Nature Art Habitat Residency
“NAHR brings together participants from around the world each year to reflect on an ecological theme…The content is meant to be provocative and forward-looking, producing new scholarship and innovative works.”
As an artist-in-residence, I spent a summer immersing myself in the Taleggio Valley of northern Italy for the program theme of “Soil: The Critical Zone.” The region is an exciting setting for engaging the ground beneath our feet and contemplating soil vitality for the cities and landscapes of our future.
Inspired by Bruno Munari and his treatment of “curiosity as a method, experimentation as a project” (*), I produced a series of field notes and watercolor studies on soil. The final product was fashioned after his “Transformazioni (Transformations)” deck of cards for exploration, where I treated the soil as both subject and medium for understanding complexity, layering, and change over time. The residency culminated in an open studio day where we engaged with the community about our interests and investigations, and my final collection of vignettes was installed in a local storefront. The experience continues to shape my design thinking, bridging creative exploration with the systems-based challenges of urban environments. I also strive to approach each subject with curiosity—influenced by Bruno Munari—to reexamine the ordinary and uncover new possibilities.
(*) “this is precisely Munari’s lesson: acquiring an attitude of curious openness towards every phenomenon, every element coming to our attention; becoming capable of questioning it without taking anything for granted.”
Work from the residency is featured in the publication: “Transect of Coexistence.”
