Opossum - the Misunderstood by Lauren Rosenfelt
Biophilia — an exhibition and slate of programming that conjures nature with artists and scientists — opens with the work of Hannah Harper, Jennifer Larsen, Grace Potter, Lauren Rosenfelt and Nicholas Czaplewski, PhD on Friday, May 10 at MAINSITE Contemporary Art, 122 E. Main, Norman.
Curated by Haley Prestifilippo, Biophilia’s title refers to the theory — first described in the late 20th century — that suggests an innate human desire for connection to other forms of life. All the featured artists (several of whom are also practicing scientists) share a propensity for just that, creating work out of a deep admiration and tether to the various forms nature takes all around us. Their work “considers a few of the analytical and emotional frameworks through which we interpret nature.”
“Nature is often referenced as an independent entity, permeating human experience but separate from it,” Prestifilippo said in a curator’s statement. “It is embodied as a mother, a threat, beauty, violence, something to be controlled and something that controls, something to escape and something to escape into. Humans have sorted the innumerable aspects of nature into scientific fields, building chronologies of evolution, ordered taxonomies, and tables of elements; we perpetually attempt to unveil the hidden infrastructures keeping the universe in place.”
The exhibition runs from its opening reception from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, May 10 through a closing reception from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, July 12, both as a part of 2nd Friday Norman Art Walk. There’s also an artist reception at the midpoint of the exhibit from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, June 14.
As a bonus, there is a full slate of events, including a nature walk, plein air sketch session, poetry workshop and more, that take place in venues across Norman. These are made possible with support from Norman Arts Council, Pioneer Library System and Factory Obscura.
Pioneer Library System will also be on hand at all three receptions at MAINSITE Contemporary Art with activities for the whole family relating to the themes of the exhibition.
The full event schedule is as follows:
Opening Reception: 6-9 p.m. Friday, May 10 at MAINSITE Contemporary Art
Plein Air Sketch Session with Hannah Harper: 4:30-5:30 p.m. Friday, May 17 at Norman East Library | Learn more and register here
Book Making Session with Curtis Jones: 1-2 p.m. Saturday, June 1 at Resonator | Learn more and register here
Poetry Workshop with Julie Ann Ward: 1-3 p.m. Saturday, June 8 at MAINSITE Contemporary Art | Learn more here
Artist Reception: 6-9 p.m. Friday, June 14 at MAINSITE Contemporary Art
Nature Walk with Jennifer Larsen and Nicholas Czaplewski, PhD: 10 a.m. Saturday, June 15 at Sutton Wilderness Trail | Learn more here
Open Mic: 5-7 p.m. Sunday, June 30 at The Standard | Learn more here
Closing Reception: 6-9 p.m. Friday, July 12 at MAINSITE Contemporary Art
More about the artists:
Nicholas Czaplewski, PhD
Nick Czaplewski (Chap-lev-ski) is a paleontologist and biologist of Polish and Neandertal ancestry, born and naturalized in the Great Plains of North America. He enjoys engaging others in all aspects of the natural world and honors its land and peoples through direct interaction, reciprocity/caretaking, mentoring, volunteerism, and making art. He extends these ideas to his work in deep-time earth history to his perception of indigenous ecological knowledge, paleogeography, and the incredible creative evolutionary potential of life. He understands science as a way of thinking that a lot of people share; the way in which most of us have similar means of encountering the world: seeing, smelling, feeling, hearing, and as a result mostly agreeing that something is probably true. Nick worked for 34 years as a curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History at the University of Oklahoma and as a scientific advisor to the museum’s youth summer field programs.
Hannah Harper
Hannah Harper grew up in the Southern Oklahoma countryside. She was encouraged to pursue creativity at a young age and collected art education from various sources as a child. At 17, she took a workshop with artists John and Terri Moyers at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City who soon after took her under their wing and has mentored her ever since. They encouraged her to take workshops with charcoal master Ned Jacob in both Scottsdale, Arizona and Jackson Hole, Wyoming and a semester at the Ryder Studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She graduated from the University of New Mexico in 2019 with a BFA in studio art and completed her MFA for painting at the University of Oklahoma in 2023.
Jennifer Larsen
Jennifer Larsen grew up in Colorado and now lives in Norman, Oklahoma. She has been lucky enough to spend most of her life living in rural areas and open/wild places feel much more like home to her than urban spaces. She is a paleontologist at the Sam Noble Museum with a background in biochemistry and biology. She was a volunteer at the Oklahoma City Zoo for many years. She enjoys a variety of outdoor activities including running, hiking, biking, kayaking, and horseback riding. A perfect day would also involve reading, drawing, chocolate and having cats lay on her. She currently lives on a remarkably generous piece of the earth amidst a magnificent menagerie of non-human beings.
Grace Potter
Working primarily in ceramics, Grace Potter makes intricate sculptures that consider her relationship to the more-than-human world through the lenses of ecology and spiritual inquiry. Her work often references sites of reverence: reliquaries, mausoleums and cathedrals, as a tool for investigating hierarchies and value systems. Animals, plants and fungi depicted in the work carry metaphors for personal narratives as well as archetypal myths. She approaches making as a ritual, illuminating the mystical in the mundane and venerating the subjects of her sculptures through time-consuming processes and meticulous craft. Accumulated textures and patterns generate surreal compositions, reflecting the disorienting complexity of the natural world and her temporal place within it. Themes of interconnection, transformation and cycles of life and death guide her practice.
Grace Potter (b. 1996) is a visual artist who grew up in rural Appalachia. She received her BFA in Ceramics with minors in Art History and Anthropology from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Grace has completed two Post-Baccalaureates in Ceramics, one at Louisiana State University and the other at the University of Oklahoma. Her work has been exhibited across the country, including in the Red Lodge Clay Center Juried National and at Blue Spiral 1 in Asheville, NC. Additionally, Grace has spent time working at the Mendocino Art Center, Cider Creek Collective in Albion, CA, Good Hope Pottery in Trelawny, Jamaica, and IaRex l’Atelier in St. Raphael, France. She is currently living and working in Mendocino, CA.
Lauren Rosenfelt
Lauren Rosenfelt is a freelance, natural science illustrator and artist currently living and working in Norman, Oklahoma. She graduated from the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma in 2014 with a BFA and minor in Liberal Arts. Her work focuses on sharing the importance of native wildlife and plant species. She works with clientele ranging from private commissions to commercial and nonprofit organizations. Her public projects are displayed at “This is Place”, a small public pollinator garden and art space, and habitat signage at the Norman Central library.
Lauren has worked with WildCare Oklahoma, Myriad Botanical Gardens, and the City of Norman, and has artwork on display at Scissortail Park, the Museum of Osteology, DNA Galleries, and Norman Firehouse Art Gallery. She is also an active board member for Inclusion in Art, an Oklahoma art organization dedicated to promoting ethnically, racially, and culturally diverse artists in Oklahoma’s visual arts community.
In January 2022, Lauren began her work as a plant biology master’s student at the University of Oklahoma. She now studies multiple ecosystem functions relating to soils, plants, and invertebrates, specifically pollinators, with the intent to marry her artist mission and ecological research into a career focused on science communication through artistic projects and public outreach. In addition, she works as a graduate research assistant for the Chickasaw Nation at the South-Central Climate Adaptation Science Center as a Sustainability Science Intern.