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Ruminations on human nature

This collection of projects surveys the complex relationship between human and non-human nature.





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The State We're In—Water
Constructing a sense of place in the hydrosphere
2020-21, Oklahoma State University Museum of Art, Stillwater, OK
Lead artists: Marguerite Perret, Robin Lasser, and Bruce Scherting

This installation surveys our relationship to water regionally and globally. In presenting stories, images and aesthetic experiences based on collaborations with multiple communities, this project presents an aggregate perspective that fosters a broad-based understanding of how the quality and presence or scarcity of water defines regional ecologies, geographies, cultures and,economies.

Installation views

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Transmutation Still Life
2019, Washburn University, Topeka, KS

Porcelain casts of anthropogenic debris and recreational boating paraphernalia, laser cut noxious aquatic weeds, and photographs taken with a toy microscope of things found along shorelines at various locations.

Installation views

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Washed Up
2019, Oklahoma State University Museum of Art, Stillwater


The first of a three-part exhibition series about the impact of water events—regionally and globally—on geographies, cultures, and economies, this installation explores the environmental challenges of water insecurity and climate change to human life and biodiversity through the lens of art.

Installation views

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Salt and Ice
2018, Mulvane Museum of Art, Washburn University, Topeka, KS
Part of the 8 Practices group exhibition.


Mixed media installation with porcelain cast boats, NaCl, Na2B407•10H20, vinyl lettering, short story handout and photography.

Installation views


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Memory of Water: constructing a sense of place in the Hydrosphere
2017-18, Albrecht Kemper Art Museum, Saint Joseph, Missouri


This installation is an exploration of water issues and interior waterways with content drawn from pop cultural, scientific and literary references and merges these with sound, movement, image and sculptural objects.The result is an assemblage of discursive and immersive, lyrical and interpretive perspectives on water.

Installation views

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Drift and Drag: reflections on water
2015, Mulvane Museum of Art, Washburn University, Topeka, KS


Kansas is a land of ebb and flow marked by extremes in variability of water levels and characterized by the polarities of flood and drought. Drift & Drag is a survey of science and art-based research projects incorporating sound, image and object by individuals who are from, working in,or collaborating with Kansan artists or communities to explore a variety of issues pertaining to water.

​Installation views

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con/Current(s)
2014, Terschelling, the Netherlands


An arts-based research project exploring water issues focusing on the oyster reefs of Long Island Sound, a man-made peninsula on the tidal plains of San Francisco Bay, and the ebb and flow of ancient seas and contemporary waterways in the Midwest.

Installation views



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Simulated Garden
2013, Fisch Haus Gallery, Wichita, Kansas


This installation provides whimsical and eerie entries into fantastical worlds of science and medicine on both large and small scales.

Installation views

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Floating World: a tent city campground for displaced human and bird song
2010-2011, 
San Jose, California

A temporary public art installation commissioned by the
City of San Jose´Public Art Program in collaboration with
the  ZERO1 International Biennial. Twenty-one miniature
flood disaster relief tents, spanning 190 feet, were
cantilevered off a bridge that spans the Guadalupe River.

Description
Installation views
Process views
Press

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Niche: nature morte and the simulated garden
2008-2009, The Commons, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas

The word niche is from the old French for nest. In contemporary usage, it can refer to the place an organism occupies in an ecosystem, or the place a product holds in what marketing professionals sometimes call the consumer ecosystem.
The exhibition Niche encompasses both associations.

The imagery is a hybrid of consumer culture and the natural
world. Images evoking the tree of life as a symbolic construct
and as an illustration of natural selection pervade the installation. The result is suggestive of a strange fairy tale in which the beautiful and peculiar occupy the same space.

Installation views


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Prairie Earth: an installation exploring the native
Kansas
landscape and urban development

2006-2008, 
Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, Kansas

As both prairie and farm succumb to grass lawns and asphalt, a dialogue about our relationship to nature and the land is urgent. This project challenges the viewer to think about these issues by contrasting the rich ecology of the prairie with representation of the repetitive environment offered by poorly planned development.

Description
Installation views 


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Wonderland Recast: from wilderness to garden to mall
2006, 
Catherine G. Murphy Gallery, St. Paul, Minnesota

Wonderland explores cultural perception of nature and juxtaposes the native ecology of the central Midwest with the artificially constructed garden environment of shopping malls and suburban development to call attention to the impact of urban sprawl on native species.

Description
Installation views

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