AFAR 2020 - 2021
RESEARCH and SCHOLARSHIP
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1. Sponsored/Non-Sponsored Projects or Programs
Examples: Grants, patents, etc.. If you are reporting a grant, include both funded and unfunded applications within the reportable time frame. If funded, include the date of the grant and the amount of the award.
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2/9/2021 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) – Grant for Individual Artists – pending
2. Presentations/Programs
Examples: Presentations at international, national or local conferences within the reportable time frame. Gallery and Media Appearances related to your academic career. Indicate your role as a paper presenter, discussant, moderator, panelist, session organizer, curator, invited speaker, etc… If necessary, identify any collaborators and define your percentage of contribution. Attendance at conferences should be noted here.
5/21/2021 MOCA Westport - exhibition submission
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5/10/2021 Eco-Art, Embodied Forest - exhibition submission
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5/9/2021 Save Art Space (SAS), I am Water - exhibition submission
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4/9/2021 Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Long Views - exhibition and fundraiser
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2/22/2021 Singulart Europe online gallery representation
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1/14/2021 Creative Growth Art Center, Oakland, CA. The Gowanus Muskrat; Drawing Muskrats: reading and workshop
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1/28/2021 Creative Growth Art Center, Oakland, CA. The Gowanus Muskrat; Drawing Mice: reading and workshop
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11/28/2020 Pen & Ink Brigade, Georgia on My Mind, fundraiser for Georgia election run-off
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10/27/2020 NYC H2O, The Gowanus Muskrat: reading and Q & A
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7/16/2020 Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS) Online Conference. Paper presenter, Supporting a Superfund: Research, Participation, Results
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7/16/2020 Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS) Online Conference. Panel Chair, Cases in Course Design and Experiential Learning and Research
3. Other ongoing significant research not resulting in publication or presentation this year
Please use this section to briefly describe your current research agenda that may not have led to publication this year but is your pipeline of material for future years.
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1. The Gowanus Muskrat (Children’s Book) for Publication:
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I have spent the last three years developing and completing a children’s book, The Gowanus Muskrat, about the effects of climate change on urban fauna. This story follows a brave and scrappy muskrat, Finn, whose den in located in the bulkheads where the Gowanus Canal opens out into the Upper Bay of New York Harbor. A storm (Superstorm Sandy) floods the family den and the Muskrat is separated from its loved ones and community. The journey up the Gowanus Canal to find missing family brings Finn in contact with an array of other creatures, each encounter offering knowledge and life lessons. Finn is joined by Niblet, an orphaned baby mouse, and the two have a life changing adventure. This project is a natural culmination of my waterfront research and my visual art practice. This year, the book was augmented with five new paintings/illustrations as well as a painted map frontispiece. It is now complete and consists of twenty chapters and thirty-five illustrations, each a richly detailed oil painting. I am currently in promising discussion with the Senior Editor of Children’s Books at Princeton Architectural Press. The complete project including all illustrations can be viewed here: https://elizabetalbert.wixsite.com/thegowanusmuskrat
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2. Visual Art Production for Exhibition:
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My ongoing studio practice continues. The large scale works are painting-based, but also incorporate photography (my own) film stills, and open source historical imagery, all of which have been printed on fabric, stitched to the painted surface and then again painted into. All these works represent in some form the relationship between the natural environment and its various forms of representation. They explore the optics of shifting space and time in actual and imaginary experience through collage-like juxtapositions of distinct worlds, evoking a simultaneity of experience internal and external; received and invented. They speak to a need to make sense of; to organize multiple types of experience, especially in the face if a barrage of welcome and unwelcome information. The works may at times pair imagery that is both utopian and dissolute; desirable and abject; but always seeking balance, i.e beauty. The subtext is the landscape as real and psychological battlefield, a stage where we face the fall-out from climate change and the need to negotiate for environmental justice, human rights, and economic growth. To date I have completed 30 pieces ready for exhibition. Most galleries remained closed throughout this past 14 months and so are far behind in their programming. However, I continue to seek exhibition opportunities for this body of work. Please see my updated website: https://elizabeth-albert.com
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3. Conference Presentations:
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Upcoming:
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6/28/21 Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS) Online Conference. Paper presenter. The Gowanus Muskrat: An Eco-critical Fairy Tale
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7/26/21 Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), Online Conference. Paper presenter, The Gowanus Muskrat: A Tale of Survival in a Dark Blue-Green World