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SE Regional Climate Leadership Summit, Miami Beach Convention Center in partnership with ArtSail. Award-winning collaboration with ARTSail BFI and AIRIE, seen here with Choreographer Dale Andree of NWD Projects, 2023.

Wild Corridor, presented by TILIARTS VENTURE as a part of The DIORAMA PROJECT in the Alfred I. Dupont Building, is on view November 22nd, 2022 - April 6th, 2023

In 1831, John James Audubon captivated America while exploring Florida to illustrate his book, Birds of America. What would Audubon think about our contemporary environmental concerns? He may have been pleased with advances in scientific research on climate change, migration, and evolutionary factors. He certainly would have been disappointed with extinctions and habitat loss. Since the 1930s, the number of breeding pairs of wading birds has declined by approximately 90 percent. Clearly, the ecosystem has struggled to support viable populations of select birds for several decades.

But there is hope. Fast forward to 2021, when the State of Florida enacted the Florida Wildlife Corridor Act, The Act was created to conserve critical natural ecosystems and working landscapes. This installation explores an environmental dialogue between John James Audubon and present day Florida. 

Created with support from Archbold Biological Station, Everglades National Park, Big Cypress National Preserve, South Florida Collections Management Center, Pelican Harbor Seabird Station, Audubon Florida and Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Everglades Songbook Suite, a dynamic live concert featuring musical compositions and soundscapes by songwriter Jose Elias, celebrated world cultures on Earth Day in Everglades National Park. Conservation artist Deborah Mitchell exhibited 10 selections from her series Wild Observations in Everglades National Park for the event, produced with support from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and filmed for its “Arts Across America” docu-series, debuting this fall. Upbeat call and response style songs, African melodies, and new music thrilled the audience at Long Pine Key Amphitheater.

 Interwoven, an art exhibition featuring work by Wilson Bowers and Deborah Mitchell, opened the National Water Dance Earth Day event on April 23rd at the South Miami Dade Cultural Arts Center.  "Conversations stations" with indigenous activists Betty Osceola, Houston Cypress, and Samuel Tommie also precluded the inspiring dance performance, which had the whole community dancing at the end of the event. Kudos to choreographer Dale Andree for another flawless experience. 

Pa - Hay - Okee: Grassy Water, is the brainchild of exhibition curator, and ARTSail Executive Director, Ombretta Agró Andruff, who conducted expeditions in the region, interviewing activists, scientists and experts to better understand the threats to this unique ecosystem originally known by the acronym KLOE: the Kissimmee-Lake Okeechobee-Everglades watershed. 

Before drainage and canalization efforts started in the late 1880s, this entire system originated near the present location of Orlando, flowing from the Kissimmee River and smaller streams into Lake Okeechobee, and from there, in the summer months, overflowing creating more streams, swamps and marshes all the way to Florida Bay.  

Tragically, what is left today is a far cry from the rich and diverse ecosystem that first explorers encountered: Ever-increasing population and urban development, industry, and agriculture have resulted in large metropolitan areas, stressing the surrounding natural environments and destroying more than half of the original Everglades. On the upside, restoration efforts, initiated in 2000 with the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), and the tireless advocacy from NGOs and dedicated individuals alike, are generating positive effects by restoring the historical water flow and enhancing the protection of biodiversity in specific areas of the National Park and beyond.  

On view at ArtServe through June 26th, 2022