Evening Botanist
Bri Bowman, Brian Smith, Charles E. Roberts III, Dylan Hausthor, Eli Nixon, Heather Flor Cron, John Brooks, Maurice Moore, Owen McCarter, Oscar Chacon, Rachel Alexandrou, Travis Morehead
Evening Botanist promotes conversation between the works of 12 artists whose practices and projects are grounded in ecological principles, relationships, and/or fantasies. Through the many lenses and unique media these artists explore, they are united by strong underlying currents of queer ecology, ecofeminism, intersectional environmentalism, and naturalist education. The selected artists create works in context of the shifting climate, conjuring connection, adaptation, place-making, direct collaboration, and fictional inquiry. This exhibition seeks to make space for new interpretations and perspectives of the natural world around us.
Evening Botanist is co-curated by Brian Smith and Kelsey Halliday Johnson.
The reception for the artists was hosted on First Friday, April 7th from 5 to 8pm.
Eli Nixon and SPACE invite you to celebrate Bloodtide, the artist’s new holiday to celebrate the horse shoe crab on Sunday, April 2nd at 7pm.
About the artists
Bri Bowman navigates longing, loss, ecology, and deep time in their multimedia practice; combining performance, sound, and sculpture to explore landscape as an internal experience and external phenomenon.
Brian Smith’s work uses sculptural form, inspired by plants and animals, to highlight the facet of queer eco theory that focuses on humans’ relationship to nature, with a yearning to reconnect and identify with the non-human world.
Charles E. Roberts III uses charcoal, ink, watercolor, colored pencils, and other drafting materials to metaphorically revisit the forests of their rural childhood through the language of folklore.
Dylan Hausthor makes photographs, videos, prints, writing, and books that think about mythmaking, disinformation, storytelling, and ecologies.
Eli Nixon builds portals and gives guided tours to places that don’t yet exist through cardboard constructionism, playwriting, choreography, and bookmaking.
Heather Flor Cron is a queer Peruvian-American farmer, performer & transdisciplinary artist who works with intuitive movement, dirt, installation, printmaking, fiber, and food.
John Brooks‘ work is an exploration of Queerness, community, connection, and existence, through distilled personal histories, pleasure, loss, and desire on a scale that is deeply immersive.
Maurice Moore’s drawing practice in expanded media interface with Black theory to create immersive environments and engaging experiences relating to race and gender identity coupled with black hxstories and cultural diasporic traditions in Amerikkkca.
Oscar Chacon’s collage and draftsman-based practice centers an exploration of identity—particularly his experience as a queer/Latino person— to understand and express himself and connect with the world around him.
Owen McCarter is a documentary and performance based artist living and working in Western Massachusetts, who is exploring, as Emerson wrote, “the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable.”
Rachel Alexandrou is a plant propagandist who works in the mediums of foraged food, printmaking, watercolor, prints and installation.
Travis Morehead is an interdisciplinary artist thinking about intimacy, ecology and loss through poetics and gift giving.
Recent Press
Portland Press Herald – “Art review: Portland galleries put the natural world in a new context” by Jorge S. Arango
