exhibit » Lora Jost, Artist

Blog 5: Poetic Language

Gallery view, *Sound the Climate Alarm*, 2020

This is the fifth and last in a series of blogs about my current exhibit, Sound the Climate Alarm, on display at the Lawrence Arts Center now through Dec. 21, 2020. Here are links to the first four:

Blog 1: Artist Statement: Sound the Climate Alarm

Blog 2: Roots of Sound the Climate Alarm

Blog 3: Symbols and Themes

Blog 4: Making Art in Covid-times

Poetic Language

Sound the Climate Alarm is, in broad terms, my response to climate change, animal extinction, barriers, border walls, and the pandemic. I was happy to discover the writer and poet Mathew Zapruderâ€™s description of how he views the language of poetry, because I think it is a helpful way to think about the images in my exhibit, too.

Zapruder talks about poetry as â€œlanguage freed from utility.â€ He says poetry is how we â€œget to the truth that is beyond our ability to articulate.â€ So where, in my drawings, chickadees sing razor wire, thereâ€™s a cardinal honking, or a paper boat is lit on fire, I think these are the kinds of images Zapruder was talking about, intended to â€œproduce an effect in us, rather than to communicate information.â€

So, while I am working with specific themes in my art, my images are intended less to communicate information than to evoke impressions, inspire imagination, and spark concern.

Installation of paper crane drawings, Lawrence Arts Center, 2020

Visit my exhibit in-person at the Lawrence Arts Center, now through Dec. 21, 2020. Original art and artist prints, suitable as gifts, are available for purchase. Hours are M-Th 9am-9pm, F-Sa 9am-7pm, and Su 1:30-7:30 pm. As Covid-19 rages on, the Arts Center is pretty low-key these days and it is likely that during a random visit to my exhibit you may find yourself alone in the space. If you would prefer a virtual tour, scroll down the page at this link, courtesy of the Lawrence Arts Center.

Artist prints are on sale in the gallery

Blog 4: Making Art in Covid-times

This is the fourth in a series of blogs about my current exhibit, Sound the Climate Alarm, on display at the Lawrence Arts Center now through Dec. 21, 2020. Here are links to the first three:

Blog 1: Artist Statement: Sound the Climate Alarm

Blog 2: Roots of Sound the Climate Alarm

Blog 3: Symbols and Themes

Making Art in Covid-times

My most recent work for this exhibit includes art that I have made during the pandemic. I am fortunate and, yes, privileged, to be mostly working at home. During this time, Iâ€™ve created two of my favorite pieces in the show.

One is a drawing originally intended to celebrate renewable energy, titled Light (above). I like this drawing because through the creative process it became more complicated than I had first imagined. Instead of inspirational, as I’d initially intended, the windmills and power lines became oddly dark and industrial, not the utopian renewable energy future I had hoped for. And the mixing of birds and windmills in the piece led one viewer to tell me about bladeless windmills â€“ Iâ€™d never heard of them. Similarly, the archway of drawn light bulbs, meant to look radiant, includes dated-looking bulbs, not energy efficientâ€”what was I thinking? Yet the incongruity in the drawing feels right during Covid-times, because nothing now is right, and weâ€™ll never have a climate change-free utopian future or the perfect technology to make it so, but, as in this drawing, we still should try.

I also created a collage piece, titled Phoenix Rising (left), that merges silhouetted hands as birds rising from the archway made of orange and yellow thread, representing fire. This piece evolved over time. I didnâ€™t know what it would be until I had painted and glued down several layers of cloth and thread. When I discovered the crux of what I wanted to make, I was very pleased.

Although these recent pieces are among my favorites in the show, I have also found Covid-times to be a difficult time to create art, especially on the theme of climate change.

It was hard for me to think about climate change with Covid raging. Early in the pandemic, I made a piece about Covid, the kind of piece that other artists were making too, a masked self-portrait (above). As I thought about including a piece about Covid in this show, I remembered the quote from climate activist Naomi Klein, which I used in Blog 3, that â€œevery disaster contains every other disaster within it. Every fire is a conflagration of all the other fires.â€ And so, it seems. Climate change is likely to bring more pandemics; both climate change and pandemic disease bring greater harm to people already harmed by racism and economic inequality; and the ongoing crisis has destroyed the jobs especially of those who are already poor. An impending climate crisis, a raging pandemic, a painful economic crisis: disasters within disasters, fires within fires.

In my art-making world, Covid-days are long, but the days fly by. My creative process is like moving through molasses, and I suspect Iâ€™m not unique. Early on in the pandemic, I couldnâ€™t get anything done. What I felt done with, though, was climate change as a theme, at least for a while, and done with Covid in my artwork, too. I wanted to make small drawings on paper. I would try to make a piece every day (that didnâ€™t happen), and I wanted to experiment with gouache. I made seven little drawings as part of this goal, some with pen and some with a combination of pen and gouache. While these drawings didnâ€™t overtly further my climate-related theme, making them was therapeutic, and I included them in my climate change show anyhow.

In my next and final blog in this series, Iâ€™ll conclude with some thoughts on poetic images, and on how I hope viewers will find my exhibit interesting to look at. Â

Blog 3: Symbols and Themes

This is the third in a series of blogs about my current exhibit, Sound the Climate Alarm, on display at the Lawrence Arts Center now through Dec. 21, 2020. Here are links for the first two:

Blog 1: Artist Statement: Sound the Climate Alarm

Blog 2: Roots of Sound the Climate Alarm

Symbols and Themes

Installation view, *Sound the Climate Alarm*, 2020

In my last blog, Roots of Sound the Climate Alarm, I described the sources and background of the first ideas for this exhibit. In this blog, Iâ€™d like to share about some of the symbols and themes that have emerged in my newer work for this show.

While I have included images of birds in my artwork for many years, more recently I have focused on cardinals. Everybodyâ€™s familiar with cardinals and, because of this, images of cardinals have a shared resonance. Four drawings in my show include cardinals. For me, cardinals are versatile characters, sometimes messengers, and sometimes harbingers of joy and Spring. I also include other birds in my artwork, too, often generic-looking birds that represent an assortment of ideas including freedom, the kind of freedom that I imagine goes along with flight, such as the ability to traverse barriers like walls and fences. In two small drawings I exaggerated the wings of a bird in flight to represent a mixture of effort and joy, and in another I exaggerated the wings of a sitting bird (right) to represent a mixture of exhaustion and rest.

I have included images of paper boats and paper cranes in my artwork for several years. I view the paper boats as both fragile and resilient. Iâ€™ve used the boats in two pieces that signify the effects of extreme weather; in one a paper boat is on fire (above left), and in another the paper boats are rocked around by a storm or flood. I have a few more weather-related pieces in the show, too, one that includes wind blowing a bird nest from a tree (above right), one of rain in the presence of a curiously yellow rainbow, and one showing a windchime whipping around in the midst of a microburst.

Paper Cranes Installation (drawings from 2017)

I made a small installation of drawings of paper cranes for this show, too (left). Many of us grew up learning one or another version of the story of Sadako and the paper cranes. Sadako, a Japanese girl, was a victim of radiation sickness from the atomic bomb dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima. She tried to fold a thousand paper cranes for good luck and long life, but she did eventually die from leukemia. Over time, the paper cranes have become a symbol for international peace, and that is how I use them in my art.

In the drawings that comprise the installation, I was experimenting with drawing a paper crane every day as a ritual. I began the drawings when President Trump was threatening airstrikes on Syria, which he later ordered. As I drew, I was thinking about the meaning of the cranes and, on some days, drawing became a kind of meditation. The daily drawings were also a way for me to practice drawing and become more fluid with drawing. So, the paper-crane installation is a documentation of that process

Several pieces in the show include images of fences and razor wire (above left and right). These pieces reference prisons, the border wall, detention centers, Guantanamo Bay and, in one, titled ICE (above right), immigration policies like family separation that violate human rights. Naomi Klein recently tweeted, â€œthere is no such thing as a singular disaster anymore â€“ if there ever was. From Covid to climate, every disaster contains every other disaster within it. Every fire is a conflagration of all the other fires.â€ In my show, I try to make a similar point, that climate change-induced extreme weather events contribute to peopleâ€™s need to migrate, and inhumane immigration policies deepen the crisis: fires within fires, disasters within disasters.

I also use arches or archways as symbols. In the exhibit, I use arches in three small mosaics (above), several drawings and a collage. Arches can symbolize doorways, or openings, or passageways. I think of them as a symbol for life and hope. They also symbolize safe passage through barriers, maybe even mental barriers. Some of my arches also appear as rainbows, a symbol of promise or hope in some religious traditions.

In my next blog, Iâ€™ll share about the art that I have made most recently for this show, made during the pandemic, and how the pandemic has affected my creative process.

Visit my exhibit in-person at the Lawrence Arts Center, now through Dec. 21, 2020. Original art and artist prints, suitable as gifts, are available for purchase. Hours areÂ M-Th 9am-9pm, F-Sa 9am-7pm, and Su 1:30-7:30 pm.Â As Covid-19 rages on, the Arts Center is pretty low-key these days and it is likely that during a random visit to my exhibit you may find yourself alone in the space. If you would prefer a virtual tour, scroll down the page at this link , courtesy of the Lawrence Arts Center.

Blog 2: Roots of Sound the Climate Alarm

This is the second in a series of blogs about my current exhibit, Sound the Climate Alarm, on display at the Lawrence Arts Center now through Dec. 21, 2020. The first blog in this series is available at this link:

Links – Blog 1: Artist Statement: Sound the Climate Alarm

Roots of Sound the Climate Alarm

*Robin, Been and Gone* in *Animals* exhibit, 2015

My exhibit Sound the Climate Alarm includes drawings, mosaics, and collages on themes related to climate change, animal extinction, barriers, border walls, and the pandemic. My focus on climate change and related themes goes back about six years, to 2014. That summer, I had a small exhibit at the Phoenix Gallery in Lawrence called Animals. I had just read Elizabeth Kolbertâ€™s book called The Sixth Extinction, and in it she describes and explains the mass extinction of animals that is going on today and all of the ways that this process of mass extinction is caused by human activity, including killing animals for feathers and tusks, spreading invasive species, destroying habitats, and climate change.

(left) *Death with Cardinals* (detail), 2019, and (right) *Death with Chicken*, 2015

I began making mosaics and drawings in scratchboard and clayboard about extinction. One piece, a mosaic included in the Animals exhibit that is not in this show, focused on robins sitting in a tree (above). While one robin is in full color, the others are obscured or silhouetted to suggest that they had been here but now are gone. I also created some small black-and-white scratchboard drawings of animals in cartoon-like scenes, where the animals are leaving, or being disrupted and carried off by the character Death. I included one of these in my current exhibit, titled Death with Chicken (below), and the influence of Death appears in a more recent piece, too, Death with Cardinals (left).

*People’s Climate March Maker Speaker Party*, 2014

Another influence on the early work in this exhibit, also from 2014, was a local community event called The Peopleâ€™s Climate March Maker/Speaker Party (left). I served on a committee that helped produce this event, a solidarity event with The Peopleâ€™s Climate March in New York City. At the march in New York, as well as at solidarity events around the globe including ours, there was a moment, at noon eastern time, where the hundreds of thousands of people gathered at the march paused to make the loudest noise they possibly could as a way to â€œsound the climate alarm.â€ The folks at the march made a huge noise; they whooped and hollered and used everything from sirens and honking horns to instruments and party blowers, to make a very loud noise.

After this experience, I became interested in the phrase â€œsound the climate alarm,â€ and made some art based on these words (right). I may have latched on to this phrase because I enjoy visualizing sound in my art, similar to how a cartoonist might visualize sound, where marks and lines stand in for the plinks, pops, buzzing, music or anything else I want the audience to visually hear.

(left) *Birdsongs*, 2015, and (right) *Party Blowers*, 2015

More of those first â€œsound the climate alarmâ€ pieces are in this show, too, including a mosaic with birds (below left) whose shapes are silhouetted to indicate presence and absence, with colored lines coming from their beaks to represent sound, and the sound then moves in and around human ears. If we really could hear the climate alarm, what would it sound like? Maybe the climate alarm sounds like birdsongs.

I included visual-sound in a few other â€œclimate alarmâ€ pieces too, including a couple small pieces with people disrupting birds with party blowers (above right), and in the piece Death with Chickens that I mentioned earlier, where Death chases a Prairie Chicken with a blaring-saxophone. The images of people blaring horns and instruments are a way to indicate the hapless disruption of animals by people unaware of their own destructive activity.

*With Nature Sing*, Bethel College Mennonite Church, 2018

*Heating Up* exhibit at the Lawrence Percolator, 2016

Additional influences on the work in this show include projects completed between 2014 and 2018 that are not a part of this show but share environmental themes, including two mosaic installations â€“ a mosaic mural at the Free State Brewery in Lawrence, Kansas, and an installation of six small mosaics (above) at Bethel College Mennonite Church, in North Newton, Kansas. Also, in the Spring of 2016, I worked closely with a committee who facilitated a large-scale community project called Heating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Change (right). It was a month-long series of cultural and educational events that involved more than fifty local artists, poets, and musicians, along with faculty and students from Lawrenceâ€™s two universities, and representatives from arts and environmental organizations. Heating Up was an exciting project and boosted my interest in responding to climate change in my own artwork, too.

In the process of looking back at my art over the past six years, I recognize that in our society and culture, value is often measured in monetary or financial terms. But artists can represent a different kind of value through the language of art â€“ beauty, care, alarm, loss, grief, pathways, possibilities. In my next blog, I will share ideas about how I have used themes and symbols as part of this language in the more recent work that I have in this show.

Blog 1: Artist Statement: Sound the Climate Alarm

UPDATE: The exhibit “Sound the Climate Alarm” will be on display at the Lumberyard Arts Center in Baldwin City, Kansas, from Aug. 20 – Sept. 14, 2021. The public is invited to an exhibit reception on Sat., Sept. 4, 5 – 7pm. Gallery hours: Tues. – Fri. 1-4pm and Sat. 9am-noon.

This is the first in a series of blogs about my current exhibit, Sound the Climate Alarm, on display at the Lawrence Arts Center now through Dec. 21, 2020. My first blog, below, includes the artist statement that accompanies the show. In subsequent posts, I will share about the themes, symbols, and ideas in my work, and how I came to these through the creative process.

Artist Statement: Sound the Climate Alarm

In my drawings, cardinals honk and chickadees sing razor wire. Death chases a prairie chicken with a blaring saxophone. Animals drawn from memory reveal the loss we find when we are without them. Origami cranes, an international symbol for peace, fly over walls and meander through chain link fences. The cardinalâ€™s song is visually amplified as a message of hope and renewal. A car with loudspeakers blasts an unusual wish for the world. Mosaics portray archways as a symbol for barriers with a way to pass through. Less an attempt to teach than an effort to explore the emotional states connected with an awareness of climate change, animal extinction, and related social stresses, these emotionally packed drawings, collages, and mosaics express alarm, despair, joy and possibility. With a sense of beauty and compassion, my art encourages the viewer to â€œlistenâ€ with a heart open to creating a future where there is enough to share and compassion for all.

Find all five of the blogs in this series at the following links:

Blog 2: Roots of Sound the Climate Alarm

Blog 3: Symbols and Themes

Blog 4: Making Art in Covid-times

Blog 5: Poetic Language

Exhibit, talks, and virtual tour of “Sound the Climate Alarm”

“Sound the Climate Alarm,” my exhibit of drawings, collages, and mosaics on the theme of climate change at the Lawrence Arts Center, is up and running and open for visitors! See the exhibit in person now through Dec. 21 (masks required). Gallery hours are M-Th 9am-9pm, F-Sa 9am- 7pm, and Su 1:30-7:30 pm.

Take a virtual tour of my exhibit, courtesy of the Lawrence Arts Center, at this link.

Sign up for a gallery talk at the Lawrence Arts Center, on Nov. 19 at 6:30pm or Dec. 5 at 4pm, at this link . Talks will be limited to 10 people; attendees must wear masks and practice social distancing.

(photo courtesy of the Lawrence Arts Center)

Mennonite Arts Weekend in Cincinnati

Group exhibit at Mennonite Arts Weekend 2020

I had a great time as a presenter at Mennonite Arts Weekend in Cincinnati. I met a lot of wonderful people who shared their experiences as artists, writers, actors, and musicians. I enjoyed the presentations and performances I attended, among them by painter Freiman Stolzfus, jewelry maker Kat Luginbuhl, poet Julie Swarstad Johnson, artists Brooke and Justin Rothshank, the DeCapo Chamber Choir, and hammered dulcimer musician Ted Yoder. I wish I could have attended every panel — I know I missed some great ones. I also appreciated the opportunity to share my slide talk about my art over the last six years, and my new work, “Sound the Climate Alarm.”

My work in the group exhibit at Mennonite Arts Weekend 2020

Exhibit: Carriage Factory Gallery, Newton, KS

Exhibit announcement

I am excited to have an exhibit of mosaics, scratchboard, and drawings at the Carriage Factory Gallery in Newton, Kansas! The exhibit runs July 27 – September 20, and is located at 128 E. 6th St., near downtown Newton. Gallery hours: T-FÂ 12-5pm,Â Sa 10am-5pm.

I am exhibiting my art along with two others, Rachel Epp Buller and Emily Willis Schroeder. The title for our collective exhibit is, Our Lives. Past. Present. Future. My portion of the exhibit is called, “Sound the Climate Alarm,” and my artist statement follows:

Sound the Climate Alarm

In my exhibit of drawings and mosaics, cardinals honk and chickadees sing razor wire. Death chases a prairie chicken with a blaring saxophone. Animals, drawn from memory, reveal the loss we find when we are without them. Origami cranes, an international symbol for peace, fly over walls and meander through chain link fences. And yet, archways that imply the presence of barriers also show a way to pass through them. The cardinalâ€™s song is visually amplified as a message of hope and renewal. A car with loudspeakers on top blasts an unusual wish for the world. With a sense of beauty and compassion, through images that visualize sounds that are both real and imagined, my work â€œsounds the alarmâ€ on climate change, animal extinction, and other urgent concerns, encouraging the viewer to â€œlistenâ€ with an open heart towards creating a future where there is enough to share and compassion for all.

Links:

Exhibit announcement in The Newton Kansan

Facebook invitation to exhibit opening

Carriage Factory Gallery website

USDAC blogs and press coverage, Heating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Change

I’m excited to share the following links that comprise the coverage of our collaborative project, Heating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Change. These include blogs on the USDAC website, and local press coverage:

Blog 1: Heating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Change: A series of cultural and educational events in Lawrence, Kansas, Part one

Blog II: Systematically Organic: An Interview with Sara Taliaferro, Part two of Heating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Change

Blog III: Many Thanks: Part three of Heating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Change

Press coverage:

Lawrence Journal World, “Talk about climate change ‘heats up’ with Percolator exhibit”

Indian Leader, “Haskell artists “heat up” community climate change event”

Topeka Capital Journal, “Artists seek to spark dialogue with exhibit exploring climate change”

Heating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Change

Heating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Change — to feature art exhibit, month-long series of educational and cultural events

The exhibit is posted as a Facebook event: http://on.fb.me/1T6XHsn.

All project events are posted on the LETUS website: http://bit.ly/1ngBiuv

LAWRENCE — â€œHeating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Changeâ€ is an art exhibit and month-long series of cultural and educational events scheduled for March and April in Lawrence, Kansas. The project brings together dozens of local and regional artists, poets, educators and performers working on climate change. A panel discussion in April includes a combination of nationally active and prominent local voices.

The exhibit â€œHeating up: Artists Respond to Climate Change,â€ opens on Final Friday, March 25, 2016, 5 – 10pm, at the Lawrence Percolator located in the alley east of New Hampshire St. between 9^th St. and 10^th St., behind the Lawrence Arts Center. The opening will feature three brief performances. At 7 and 9 pm, Robert Baker will read poetry by Langston Hughes and the band Ovaries-eez will perform. At 8 pm, local poets Dennis Etzel, Sandy Hazlett, Denise Low, Topher Enneking, Nancy Hubble, and Mary Wharff will read from their poetry, and Doug Hitt will briefly speak about his co-authored book A Kansas Bestiary. The exhibit runs March 25 – April 23 and is open Saturdays and Sundays, noon – 5pm.

â€œWe hope that the exhibit bolsters a community conversation about climate change and what we can do about it,â€ said committee co-chair Lora Jost.

The exhibit includes the work of 42 local and regional artists with diverse viewpoints, some working in teams. The exhibit includes art by professionals and non-professionals, among them professors and students alike.

â€œWe wanted to exhibit the work of artists who are already working on climate change as well as to activate others to engage climate change as a new theme in their work,â€ said committee co-chair Sara Taliaferro.

Art in the exhibit includes paintings, prints, drawings, an artist book, sculptures, and installations. Some of the art pieces concern the roots of climate change and the effects of fossil fuel consumption on the weather, animals, and people. Some of the art pieces convey deep despair. One artistâ€™s work is a metaphor for creativity born from crisis. Additional art pieces offer hope, visualizing ways to work together toward solutions.

Justin Marableâ€™s prints, for example, with images of coal smoke, dinosaur bones, birds and buffalo, illustrate how fossil fuel use and consumerism affect the earth and animals. Damia Smithâ€™s colorful, intricate, enameled copper images reveal how burning coal in the United States brings drought and famine to north Africa.Â A painting by Haskell Indian Nations University student Geraldine Walsey shows a woman looking to the past through winged eyes, â€œsearching for the beauty of what nature once was, and now is rarely seen today.â€

Laura Rambergâ€™s ceramic cloud vessels evoke sharing food and other resources as a way to reduce the need and greed arising from our reliance on fossil fuels. A team of artists (KU Professor Matthew Burke and then students Samuel Balbuena, Cameron Pratte, Vi Stenzel, and Cortney Wise) contributed a functional beehive that, once launched, offers a home for the dwindling honeybee population. Marin Abellâ€™s whimsical 9-foot long flat-bottomed trolling motorboat, complete with serpent heads, is made with Eurasian Milfoil (an invasive aquatic plant that threatens lakes) and runs on distilled Milfoil ethanol.

Jill Ensleyâ€™s interactive board game playfully asks serious questions about our future: â€œWill the last iceberg melt?Â Will the pollinators die off?Â Will you opt to take in those climate refugees?Â Do you believe we can step back from the edge, or that it’s too late?â€

Exhibiting artists include: Marin Abell, Angie Babbit, Rena Detrixhe, Jill Ensley, Neil Goss, Lisa Grossman, Eleanor Heimbaugh, Nancy Hubble, Lora Jost, Dave Loewenstein, Justin Marable, Nancy Marshall, Kaylyn Munro, Molly Murphy, Laura Ramberg, Hirsuta Pilosa, Michelle Rogne, Kent Smith, Damia Smith, Sara Taliaferro, Garret Tufte, David Titterington, Nicholas Ward, Ethan Candyfire, Georgia Kennidee Rikie Boyer, Kyuss Hala, Kayla Kent, Cleta LaBrie, Lori Hasselman, Alyx Stephenson, Geraldine Emily Walsey, Katie Manuelito, and KT Walsh. Three teams of the following artists have created collaborative works: Samuel Balbuena, Matthew Burke, Cameron Pratte, Vi Stenzel, and Cortney Wise; Amanda Monaghan and Pablo Cerca; and Amanda Maciuba, Tim Oâ€™brien and Mary Wharff.

The exhibit and related events are sponsored by two Lawrence community groups, the USDAC-Lawrence Field Office and Lawrence Ecology Teams United in Sustainability (LETUS), in collaboration with Haskell Indian Nations University (HINU) and the Lawrence Percolator. (See USDAC-Lawrence Field Office at http://on.fb.me/20riNAM, the USDAC national office at http://www.usdac.us, and LETUS at https://lawrenceecologyteams.wordpress.com/about/.)

The â€œHeating Upâ€ project grew out of a local event in 2014 that brought together these sponsoring groups with leaders from the Haskell Indian Nations University community, on a march and art event against climate change. The success of the 2014 event helped inspire the current collaboration.. (See link for 2014 collaboration http://usdac.us/news-long/2014/10/16/the-peoples-climate-march-makerspeaker-party-lawrence-ks).

â€œHow Can We Work Together on Climate Change?â€ is a panel discussion that is free and open to the public on Sunday April 10, 3-5pm, Parker Hall, Room 110, at Haskell Indian Nations University. The event includes five prestigious panelists, all local, with an exciting combination of experiences and expertise on climate change, arts and culture, community organizing, and practical steps to a sustainable future. Panelists include Saralyn Reece Hardy, Director of the Spencer Museum of Art; Thad Holcombe, retired Ecumenical Christian Ministries Campus Minister at KU and Moderator for Lawrence Ecology Teams United in Sustainability; Eileen Horn, Sustainability Coordinator for Douglas County and the City of Lawrence and formerly with the Climate and Energy Project and Interfaith Power and Light; Jay T. Johnson, Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Geography and Atmospheric Science at KU and directs KUâ€™s Center for Indigenous Research, Science, and Technology; Dan Wildcat, professor at Haskell Indian Nations University, Director of the Haskell Environmental Research Studies Center, and Convener of the American Indian/Alaska Native Climate Change Working Group. The panel will be facilitated by Sara Taliaferro with music by Alex Williams and art by Haskell students. The panel discussion is listed as a Facebook event: http://on.fb.me/1L6z6l8

“Mrs. Noah in Poetry and Dance” is a collaborative performance by poet Elizabeth Schultz and dancer Joan Stone, on Friday April 15, 2016, at the Lawrence Percolator, with performances at 7 and 9pm.Â The collaboration includes Stoneâ€™s insightful dance interpretations of Schultzâ€™s poems that reflect on the relationships among humans and animals, examining how catastrophes disturb these relationships, how the resulting tremors connect us, and how we survive together, learning from one another. Elizabeth Schultz, retired from KUâ€™s English Department, has published a large body of scholarly writings, books of poetry, short stories, essays, and a memoir, and is a dedicated advocate for the arts and the environment. Joan Stone taught dance history and choreography at the University of Kansas from 1982 to 2010, and through dance explores nature, dance and politics, women as history makers, and the relationship between gesture and word. The performance is listed as a Facebook event: http://on.fb.me/1njVj3i

â€œA Change in the Weather: Writing From Climate Change Art,â€ is a free all-ages writing workshop on Sunday April 17, 2-4pm at the Lawrence Percolator. Please plan to attend the whole workshop to help create a circle of deep sharing and reflecting. Led by former poet laureate Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg and naturalist and writer Ken Lassman, participants will consider their own â€œinternal and external weatherâ€ in relation to climate change by dwelling among the art exhibit as a key writing prompt. The writing workshop is listed as a Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1Qr1led

Hang12 â€œEffecting Changeâ€ includes art made from repurposed materials by teens, coordinated by the Lawrence Art Centerâ€™s youth curatorial board Hang12. The public is invited to the exhibitâ€™s Final Friday opening on March 25, 5-8pm, Watkins Museum of History, 1047 Massachusetts St. The exhibit runs for a month and is open Tuesday – Friday, 10am-4pm (and on Thursdays in April from 10am – 8pm). â€œClimate Change is an issue that impacts all of us. To bring awareness to this subject we asked artists to use repurposed materials within their artwork to take a stand on Climate Change and environmental issues.” Watkins website: http://bit.ly/1Rsh4X7

Eco Ambassadors â€œHaskell Wetlands Restoration Dayâ€ invites the public to join this Haskell student-led workday of seeding and planting to help restore the Haskell Wetlands, on Saturday April 16, 2016, 10am-2pm. Bring gloves and gardening/landscaping tools. Directions: Come straight on Massachusetts St. heading S., continue S. past Indian Health Service. Massachusetts St. turns intoÂ W. Perimeter Rd. so keep going and follow road around campus until you get to the intersection of W. Perimeter Rd. and Barker Ave. Dr. Then turnÂ right onto Barker Ave. Dr. (you are going south), go straight and you will run right into theÂ wetlands accessÂ gate. The workday is listed as a Facebook event: http://bit.ly/1ZtKmuh