UnderMINE

The American Lawn, AI, and What We Have Been Conditioned to Unsee

The American lawn.

40 million acres. 2 trillion gallons of water a year. The largest irrigated crop in the country — more than corn, wheat, and fruit trees combined.

Is that a lot? What is a lot? The press tells us U.S. AI data centers consume too much — roughly 17.5 billion gallons of water in 2023.

Here is the inconvenient truth.

The lawn uses 100 times more water than AI.

Lawns at 2 trillion are good and AI at 17.5 billion is bad? Where is the logic? And water is just half of it. We mow it on Saturdays — burning 800 million gallons of gas a year. Americans spill 17 million gallons just refueling their equipment — more than was spilled by the Exxon Valdez.

In 2021 I carved the carbon symbol into 35 feet of Zoysia turfgrass at Lawndale Art Center — Carbon by the Yard — to make visible what those 800 million gallons deprive us of. In 2022 I replaced a section of that same turf with native plants, living soil, and deep roots — CARBONsink — to show what the same ground could store instead. Carbon. Water. Life.

That is how I know how ridiculously easy it is to change.

The lawn is not the problem. What we have made it into is the problem. Forty million acres of chemically dependent monoculture sitting on top of some of the most populated land in the country. Land that could be absorbing rainwater, cooling the air, sequestering carbon, feeding pollinators, restoring the biodiversity we have been losing for a century.

For every one percent increase in organic matter per acre, soil can hold an additional 20,000 gallons of water. Native plant roots reach eight to fourteen feet deep — sequestering carbon like an upside down rainforest. The coastal prairie that Houston sits on once soaked up everything the sky sent down. We replaced it with turf. Harvey showed us what that costs.

But the ecological argument, as urgent as it is, is not the most powerful thing the lawn could do.

The most powerful thing is this: lawns exist in the largest population centers in the world. They are the daily interface between modern humanity and the living world. If we change what happens on that interface — in front yards, street medians, corporate campuses, school grounds — we change how millions of people understand their relationship to the planet. That is a social transformation. The ripple effects are incalculable.

Which brings me back to AI.

The comparison between lawn water use and AI water use is not meant to let either one off the hook. It is meant to show that we are already wasting at a scale that dwarfs what we are alarmed about — and that the solution to both problems might be the same solution. AI saves us time. It makes us better. What if it also helps us see what we have been conditioned not to see?

What if the lawn became part of the answer to AI’s water problem? Native landscapes absorb and store water in the ground. Deep roots recharge aquifers. Living soil filters and holds what falls from the sky. More than 160 new AI data centers have been built across the U.S. in the past three years — many of them in water-scarce regions. A Meta data center in Newton County, Georgia uses 500,000 gallons a day — 10% of the entire county’s water supply.

What if the landscapes surrounding those data centers were living systems instead of turf? What if regenerative landscaping — on the scale of cities — could recharge the aquifers that AI is draining?

I don’t know if that is possible. But I know that the first step is to stop treating the lawn as decoration and start treating it as a living system connected to everything.

Writer and botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer observed that in the wild, the solution is often found near the problem. The remedy grows where the wound is. The lawn uses 100 times more water than AI — and the lawn is also the solution to AI’s water crisis. The same 40 million acres. The same ground. The problem and the answer occupying the same space.

Tomorrow the gallery floor disappears under 600 square feet of sod.

I thought about attending the opening barefoot. Then I thought about the chemicals that must have been applied to grow this perfect mono-crop of sod. I won’t be barefoot on it.

That is the point. We have made the most abundant surface on the planet — 40 million acres of it — something you cannot safely stand on in your bare feet. Something that poisons the people who maintain it. Something that sheds the rain, kills the insects, and heats the ground it covers.

And we call it a lawn. We call it beautiful. We mow it on Saturdays.

underMINE is 600 square feet of that lawn, brought inside. What we have been conditioned to unsee — you walk by it every day — now you are standing on it.

Now imagine it differently.

AI changes instantly when it receives better information. Society takes forever — even when the difference is 100 times more gallons of water. However for society, baby steps are how it starts. One gallery floor. One front yard. One school ground. One corporate campus.

What if AI saves us enough time that we have time to garden? To grow our own food? To tend the land instead of manage it against itself? Think of the ripple effects of that idea.

The lawn has enormous potential.

The first step is to stop underMINEing. Start seeing.

Unfolding Hope — This Piece and How It's Made

I finished Unfolding Hope last week. These photographs were made about a month ago, when I was still deep in it — crouched on the floor of the gallery, a garden sprayer in one hand and a cup of pigment in the other, watching watercolor run down nine feet of layered paper. That moment still captures the process well: I set things in motion and then pay close attention to where they go.

The Piece

Unfolding Hope is a site-specific quadriptych on paper — approximately 28 feet wide by 9 feet tall — and the piece for my solo show for the Houston Endowment Jones Artist Awards Program 2026. The four panels are: Quiet Estuary, Life's Stubborn March, Courtship Dance, and Knowledge Is The Bridge. Together they move through the story of the sandhill crane — near-extinction in the early 1900s, recovery through the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and restored wetlands, and what that recovery means for how we live now.

My poem, also called Unfolding Hope, is written directly onto the surface in pastel—layered over itself in multiple colors —so the words almost dissolve into the landscape. Some phrases are readable up close. From a distance, they just look like marks. That's intentional. The seed phrases scattered across all four panels include:

 My Process

This is a process I developed in 2025. I start with research — studying the birds, pinning photographs to the wall, making detailed color swatches, doing pencil drawings on Stonehenge paper until I really know the forms. That research matters to me as much as the painting does. I can't draw what I haven't truly looked at.

The reference photographs pinned to my wall are mostly my mother’s — Minnie Travis, who is 95 years old and still out there shooting and sending images through Dropbox. I can’t make this up. Some are mine, but honestly, hers are much much better.

The drawings

Great Blue Heron- Detail of drawing on the fourth panel Knowledge is the bridge.

Then I tear the drawings apart. Not cut — tear. I collage the torn pieces onto a fresh sheet of the same paper, which creates a layered relief. The torn edges bring energy to the composition and help the birds blend into the environment rather than sitting on top of it.

After that, the color. Big washes of watercolor and ink, then the garden sprayer to push wet paint into all the ridges and cracks in the relief. The surface ends up looking almost geological — cracked and stratified, with color pooled in the low spots. I go back in with pastels for line work and detail, spray again, repeat until it feels right.

The finished panels are three to four sheets thick. They're surprisingly durable.

Sandhill Crane detail

Why This Bird

The sandhill crane population was down to 24 birds in parts of their range in the early 1900s. They came back — through the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, through habitat protection, through people deciding they were worth saving. That's the story I keep coming back to. Not because it's a feel-good ending, but because it actually happened. Aldo Leopold heard that prehistoric call at dawn and wrote about it as the sound of evolutionary time — deep, ancient, irreplaceable. I feel that way about the coastal prairie.

Richard Louv's line runs through all my work: we cannot protect what we don't love, can't love what we don't know, can't know what we don't see. This piece is built around that. The birds are specific, the habitat is specific, the history is specific. The more particular it is, the more it matters.

These Images

These shots were taken by Rony Canales (@ronyedin) about a month ago — I'm grateful to him and to Houston Endowment and Weingarten Art Group for their support of this work. The mural takes up the whole gallery wall.

— — —

Unfolding Hope is part of my solo show, made possible through the Houston Endowment Jones Artist Awards Program 2026.

Photography by Rony Canales (@ronyedin).

Presented in partnership with Weingarten Art Group (@weingartenartgroup).

More at www.cindeeklement.com and @cindeeklementart.

This Was Never Supposed to Exist

We had been planning this trip since January — we wanted to see the birds. I just hadn’t had time to dig into the land’s history before we arrived. I’d been deep in the studio, consumed by my upcoming shows. When I got there and started learning what this place actually was — a clay pit, a sulfur mine, an accident of excavation turned bird sanctuary — I felt it land somewhere in my chest. Everything I had been turning over for months was living, breathing, right here.

A coincidence? Maybe. But it felt like confirmation. Like a reminder to keep going — the work will find a place to live. That is always the big question when making eco-art.

I went to see the birds. I ended up seeing the system. I had just written a manifesto about seeing in systems — and I still walked in looking at one thing. That’s how wired we are. Standing there, I had to laugh at myself.

This is Claybottom Pond at High Island — one of the Gulf Coast’s most extraordinary ecological sites. And nothing about it was supposed to exist.

The pond was dug in 1936 to provide fill dirt for a railroad bridge crossing the newly excavated Intracoastal Waterway. It became a community water reservoir. Then a sulfur mining operation. The island the birds now nest on? An accident — a leftover edge of the original pit, forgotten during later excavations.

Then Houston Audubon stepped in and simply said — not here. Within a year of protection, the first 50 heron nests appeared. By 2003, over 1,000 nesting pairs called this place home. The alligators stayed on purpose — managed as a natural moat, keeping raccoons and coyotes away from the nests.

The birds didn’t just move in. They become the system.

This is the part that stopped me cold. Those egrets nesting above the water aren’t just raising their young — they’re regenerating the world beneath them. Their waste, rich in nitrogen and phosphorus, rains down into the water and onto the banks. Seeds they carry in from miles away take root. Nutrients from the Gulf ecosystem pass through their digestive systems and get deposited into a former industrial pit in coastal Texas.

Consumption and waste. The most basic biological cycle. And here it is rebuilding an ecosystem from the inside out.

I’ve been reading Joe Roman’s *Eat, Poop, Die: How Animals Make Our World*, and he writes about Surtsey — a volcanic island off Iceland that erupted out of the ocean in 1963, a completely sterile rock. When seabirds began nesting there, they brought the ocean with them. Their guano fertilized the bare volcanic surface. Meadow grasses appeared. An ecosystem assembled itself, one deposit at a time. Roman calls it a perfect example of how animals shape our world — not through grand gestures, but through the accumulation of small, bodily, unglamorous acts.

Claybottom Pond is its own version of Surtsey. A hole dug for industry, transformed first by protection, then by the slow, steady biology of the birds themselves.

And this place is a reminder that industry and wildlife are not always opposites. Sometimes industry leaves something behind — accidentally, imperfectly — that nature knows exactly what to do with.

What if we designed our cities the way the egrets work — where consumption and waste don’t deplete but regenerate? Where what we take in and what we leave behind actually builds something?

That’s not a fantasy. The birds have been doing it all along.

Two shows opening this spring. *circle & the circle*, a collaboration with Sherry Tseng Hill, opens May 15 at Throughline Art Collective. And on May 23 I open a solo show as a recipient of the Houston Endowment Jones Artist Award — work that elevates stories of conservation like this one. This is exactly the territory both shows are working in. The pull between the natural and unnatural. The way life moves back in when we let it. The things we’ve been conditioned not to see.

More to come.

Happy Earth Week

nature is bigger than humankind.

Two shows opening this spring. the circle & the circle, a collaboration with Sherry Tseng Hill, opens May 15 at Throughline Art Collective. And on May 23 I open a solo show as a recipient of the Houston Endowment Jones Artist Award — work that elevates stories of conservation like this one. This is exactly the territory both shows are working in. The pull between the natural and unnatural. The way life moves back in when we let it. The things we’ve been conditioned not to see.

More to come.

One Year Old, Two Feet Tall and Already Working.

Last year I planted two American Fringe Trees — Grancy Greybeard — one on each side of the stone walking path that takes you into Sequel. They are a year old. Two feet tall. They are babies. And they are already teaching me something.

The Eastern tree is thriving. It gets full sun.

The eastern tree is thriving. It gets full sun. The western tree is the smallest — shaded by other small plants that block its access to full sun. It should eventually outgrow them.

The western tree is the smallest and is shaded by other small plants that block its access to full sun. It should eventually outgrow them.

I chose them deliberately, the way I choose every element in my living sculptures. In Symbiosis at Lawndale, every plant was a decision about relationship — who would it feed, what would it host, how would it move nutrients and carbon through the system. Sequel is the same conversation, carried forward. The fringe trees at its threshold are not decorative. They are a proposition.

The walkway features the two one-year-old trees, barely visible, standing 10 feet away from the center.

Chionanthus virginicus grows naturally at the edges — along woody draws and stream banks, in the transitional zones where forest gives way to coastal prairie. That is exactly where I placed them: flanking the stone path, at the threshold. You pass between them to enter the work. The living sculpture begins before you know it has begun.

The fringe tree does its most important work in the margins — the places most overlooked, most degraded, most in need of rebuilding. That is where Sequel lives too.

Come April through June the white fringed blooms open — long, thread-like petals cascading like an old man’s beard in a coastal breeze. For native bees and butterflies this is a critical nectar window early in the season when little else is offering. The fringe tree is a larval host for three sphinx moth species. A host plant is not ornamental. It is food infrastructure. Female trees produce dark blue olive-like fruits in late summer — high-fat fuel for migrating songbirds. Their dense multi-stemmed structure creates cover and nesting opportunities for birds. And their roots hold the clay soil at Sequel’s entrance, moving water downward — the same function I have been studying since I first understood how roots cool this planet and absorb what Houston cannot stop flooding with.

A close-up of the trees soft, airy beard.

A threshold is a sculpture.

When I carved Carbon by the Yard into Lawndale’s turf, the gesture was simple: carve a shape, let the grass grow around it. The relief emerged from contrast. What was taken away revealed what was possible.

Carbon By The Yard - Lawndale 2021

The two fringe trees at Sequel’s entrance work the same way. They mark the passage from the manicured urban world outside into the living, breathing, intentionally ecological world within. They are the frame. They are also the argument — that two feet of native species, one year old, already threading itself into the insect food web, is doing more ecological work than turf and non-natives could do in a decade.

They are a year old. In twenty years they will be twenty feet tall — cascading white each April, fruiting each September, hosting moths, sheltering songbirds, holding the ground. Sequel will have grown up around them.

That is the whole conversation.

The Tyranny of Tidy

In Defense of the Uninvited — Part II

There is a particular kind of anxiety that lives at the edge of an unmowed lawn. You can feel it from the sidewalk — the low-grade disapproval radiating off a neighbor’s glance, the HOA letter with its careful language about community standards and property values. We all know this pressure. Many of us have bent to it.

I feel it too. At my own eco-art studio, volunteer plants have started pushing up through the gravel parking lot this spring. In modern aesthetic terms, it looks unkempt. Do I groom it because that is what looks cared for to the human eye — or do I do what I preach? If I did clean it up, how? I won’t use pesticides. Pulling is more work than I can manage. I could burn them with a torch, which releases carbon — leaving the lot neat but barren. I know that option well. It’s what I did all last summer. I feel the pull of it still.

That question — how much tidiness do we owe society before we’re allowed to let something live — is exactly what this essay is about.

The ancient part of your brain that kept your ancestors alive is genuinely afraid of the tall grass. It is scanning for the snake, the bobcat, the thing with teeth. That instinct is old. It is wired in. The impulse to clear, to see, to know what’s out there — it kept people alive across tens of thousands of years. We are not wrong to have it.

But we are living in a different world now, and that old circuitry is misfiring.

Here is what the science shows: living plant systems — their moisture, their transpiration, their cooling and breathing — help move weather across the landscape. Strip those systems out and replace them with hot pavement and monoculture lawn, and you remove the very mechanisms that keep weather moving. Extreme weather increasingly gets stuck. Heat domes park over cities for days, fed not just by hot pavement but by the barren heat radiating off bare ground and fallow fields. The fires. The floods. The Guadalupe on the Fourth of July. Hurricane Harvey. We call these natural disasters — as if nature did this to us, unprovoked.

The danger is no longer the rattlesnake in the grass. The danger is the bare ground.

I know this in my body now — not just my brain. Standing in my parking lot, looking at the volunteers pushing through the gravel, I no longer see a mess. I see first responders. The plants that show up uninvited are the ones that know what the ground needs — to be covered, held, cooled, fed. They are doing the work we stopped doing when we picked up the leaf blower and the herbicide.

What would it take to shift not just individual behavior but the aesthetic itself — to make living, layered, uninvited-welcoming landscapes look like what they actually are: acts of intelligence? Acts of care?

The weeds already know what to do. The seeds are in the soil, waiting. Life is not asking permission. It is ready to come back the moment we stop yanking it out.

The question isn’t whether the land can recover. The question is whether we can — from the idea that control is the same thing as care. That bare is the same thing as clean.

The greatest threat we face isn’t what’s hiding in the weeds. It’s that we cut them all down.

Passionate for Pre-K

This post will serve as a journal for the work.

“My four-year-old daughter saw her first butterfly and was terrified.”

— Lawndale Art Center patron, 2022

This remark, shared during my Symbiosis artist talk at the Lawndale Art Center, stopped me cold. Imagining a generation untouched by the gentleness and fragility of wings — this is a sorrow too heavy to bear and do nothing.

Wildlife plays a vital role in early childhood brain development. At the very least, let each school day begin with a procession past living poetry: vines sculpted in fragrant blossoms of lemon honey, trembling with the promise of caterpillars, alive with the fragile ballet of butterflies. Each child deserves to develop in the company of nature’s intelligence.

With small acts of passion, this is within reach.

DESCRIPTION

Passionate for Pre–K is a living social sculpture installed in the fall of 2025 on the chain-link fences surrounding the playground at Clemente Martinez Elementary School in Houston, Texas. I sourced approximately 90 Texas native vines from my three living sculptures: Symbiosis at the Lawndale Art Center, Deeper Than That at a private residence, and Sequel, located next to my art studio in Acres Homes. Passion vines are highlighted in the mix. Sourcing from multiple locations supports the DNA diversity of the ecosystem. Hope Stone and landscape architect Caroline Craddock coordinated this installation with the school administration.

THE PROCESS

Taking tender 10-inch vine cuttings, using root stimulator and native leaf mold to propagate the plants. I selected 90 plants of different species to support a variety of wildlife and accommodate different growing seasons. The school community assisted with the planting in early October.

LONG-TERM GOAL

As ecological knowledge from Symbiosis has taken root in Deeper Than That, which has grown into Sequel, the hope is that Passionate for Pre–K will act as a catalyst. Annually, new tendrils — carefully propagated — will be gifted from Clemente Martinez Elementary School to neighboring schools, allowing the spirit of regeneration to spread from playground to playground, blossoming into a living legacy of wonder and natural intelligence.

PLANT LIST

May pop, Passiflora incarnata

Stinking passion vine, Passiflora foetida

Various proven passion vine hybrids

Trumpet honeysuckle, Lonicera sempervirens

Hairy clustervine, Jacquemontia tamnifolia

Muscadine grape, Vitis rotundifolia

American wisteria, Wisteria frutescens

Crossvine, Bignonia capreolata

Carolina jessamine, Gelsemium sempervirens

COLLABORATION

Passionate for Pre–K is a collaboration with Hope Stone, Caroline Craddock, and the Clemente Martinez Elementary School community. This would not exist without them, or without the incredible volunteers who gave their time and hands to this work.

NOVEMBER 2025 UPDATE — SETBACK & RESILIENCE

During phase two, a fifth-grade class carefully planted the remaining plants for the installation. The following week, the eager students returned to check on their plantings — and found devastation. A child left unattended in the play area had pulled up plant after plant, leaving only 7 of the original 90 still alive.

This is heartbreaking and frustrating — but it highlights exactly how important this project is. The lessons a garden teaches about social responsibility, care, and wonder are fundamental. I will not let one act derail it. Every child has the right to be inspired by nature.

I am propagating new cuttings. We plant again in the spring.

Special thanks to Caroline Craddock for capturing these moments in photographs.

—special thanks to Caroline Craddick for capturing these moments in photos.

One of the plants from the previous planting that was part of the vandalism. Notice the gulf Fritillary butterfly hiding in the shadow.

propagating a passion vine in water.

The Stinky Passion flower’s scientific name is Passiflora foetida. It is also known as Fetid Passion Flower, Love-in-a-mist, Wild Maracuja, and running pop.

It has sticky, feathery, leafy bracts that surround the flower and fruit. When an insect tries to eat the fruit, it gets caught in the sticky bracts and dies. The plant then secretes a digestive enzyme and absorbs the nutrients.

Nature Nurtures: Nurture Nature

Sequel, 65oo sq. ft living sculpture, Summer Solstice 2024, Image by Jake Eshelman

image by Wolf Mac Lean

image by Jake Eshelman

Dreaming of Melting Mummies.

When you understand the natural systems that regenerate our planet, you understand that snow is both an end and a beginning. Tobi, my Labrador, and I could not wait to check on our plant beings in “Deeper than that” this snow-covered morning. Scanning the installation there are bushy snow puddles of Butter daisies and Bluemist flowers with tiny bursts of color saved only for those who care to listen closely.

Layered in the dust of the morning’s snow the blanket flower draws us closest. The fiery blooms not reaching for the sun but in a motherly huddle. I am grateful that I don’t need to spend money, time, or energy on covering native plants that are genetically designed to thrive in extreme temperatures and weather conditions. The exposed plants create a subtle palette of earth tones rarely seen in urban landscapes, showcasing the various stages of life and regeneration that these resilient species represent. When my eyes focus on the details, hidden colors are revealed, and my brain receives a surge of oxytocin. I understand what hope feels like. As l scan down the street I see homes lined not in winters pallets but boxshrubs wrapped like mummies. For a moment I invision those mummies milting into a street lined with nature’s gentle winter lessons. I image things to inspire children to explore and capture their imagination.

In the quiet of the snow, I reflect on its form—a white-covered blanket—and its relationship with a planet that naturally regenerates for future generations. I consider how the plants that freeze back or remain in place become energy sources and habitats, supporting the foundation of the planet’s food network. It warms my heart to think about how this snow-covered landscape protects the soil life that nourishes roots and promotes spring growth.

There are many lessons that humans can learn from a garden that embraces seasons, regenerates life and provides for a diversity of beings. Imagine how different the world would be if every child’s first classroom was a garden, or if all politicians had to maintain a healthy garden without the use of chemical inputs for four years before they could hold office. They would gain insights into networking and learn about symbiotic relationships in real life.

Lifeblood

Lifeblood

5.75 “ X 6” X 7”

bronze

Image by Jake Eshelman

Lifeblood, Explores of the profound connection between humans and nature, conveyed through the visual metaphor of a root naturally occurring in the shape akin to the human heart. This piece is part of a larger body of work titled "Subterranean Secrets," which delves into the theme of roots. My work aims to invoke reflection on the unseen yet vital networks that sustain both plants and humans. By casting roots directly in bronze, I emphasize their resilience and permanence, highlighting the enduring significance of these natural systems.

The inspiration for "Lifeblood" arose from my studies on regenerative agriculture, focusing on the indispensable role roots play in countering extreme weather. My exploration into the fascinating world of roots began in 2017, unveiling striking visual similarities between roots and the human heart. These parallels reveal both biological and conceptual truths, as roots and the heart function as lifelines, circulating essential nutrients that sustain life.

Through "Lifeblood," I invite an examination of the often-overlooked relationships between human existence and the natural world. The act of casting these roots in bronze imparts permanence to these otherwise ephemeral forms, challenging perceptions of how we value the natural systems surrounding us. This sculpture contributes to the ongoing dialogue about our environment by emphasizing our dependence on nature and reinforcing the deep interconnection between humanity and the natural world.

In the end, "Lifeblood" serves as a call to acknowledge and appreciate the hidden yet crucial systems that support life. I believe that by understanding and valuing these networks, we can cultivate a deeper awareness of our roles within the broader ecological system, sparking actions to preserve and nurture the natural environment essential to human existence.

Prairie Rhythms: Predators and Pastoral Stewardship

As I prepare for my upcoming living sculpture titled "Sequel," I had the opportunity to explore the prairie ecosystems at Pierce Ranch. The morning started with collecting prairie seeds, which is a vital step in bringing my sculpture to life. To enhance my understanding of these ecosystems and find the most viable seeds, I reached out to a local prairie conservationist who has been instrumental in restoring numerous prairies, notably preserving the Katy Prairie. Collecting seeds is much like eating crawfish, proven to be a catalyst for engaging and enlightening dialogue.

The insights I gained from this exchange confirmed my concerns regarding land preservation. It might surprise and disturb you to learn that the most vibrant and diverse prairies aren't necessarily those that are protected. Rather, they are the prairies that have embraced a more dynamic relationship with the land through careful ranching practices and thrive with life and diversity.

Historically, the natural balance between predators and prey shaped these ecosystems. Predators once hunted freely, guiding the movements of herbivore herds, naturally managing the consumption of vegetation (energy) and the dispersal of organic matter in the form of dung, returning energy back into the soil. However, human intervention led to the decline of these predators, overgrazing, and the desertification of ranchlands. Modern-day ranchers have learned to adapt by using portable fences to mimic these natural movements. This modern adaptation sustains the prairie as a healthy ecosystem, supporting numerous bird species and wildlife.

Through this blog post, I hope to reach an audience unaware of the critical role of ruminants in preserving and revitalizing prairie ecosystems. It's not merely about protecting a static image of nature but understanding and fostering the dynamic relationships that sustain it. The prairies are a testament to the resilience and complexity of life when allowed to interact naturally, even within the framework of sustainable human practices.

It's exhilarating to see how this knowledge aligns with my artistic vision. The conversations I've had and the observations I've made will undoubtedly enrich the narrative and structure of my living sculpture. The prairie seeds are not just components of my work; they symbolize a deeper understanding of ecological balance and the beauty of a thriving ecosystem. They are a source of energy and knowledge, a way to repay the planet.

As I continue this creative process, conversations with friends and experts will remain the cornerstone of my inspiration. In sharing these insights, I hope to foster a broader appreciation for the nuances of prairie conservation and the subtle yet profound ways we can contribute to preserving our natural world.

I leave you with questions that modern society must consider: How can ruminant populations be managed in the absence of predators? What are the consequences of not culling herds? What does the future cycle of life entail?

Living Labyrinth – Echoes of Existence: A Journey Through Nature's Narratives To Redefine The Anthropocene. - Artist statement

Echoes of Existence: A Journey Through Nature's Narratives To Redefine The Anthropocene.

A Living Labyrinth · Available for Installation

Before the turf grass, there were bison. Thirty million of them — the first farm equipment, brown not green — harvesting the plains with their appetites, drilling seeds into the earth with their hooves, building the soil that once covered this continent. Then they were gone. What replaced them was manicured lawn — a carbon footprint where a carbon sink once stood.

Echoes of Existence is a living labyrinth designed for a field of turf grass. The labyrinth is shaped as a bison — a tribute to the eating and waste habits that built North America’s ecosystems. Students install it. Native plants replace the turf. The entrance is marked with limestone inscribed: What might seem like the endpoint…may also be the beginning.

It was developed during an artist residency at Indiana University. The university is working to find its permanent site. In the meantime, the work is available — to any campus, institution, or community with a field of grass and the willingness to let something live in it.

links to other Living Labyrinth blog posts.

Artist in Residency at Indiana University- Living the Dream Installation.

IU- How do you draw a labyrinth?

IU- What kind of Labyrinth should I make? What is my site-specific message?

IU- How do you build a labyrinth from 8’ X10” to 83’ X 54’?

IU- Natural Systems - digestive system.

IU- The labyrinth design - How will it be installed?

IU- Living labyrinth- Building the grid.

WHISPERS OF A SHIFTING DIVIDE

Whispers of a Shifting Divide is a polished bronze sculpture that imagines the unimaginable. It was inspired by my children's 1997 discovery of a crustacean fossil lying in the desert of West Texas just before we moved east to semitropical Houston, Texas.

The sculpture symbolizes the U.S. 100th meridian, the demarcation between the arid western US and the humid eastern US since the early 1800s. Since 1980, this demarcation between arid and humid has shifted 140 miles eastward from the west side of Austin, Texas to the east side of Austin to the 98th meridian. Another 140 miles — another 40-50 years — and Houston, known for its semitropical humidity will be on the arid side of the boundary.

The polished bronze material nods to Houston's future and industrial character, particularly the polished steel street signs in its minimally landscaped commercial tourist area, Uptown Houston.

By imagining the unimaginable, this work fosters a dialogue that calls for environmental consciousness of the possibilities of our actions.

Echoes of Existence-how to engage the students

I am slowly working to find solutions to the problems that will arise when the students implement the installation.

First, how to get students that are not comfortable with nature to want tobe involved. What will draw them in?

Second, a big problem is how to control a group of college kids in a field and have them complete a detailed installation.

Bloomington is a walking city. Every day as I would walk about town and the campus I worried about how I was going to solve these two problem. And like on most college campuses everyone is in their own audio visual world contained between the ear pieces of a headset. And I was the same. The difference was I still wanted to connect to those passing by me with a “good morning” or hi. I found the IU students were very focused on the sounds in their headsets they did not need to make eye contact or say hello.

In a discussion with an English professor, Shannon Gayk, who also teaches a walking class, I learned that a novel idea for students is silent walking. The idea of walking without a headset without sound — silent.

Thinking of headsets and silent - my mind went straight to silent raves then to a silent installation.

Would the concept of a silent installation draw the students in. Could this commitment to headsets be a possible tool for crowd control during the installation?

I love the idea. But that leads to another hurdle. How do I design a silent installation? What technology makes this possible?

With a quick Google search, I found several companies that provide everything you need for a silent event.

Weingarten Art Group - Reseeding

I am delighted to be included in the spring 2024 exhibition at CityCentre, “Reseeding”, which prompts deep reflection on humanity’s influence on the natural world. The exhibited artwork urges us to envision a utopian future where our impact is positive and mindful choices lead to a harmonious coexistence with nature, inspiring a collective commitment to a sustainable future. The exhibition was thoughtfully curated by Olivia Kimbrell of Weingarten Art Group.

On exhibit until September 2024, the lobbies at CityCentre are open to the public M-F, 8 AM – 6 PM

CityCentre 2 Front – Christian Eckart
CityCentre 2 Back – Cindee Travis Klement
City Centre 3 – Dornith Doherty
CityCentre 4 – Bruna Massadas
CityCentre 5 – Rachel Livedalen

Photography by Nicki Evans

Indiana University artist in residence— conceptualism, the site, archeology and anthropology.

October 11th was the end of the first leg of my residency. The experience truly supports the statement you don’t get what you want but you always get what you need. I did not seek out the residency but I can see how it is helping me take my Social practice to the next level.

It is giving me the opportunity to use; the symbolism of a labyrinth, the regenerative symbol of a bison, the turfgrass of an institute of the US collegic system to change societal habits. These features alone are rare and hard to come by resources.

Exploring the campus and discussing my plans with all who would listen resulted in IU providing me with the opportunity to add a few more layers to the work. Specifically conceptualism, archeology and anthropology.

Conceptualism- The Eskenazie Museum on IU’s campus has one of the three complete collections of Marcell Duchamps readymades. Seeing these pieces of Duchamp the father of conceptualism from the 60!s and 70’s gave me the idea that my work at Indiana would be more impactful if it is conceptual.

As I began to plan the labyrinth design and installation I began to see how beautifully Conceptualism works with Social sculpture. If I create the concept and the design the steps to install it and the students implement my concept and design it becomes theirs. It won’t be my art they assist me with it will be their actions taking meaningful steps.

The last Monday at IU in a meeting discussing the actual installation process with one of the professors and directors of the Hilltop Gardens it was suggested I work with the anthropology department and Archeology departments when I return. Archeologists will be enlightening when it comes to installing the grid. The Anthropology department can help facilitate a possible relationship and sharing of culture between the students of the First Nations and the students who do not have a deep connection to the land. I would like the installation to be a catalyst for the two groups to develop a unified way forward, a new tradition or ceremony that will give them all together a personal connection to the landscape and the biodiversity it will support.

The next step is to get the University wheels to approve a site. To be the most successful the site needs to be a sea of turfgrass, have full sun, be spacious enough to accommodate the 85’ X 54’ bison, and accessible to the students and community.

I am thrilled to announce that in late January 2024, IU selected a sloped plot of The Hilltop Gardens for the installation.

Related blog posts

A labyrinth of what shape? http://www.cindeeklement.com/blog/2023/10/2/what-kind-of-labyrinth-a-seed-a-beautiful-design-a-bison-that-is-the-question

The design

http://www.cindeeklement.com/blog/2023/10/8/the-labyrinth-design-how-will-it-be-installation

From 8” X 10” to 53’ X 85’

http://www.cindeeklement.com/blog/2023/10/7/how-do-you-build-a-labyrinth

Language and Perception

In the above image the wrench represents industry and the butterfly the natural world.

For those with philosophical minds, it’s fascinating to explore how language shapes our understanding of the world. The power of words extends beyond mere communication; it molds our perceptions and influences the way we interpret reality.

Consider how our dominant cultural values can impact our vocabulary and ultimately shape how we perceive things. If our society places highest importance on industry and financial gain without regard for environmental consequences, our language will reflect that mindset.

Our perception of the image and the world is shaped by our language. If our main focus is on achieving economic success at any ecological cost, then our vocabulary reflects these thoughts, and these thoughts in turn influence how we value ecology. Take a moment to consider this image of a butterfly and a wrench.

What do you perceive — a wrench supporting a butterfly or a butterfly struggling to withstand the pressure from a wrench?

We can use this knowledge to change society – by analyzing the relationship between language and perception, we can start to question and challenge these dominant narratives. We can choose to broaden our vocabulary, incorporating words that prioritize environmentalism and regeneration.

Imagine if everyone shifted their linguistic focus towards promoting regenerative practices, valuing nature, and taking responsibility for ecological well-being. This change in vocabulary could create a shift in perception – from viewing nature as something to exploit for financial gain to recognizing its inherent value, fragility and it’s power.

So let me ask you again: How do you perceive the image of the butterfly and the wrench? We have an opportunity to reflect on the power of language, challenge conventional thinking, and work towards creating a more regenerative future for ourselves and generations to come.

#ecoart #socialsculpture #wrench #butterfly #language #womanartist #texas #houston #cindeeklementart

Heat Dome

“What I propose, therefore, is very simple: it is nothing more than to think what we are doing.”

-Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition

Heat Dome

Watercolor monotype

30" X44"

Bare ground, concrete, asphalt, and astroturf emit 4X radiant heat. Great masses of radiant heat create heat domes. Heat domes prohibit weather from moving across the land. In contrast, surfaces covered in thick layers of plants indigenous to the region store water in the soil. When the day warms, the plants transpire, releasing bacteria with the moisture to form clouds that provide shade and then rain. We each need to carry our ecological weight. We can start by considering new ways to surface our city scapes to cool the planet.

Heat Dome ghost

Moving Forward

Moving Forward

67” X 15” X 18”

Image by Jake Eshelman

Found object concrete and rebar curbing fragment, rusted steel, bronze, and gold leaf.

Moving Forward consists of two rectangular concrete curb fragments and two cast bronze roots, the latter with gold-leaf patinas. These objects are tethered like irregular beads strung on a wire of rusty rebar falling to the earth.

The fractured concrete and the more extensive root land at the forefront in a forward strutting anthropomorphic structure. Growing behind the long-necked bird-like form, a stem of rebar twice the creature's height reaches for sunlight. The meandering stem is counterbalanced with the smaller root in a lyrical passed sunflower shape.

The weighted composition invites viewers to reimagine the relationship between our engineered landscapes and ecological systems to support wildlife and forge a path toward a regenerative future.

Interdependence

Interdependence

60” X 10.25” X 10.25”

Image by Jake Eshelman

Texas Bricks, Paint, Plastic Dome and Base, Vintage Globe Bank, Prop $100 bills, Coins from a diversity of economies, Paper Wasp’s nest on Maple tree leaves, Seashell with barnacles, Red swamp crayfish, bird nest, feather of a Pileated Woodpecker, Blue jay feathers, Mantis, Cicada, Great Purple Hairstreak, Tropical Checkered Skipper, White Peacock, Red-spotted Admiral, Monarch, Red lacewing butterfly, June Beetle, Eastern Carpenter bee, Wolf Spider, Beebalm, Sacred Datura, Bundleflower and various dried leaves.

Artist Statement

Interdependence is built from a collection of TEXAS-stamped bricks washed with a white patina. In a staggered stacked square skyscraper form, the bricks shoulder a transparent dome and base, crowned with a vintage Globe Bank finial.

Within the transparent dome is a still-life collection of intricately connected elements from natural and human-made systems. They wreath a "Houston" stamped brick fragment.

By using everyday materials that we typically associate with urban environments, the work conveys that the collective actions of Houstonians, living in a dense population center with a sprawling footprint and long growing seasons, have far-reaching implications for global economies. It is a reminder that our choices impact not just our immediate landscapes but global eco-systems as a whole.

This sculpture is not a warning. It presents a solution. I employ systems thinking to suggest that embracing economic systems is necessary to recover biodiversity. Economic systems dominate our culture and intimately impact natural systems. Houston's ecology and commerce can potentially create a new economy - an ecotourism industry. Houstonians can transform the negative impact of industrialization, commerce, and urbanization into a source of beauty, wonder, and economic growth by advocating for our natural habitats.

Interdependence invites us to rethink our individual relationship with the planet’s biodiversity, recognize the value of our natural heritage, and embrace the idea that supporting wildlife is a global responsibility dependent on a collection of individual acts. 

Hats and Storytelling.

Indulging in a morning of thoughtful stitching and reflection. Since my youthful days in the 70s shaping hats at my father's feed and Western Wear store, hats have held a profound meaning for me. They possess a unique ability to tell stories.

Recently, I acquired an extraordinary green hat from the talented artisan Edgar Alvarez at Gran Central Hats. Their craftsmanship captures the essence of customization, allowing ribbons, feathers, and all manner of embellishments to adorn your own hat. I made the decision to handle my own stitching, and I must admit, piercing through the resilient felt material is no easy task.

As I sit here, needle in hand, I find myself musing about the idea of incorporating elements inspired by the prairie grasses and the thriving ecosystem that thrives through the consumption and waste patterns of bison. It's a fascinating, how their actions actually contribute to the renewal of life. For instance, birds benefit from the ecosystem by consuming pests that break down bison dung. These birds utilize bison fur to construct their nests, as the fur provides antiviral properties, fortifying their eggshells. Furthermore, the grasses that flourish due to the bison's eating and waste habits offer nesting materials and shelter from predators.

I am hopeful that when finished this hat will be something more than a mere fashion accessory; it possesses the potential to be a powerful catalyst for conversations, stimulating discussions about our individual roles in the process of regeneration.