steering committee will issue a request forproposals, generally requiring a statement of interest, resume, and work samples to apply.

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Shelley Stonebrook is the programcoordinator for the Spring Creek Project. Shemanages the organization’s residencyprograms and helps plan events and otherprogramming that support artists and writersand that cultivate connections across manydisciplines. She holds an MA in English fromthe University of Kansas and was previously asenior editor at Mother Earth News magazine.She lives and gardens with her husband anddaughter in Corvallis, Oregon. Header photo from an artist field trip toToolik Field Station by Mary Beth Leigh.

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