Bison Shows Real, Raw, Love to CalArts

Art & Creativity, Blog, Deep Ecology, Ethics & Whole Community | July 21, 2011

CalArts Residency off to a Fantastic Start

“What happens when you put an experimental animator from Argentina, a musician from Mexico City, a performing artist from New Jersey, and an ecologist from California in the Earthfire Institute pasture?
They become part of Bluebells the bison’s herd.” Mike Bryant.

There has been a utter explosion of creativity here at Earthfire with the combined talents of three artists, a scientist, Jean, Susan and the animals – through the California Institute of

the Arts residency program currently at Earthfire. The animals have simply awed the students. One of them has already made a life-time commitment to conservation; science lectures at CalArts will now be enhanced with understandings gained here, an on-line children’s book has been conceived, and that’s just in the first three days of a two week program.

The Michelle Lund/Earthfire Institute Residency program has made possible the encounters between CalArts students and faculty with Cucumber the wolf, Bluebell the bison, Pimpernel the coyote, Firefly the fox and many other Earthfire animals. The goal of the residency to is to produce a powerful multi-media art project, informed by science, on the new ways of seeing and practicing conservation.

Johnnie Martin, a performing artist says “The animals here at Earthfire have gone through a lot of different transitions. Bluebell’s herd has passed away and she has come to embrace humans as her herd. There is a real, raw, love that comes out of Bluebell. It’s almost overwhelming to hold this animal that’s 1500 lbs in your arms as she licks your shoelaces. There is nothing else quite like that.” He goes on “I think Earthfire presents a really interesting model for an animal sanctuary, in that its an ethical venture, yes, to take care of animals that can’t live in the wild, but takes it to another place to educate people about wildlife. In the larger picture of conservation the number of animals that are here aren’t very many, but through their role of spokes-animals they can encourage people to support conservation in a really big way. I wish that more animal sanctuaries had that two-fold component.”

Mike Bryant, part of the science faculty at CalArts is using his experience to expand on his conservation lectures.  He states “Inspired in part, by Earthfire’s physical location, which “guards” the southern portion of the Yellowstone to Yukon Wildlife Corridor, and by drawing from the personal connection with the wildlife at Earthfire, I am exploring the many facets of the term connectivity as it applies to Conservation Biology. Earthfire is bringing the level of my personal connection to wildlife up, which leads me into something that I haven’t done before in my lectures to the CalArts students -  to really focus on the role of advocacy as an ecologist. That is what I have been working on here.”

The students will be hosting a free public presentation of their work done over the two week residency at Pierre’s Playhouse in Victor, ID on July 30th at 12pm.  We hope to see you there!

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