A.I.R. Gallery

JoAnne Mcfarland

I am an artist who communicates directly with nature. The work I do is inspired by many years spent in wild places as well as my study of topics in natural history and contemporary art. My father was a pharmacologist who did research work for years with plants and animals in the Amazon Delta of Brazil. His life had a strong influence on me. My art deals with issues of ecology and habitat loss. In my temporary site projects and my drawings, photographs, sculpture and narrative poems I engage the land. My work respects the reality of natural materials and the small events that take place in nature. I present real elements from the land in my installations because I believe the wilderness should have a direct voice in my work. I also need to understand and create a mystical bond with the natural world. I gain energy from studying and working with the land. And through my interaction with nature I give energy from myself back into the wilderness. I am a hybrid in that I am both an ecology-based artist and a conservation worker. One role feeds and informs the other. The Hindus believe God is in everything, but they also say you cannot hide from disease in a forest. I say we can heal ourselves if we respect and search for what the forest can teach us. My work is meant to offer up common mysteries of the natural world for a viewer and reader to reflect on. The natural world is a powerful mirror of our own society. Like all structured communities the wilderness is in a search for survival. Through my work I hope I will inspire people to become interested in the mysteries inherent in wild places. From interest a desire to protect may follow.

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