Kansas artists embrace nature, show concern for environment through their art
Two art exhibits exploring the nature and birds of the Great Plains opened recently at the Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University. The exhibits will run through Dec. 4.
The museum cited the United Nations’ recent IPCC report that left audiences with grim takeaways: climate change is real, driven by fossil fuels and a crisis. Those facts and broader climate change concerns made bringing these two exhibitions urgent for them.
“It’s such an important issue in our time and we knew people in our university and in our community would be interested in seeing this,” said Leslie Brothers, the director of the Ulrich Museum of Art.
One of the exhibits, “Love in the Time of the Anthropocene,” is a collection of photographs and paintings by three Kansas artists; Terry Evans, Philip Heying and A. Mary Kay. Anthropocene refers to the huge role humans play in shaping the environment around them.
“The prairie is an ecosystem that has always been symbiotic with people,” said Heying. The Matfield Green photographer was referring to the fact that humans and prairie developed together, shaping each other.
For Heying, the prairie is a metaphor for the wider world.
“If we damage it, it will damage us,” Heying said. “If we care for it, it will care for us.”
The largest piece of their exhibit is a 7-foot-tall, 18-foot-long painting by Mary Kay that she started 20 years ago, that shows the interconnections of nature.
It was influenced by her feelings of “extreme loss and melancholy” when it comes to nature, as Mary Kay remembers when she was young and would walk with her mom who would talk about how there were no more wildflowers in their part of England because of the use of DDT.
For the past 30 years, she’s lived in Kansas and has worked to build a nature sanctuary around her home.
“I want them to feel the ecstasy of experiencing the natural world . . . and see life and mortality and how everyone is connected,” Mary Kay said.
A pair of Canadian artists has the other exhibit called “Look, it’s daybreak, dear, time to sing,” which looks at the connection of birds and humans throughout the Great Plains and other areas. Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens have collaborated for over 15 years.
Walking into their exhibit, visitors are greeted by noises of bird calls and projected videos of birds being counted, blood tested and fed.
“We wanted to meet with people who care for the birds and show that it is a complex relationship,” Ibghy said. “We wanted to show the violence involved in caring. Caring is not always easy or rewarding for those involved in the care or for those being cared for . . . There’s a lot of very questionable ethics involved in caring.”
In between the videos are tables with wooden blocks., a materialization of graphs showing the relationship of industrial agriculture and its impacts bird populations and nature.
“It shows how agriculture land is increasingly being bought up by investors other than the farmers who are living on this land,” Ibghy said.
The Ulrich Museum of Art is located on Wichita State’s campus. Its hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday and admission is free.
This story was originally published September 1, 2021 at 4:09 AM with the headline "Kansas artists embrace nature, show concern for environment through their art."
