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Rewilding Audiences through Agency, Ritual and Empathy:

Jenny Kendler’s Eco Art Reform Tactics

By

NOËL KATHRYN ALBERTSEN

THESIS

Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

in

Art History

in the

OFFICE OF GRADUATE STUDIES

of the

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

DAVIS

Approved:

________________________________________________

Christina Cogdell, Chair

________________________________________________

Talinn Grigor

________________________________________________

Alexandra Sofroniew

Committee in Charge

2020

ii

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my chair, Dr. Christina Cogdell, for her profound support and guidance

through the thesis-writing process. Thank you to my committee members Dr. Talinn Grigor and

Dr. Alexandra Sofroniew for their consistent encouragement and invaluable feedback. I would

like to also thank the entire Art History Department for their help and support. Thank you so

much to my dear friends and family for their encouragement through this process, including my

Great Aunt Mary Ellen and Uncle Jack Brucato, my sister Lara Hiehle, and Carol Fisher. Lastly,

I would like to express my deepest thanks and appreciation to my mother, Christina Lee, to

whom I dedicate this thesis.

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Abstract

Rewilding Audiences with Agency, Ritual and Empathy:

Jenny Kendler’s Eco Art Reform Tactics

In the evolving genre of ecological art, or eco art, artists work in the midst of ever-

increasing environmental crises so they might compel audiences to help safeguard the planet.

However, rarely are audiences offered an immediate and direct entry point into environmental

activism that offers a simple and practical way to take action. Contemporary artist Jenny Kendler

is an exceptional figure in the field of eco art for her revolutionary methodology which combines

a number of eco art reform tactics to engage her audience in ways to immediately benefit

ecologies suffering specific problems. Her prolific career has rendered an extensive portfolio of

these projects that employ the tactics of ecovention, ritual, and the deconstruction of cultural

canons to inspire safeguarding efforts. Further, the underlying philosophies of Kendler’s practice

take inspiration from ideologies such as rewilding, the Deep Ecology worldview, and

philosopher David Abram’s work Spell of the Sensuous that focus on reminding humans of their

inherent identity as part of the natural world. These ideologies lend themselves to the mindset

that nature should be saved for its own intrinsic value versus solely for how it benefits our

species, but also that we are forever a part of the nature we often think of ourselves as separate

from. By tracing the origins of her three most prominent reform tactics through the history of eco

art, this thesis seeks to establish Kendler as a significant pioneer in the expanding field of eco art.

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Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………1

Ecovention as Artistic Strategy: An Entry Point into Environmental Activism….……..…10

Ritualizing Interaction with Nature…………………………………………………………...19

Deconstruction of Cultural Canons and their Return to Nature……………………………33

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………39

Figures…………………………………………………………………………………………...41

Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………….53

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Rewilding Audiences with Agency, Ritual and Empathy:

Jenny Kendler’s Eco Art Reform Tactics

Even in the most urban of cities, goldfinches migrate through in the fall, coyotes run the

railroad tracks, and spiders weave intricate webs on the windows of skyscrapers. And even

within those skyscrapers, nature is alive because we are still (and always) embedded within

our animal bodies. We are blood, bone, guts, bacteria-we are multitudes, ourselves an

ecosystem-mortal and fully animal, no matter how our culture may try to ignore this fact.

And so, I suggest with this installation, the need to reclaim our animal selves, and to

recognize and respect our kinship with the others with whom we share this planet.

Jenny Kendler on her project, Tell it to the Birds (2014-2015)

Introduction

Environmentally-engaged artists generally share a common goal: to educate and inspire

their audience so that they might care about environmental threats and engage in safeguarding

efforts. However, in the field of ecological art, or eco art, a field deeply intertwined with

environmental activism, what entryways into connecting with nature and engaging in activism do

these artists actually offer through their eco art? The birth of the Modern Environmental

Movement in the U.S. began in the 1960s and 70s when awareness of increasing environmental

threats such as devastating water pollution and oil spills spread and inspired widespread

activism. Since this zeitgeist of environmental reform, when such pivotal milestones occurred as

Rachel Carson’s pivotal book on environmental conservation Silent Spring (1962), the first

national Earth Day was held (1970) across the country, and the Natural Resources Defense

Council (NRDC) was founded to aid in developing protective environmental laws (1970), artists

have undertaken projects to benefit the environment. However, these artist-initiated works were

primarily solo projects meant to inspire people who were removed from the epicenter of the

activity, where artist, not viewer, was the primary agent of change. Today, inspiring activism is

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still central to the goals of eco artists-and, furthermore, in the midst of environmental crises such

as swelling climate change, ongoing species extinction, and dire pollution in our land, water, and

air, the need for humans to take immediate action to defend the environment is even more urgent

than it was in decades past. Even so, today, rarely are eco artworks presented in such a way that

they create space for audiences to engage with nature in a profound, personal way or become

immediate agents of tangible change. Additionally, the means by which environmental activists

often push for changes in human behavior is often by emphasizing how letting the natural world

fall to harm will negatively affect our species, instead of valuing it for its inherent worth and

highlighting that we are, in fact, part of nature itself.

Ecologically-engaged artist and activist Jenny Kendler stands out on the spectrum of eco

artists for the ways that she utilizes clever and strategic reform tactics in her artistic practice to

accomplish the crucial goal of inspiring activism. Her ecological reform tactics re-sensitize her

audience to their inherent connection with and as part of nature by drawing on a number of

unique ecological philosophies that focus on the intrinsic human-nature nexus, such as the Deep

Ecology worldview that emerged in the 1970s. This philosophy stresses that we must safeguard

the natural world from human destruction not solely because of its benefit to us, but, instead, for

its intrinsic worth as a living system of which we are a part. The strikingly uncommon principal

of this philosophy is clear when considering, for example, how often environmental activist

messages focus on a “preserving our planet for future generations” trope instead of saving other

living systems for their fundamental value. It is this notion, that we are inherently part of nature

itself and not removed from it, that is worth protecting for its own sake, that is the impetus of

Kendler’s practice. She enacts this core belief time and time again by the tactics she utilizes in

her projects. Kendler herself has acknowledged the use of tactics in her artist-activist practice: “I

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kind of deploy these strategies of beauty that are found in nature and use that as an activist

tool.”1 My analysis explores the significance of the types of strategies Kendler uses and

furthermore how she uses these strategies to engage her audience. I will investigate how she

seeks people’s participation in environmental awareness and activism by examining three of the

reform tactics she practices in her eco artworks-ecovention, ritual, and the deconstruction of

cultural canons. By comparing her to earlier and more contemporary eco-artists concerned with

the environment-but rarely emphasizing the inherent connection of human and nature, or

engaging with audiences as directly as Kendler-I will demonstrate how Kendler powerfully

utilizes these reform tactics based on philosophies and ideas that emphasize the human-nature

connection, and argue that her groundbreaking practice has the potential to revolutionize

methods of inspiring environmental activism through art.

Before delving into Kendler’s background and practice, it is helpful to have a grounding

in the history of eco art. Earthworks and Beyond: Contemporary Art in the Landscape (1984) by

John Beardsley is a helpful introduction to the predecessors of eco art-earthworks and land art

from the 1960s to the 2000s. Such prominent land artists as Andy Goldsworthy and Robert

Smithson are discussed, who, as typical of all land artists, used natural materials like icicles and

stones to create sculptures on site of their natural habitat. Some artists engaged in eco art-related

projects as early as the 1960s, though the term would not be invented until decades later.

However, the majority of artists Beardsley examines are land artists working with parts of nature

as medium but are rarely strategically implementing a plan of ecological improvement. This is

the domain of eco art, the next wave of environmentally-concerned art.

1 Katie Dupere, “How one activist combines impactful art and advocacy to save the Earth,” 22 April 2016, Mashable

website: https://mashable.com/2016/04/22/jenny-kendler-ndrc-artist/.

https://mashable.com/2016/04/22/jenny-kendler-ndrc-artist/

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The study of eco art practice and its history is an emerging focus in art historical studies.

In Mark A. Cheetham’s recently published book Landscape into Eco: Art Articulations of Nature

Since the ‘60s (2018), the author explains the transition from land art to eco art by pinpointing

circa 1970 as the start of “expressly ecological artworks,” referring to projects by Agnes Denes,

Helen Mayer Harrison, and Newton Harrison that transformed and manufactured ecosystems.2 In

these conceptual projects, artists did not just use nature as sculpture but created entirely new

environments. One of these early eco artists, Newton Harrison, who with his partner Helen

Mayer Harrison recreated living ecosystems in museum settings, concisely explained during an

interview the difference between movements: “‘They used earth as material; we feel that our

works were among the first to deal with ecology in the full sense of the term.’”3

In 2012, To Life! Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet by Linda Weintraub became

part of the growing body of literature on this emerging art historical field, serving as the first

wide-ranging compendium on eco art. Eco art is a newer and often overlooked genre of the

contemporary art world and To Life! clearly aims to elevate its status in its preface: “Eco art

stands out from the din of environmental warnings, policies, and campaigns because its content

is enriched by artistic imagination and its strategies are emboldened by artistic license…By

bolstering eco art’s status as the current era’s definitive artistic movement, [eco artists] are

establishing an entirely new set of standards of measuring an artistic masterwork.”4 Weintraub’s

compilation of contemporary eco-artists attempts to thoroughly define and explore eco-art in

current practice-an admirable pursuit in a genre of art that, because of its staggering diversity of

2 Mark A. Cheetham, Landscape into Eco Art Articulations of Nature Since the ‘60s, The Pennsylvania State

University Press: University Park, Penn. (2018), 31. 3 Ibid. 4 Linda Weintraub. To Life! Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet. University of California Press: Berkeley and

Los Angeles (2012), xiii.

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categories such as materials, styles, disciplines, settings and concepts, does not lend itself easily

to parameters and definitions. In its early pages, the book offers both schematics and indexes of

art genres, art strategies, eco issues, and eco approaches that clearly tries to establish a basis in

which to approach study of the field, but makes it somewhat overwhelming to conceptualize the

field as a whole. It then offers generalizations of eco-art themes, aesthetics, and materials

followed by the main bulk of the book: the eco art pioneers. This ambitious book seems to be

rare in its attempt to establish, define, and conceptualize the field of eco art as a legitimate art

historical field, and seeks to outline its unique parameters through both concepts specific to the

genre and by canonizing a selection of eco-artists to further define the practice. This effort

reinforces the scholarly desire to establish and explore eco art as a burgeoning field, an art form

that is at times difficult to clearly define other than by identifying the common thread of

environmental activism involved.

The anthology Art, Theory and Practice in the Anthropocene, edited by Julie Reiss and

published much more recently in 2019, is dedicated to tackling themes in eco-art.

“Anthropocene” refers to our current geologic age that denotes a period in which humans have

had the most significant impact on our climate and environment. This thematically-focused

volume is most pertinent to this discourse in its fifth chapter, titled “Ecological art-origins,

reality, becoming,” where author Paul Ardenne broadly examines the artistic strategies utilized

globally by eco artists to cope with environmental change.5 Though some offer practical,

environmentally-beneficial acts, these strategies are mostly removed from direct audience

participation. The insistence in this text and others that eco art is a legitimate and worthwhile art

historical genre reinforce the newness of this field and its struggle to find its place within the art

5 Ed. Julie Reiss, Art, Theory and Practice in the Anthropocene, Vernon Press (2019), 51.

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historical narrative. This indicates that there are not yet long-established definitions in the art

historical lexicon for eco art.

Taking into consideration the recent scholastic desire to legitimize the young field brings

us back to the significance of Jenny Kendler and her innovations in eco art. Although born in

1980 in New York, the artist-activist currently resides in Chicago. She attended The Maryland

Institute College of Art (2002) and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2006) for her

BFA and MFA, respectively. Self-described as “an interdisciplinary artist, environmental

activist, naturalist & wild forager,” she truly embeds the same care for nature that drives her

practice in her lifestyle. Even her earliest interests and artistic pursuits were nature-oriented. She

grew up in a family of scientists focused on the environment, and spent many childhood hours

exploring the outdoor wonders where her parents raised her in Virginia, as well as in California

during the frequent trips her family took to visit her grandmother in San Luis Obispo. Her

relationship with nature growing up is best summed up in the artist’s own words: “I always

wanted to be outside.”6

Kendler’s devotion to exploring the natural world and our relationship to it only

strengthened with time, and her art school years were spent further exploring themes that would

develop into mainstays of her artistic practice. Notably among these interests are the significance

and intimacy of the human and animal/nature connection. Drawn in 2009-2010, a few years after

finishing her graduate art program, a series of her drawings titled Cohabit depict naked women

with long, untamed hair obscuring their faces, in a number of various positions entwined with

different types of animals. In one, titled Spawning III (Fig. 1), a woman crouches with her back

6 Ryah Cooley, “Jenny Kendler brings the wild to art in her SLOMA exhibit Bewilder I Be Wilder,” May 4, 2016,

New Times Online, San Luis Obispo.

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to us to showcase a long stream of dark hair that serves as a river for salmon swimming upstream

through her tresses. Another, titled, Oh, Give Me a Home (Fig. 2), depicts a woman crouched on

all fours, fingers pointed into the gesture of horns on either side of her head and her dark curtain

of hair falling before her. In place of flesh on her back, she is instead covered by a herd of bison

walking leisurely through a span of flowing grassland. In this series, human bodies merge with

animal ones, creating new ecosystems and relationships in each drawing. She intimately

entwines animal and human bodies, calling into question where human (which she reminds us, is

still animal) and animal features begin and end. She also touches upon questions of habitat,

ownership, belonging, and interaction between species. In a 2016 interview, a few years after

rendering these images, she is quoted as saying, “We can’t fully understand the human

experience without understanding nature.”7 Kendler’s ongoing interest in reconciling the animal

part of being human, and our relationship to the rest of the natural world-which Kendler asserts

we often overlook through human exceptionalism, a belief that humans are unique among other

living beings and should therefore be valued above all else-is a crux of her artistic vision.8

Another major thread woven throughout Kendler’s practice is the enchanting and

sumptuous quality she imbues into her work. She cites contemporary ecological philosopher

David Abrams and in particular his book, The Spell of the Sensuous (1996), as a favorite read,

one that has certainly influenced her practice.9 The book concerns itself with how we may re-

sensitize our animal bodies to the natural world through sensual interaction with it. This notion is

visible in nearly all of her works-from mossy, lichen-scented dishes that transform human voices

7 Ibid. 8 Gregg Henriques, “On Human Exceptionalism: We are unique beings that warrant special moral value,” January 2,

2013, Psychology Today, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/201301/human-

exceptionalism. 9 “Jenny Kendler’s Sensuous Rewilding,” from Inside/Within, December 2015, http://insidewithin.com/jenny-

kendler-2/.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/201301/human-exceptionalismhttps://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/201301/human-exceptionalismhttp://insidewithin.com/jenny-kendler-2/http://insidewithin.com/jenny-kendler-2/

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into birdcall, to opal-white balloons participants are invited to pop into an ethereal burst of

milky-white seeds. Her concern with creating multi-sensorial experiences of nature is another

important hallmark in understanding Kendler’s way of engaging her audience.

Kendler is already a prolific artist despite her still-young career, exhibiting in many

shows locally, nationally, and internationally. Her work has been selected for private, public, and

museum collections, including the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library at Yale University and

the Victoria & Albert Museum. She holds an impressive resume: she has contributed to

anthologies on eco-art, has been invited to lecture at universities and institutions across the

country, has held leading roles on artist boards and participated in environmental initiatives, has

been selected for several prestigious grants and awards, and has held a number of artist

residencies.10 Her position as the first artist-in-resident with the U.S. environmental nonprofit

organization Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which she has held from 2014 to the

present, has been an important catalyst in her career. The partnership provides the NRDC with

someone to promote their environmental concerns and gives Kendler access to the scientists,

research, resources, and funding for impactful public art projects. This has served as a fitting

opportunity for Kendler to further explore the human-animal and nature connection through a

position of activism, while providing her with the opportunity to change the size and form of her

works from gallery-sized drawings, paintings, and sculpture to large-scale, public art projects.

During the first year of her NRDC residency alone, she produced three works I will be

discussing in this study-Milkweed Dispersal Balloons (Fig. 3), Tell it to the Birds (Fig. 4), and A

Place of Light and Wind (For Lost Prairies) (Fig. 5).

10 Jenny Kendler CV, Jenny Kendler Environmental Artist & Activist, Accessed December 8, 2019, https://img-

cache.oppcdn.com/fixed/37/assets/DnvOm_jX9X1s9noL.pdf.

https://img-cache.oppcdn.com/fixed/37/assets/DnvOm_jX9X1s9noL.pdfhttps://img-cache.oppcdn.com/fixed/37/assets/DnvOm_jX9X1s9noL.pdf

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While no focused formal academic scholarship is yet published on Kendler, these three

works as well as many of her others have been discussed in art review articles, exhibition

catalogues, and interviews. In these, she is frequently lauded for the environmental activism

imbued in her public art projects. That her practice is heavily centered on reconnecting, or

rewilding, humans is also typically addressed. She readily admits that she is utilizing reform

tactics in her practice in hopes of inspiring change: “I kind of deploy these strategies of beauty

that are found in nature and use that as an activist tool. It’s operating in a very different way than

I think people traditionally see activism.”11 However, while the significance of her unique art-

activism-nature nexus is often alluded to, little to no commentary or research exists on the

specific ways she uses reform tactics in her practice and how unprecedented her strategy is. In

this discourse, I will analyze three of her most prominent reform tactics that are enforced by her

conviction towards the inherent human and nature connection-ecovention, ritual, and the

deconstruction of cultural canons.

11 Dupere, “How one activist combines impactful art and advocacy to save the Earth,”

https://mashable.com/2016/04/22/jenny-kendler-ndrc-artist/.

https://mashable.com/2016/04/22/jenny-kendler-ndrc-artist/

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Ecovention as Artistic Strategy: An Entry Point into Environmental Activism

In 1999, American art curator Sue Spaid created the term “ecovention”-a marriage of the

words ecology and invention-to define an artist-initiated, inventive strategy devised to help

improve a local ecology.12 Spaid has since curated two exhibits themed around this concept:

Ecovention: Current Art to Transform Ecologies (2002) at the Contemporary Arts Center in

Cincinnati, Ohio, and Ecovention Europe: Art to Transform Ecologies (1957-2017) (2017) at De

Domijnen in Sittard, Netherlands. Although this term can refer to large-scale projects that

revitalize entire landscapes, such as Agnes Denes’s Wheatfield-A Confrontation (1982) (Fig. 6),

it can also be applied to projects that work on a smaller scale. As the inventor of the term,

Spaid’s exhibits and exhibition catalogues provide the primary context for the word. I have not

yet come across this term in other scholarship focused on eco art. However, I would like to

utilize it in this analysis, as it is a very useful, succinct term that defines an important tactic in

eco art-and, more specifically, a defining tactic of Jenny Kendler’s practice.

Kendler has already undertaken many ecoventions in her young but prolific artistic

career. Although not every of her artworks directly impacts the environment, several of them are

designed to do so; this is one of the most fundamental strategies she utilizes to mobilize her

audience towards environmental conservation. Among the strongest examples of this type of

initiative is Kendler’s project Milkweed Dispersal Balloons (Fig. 3). It was undertaken as her

first project during her artist-in-residency with the NRDC, and initially performed in St. Louis,

Missouri in 2014 – though it has since made its way through several cities and museums. This

project is particularly noteworthy for its ingenuity and engaging design oriented towards

12 Sue Spaid, Ecovention: Current Art to Transform Ecologies, (The Contemporary Arts Center: Cincinatti, 2002), 1.

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audience participation. For this ongoing project, Kendler uses an old-fashioned ice cream cart to

distribute written materials on the current plight of the monarch butterfly population-of which

90% has declined in part due to a chemical in weed killers (glyphosate) that kills Milkweed, a

life-sustaining plant to these butterflies.13 Tied to her cart are balloons made of biodegradable

latex, filled with clouds of Milkweed seeds intended to be released by participants to become the

Milkweed plant-the only plant on which monarch caterpillars can feed.14

When analyzing images from moments of the project, the social aesthetic of this work

may be better evaluated through photographs of Kendler when she is engaging with participants,

as that is the heart of this piece-when her intent for the crucial first step of this project is fully-

realized. Here, she engages the outsider with information and a process to perform: essential

ingredients for ecovention. After conversing with the artist, participants receive the leaflet and

are handed a milky balloon (Fig. 3), as well as buttons decorated with magnified-images of the

monarch butterfly wings. The button backs feature sharp pins that can be used to pop the

balloons and release the seeds onto the land.

Though the ecovention ends with the participant’s act, the catalyst for the process begins

with the one-on-one interaction between artist and participant. In one artist talk, Kendler

emphasized her value of these one-on-one encounters with community members such as the one

she creates in Milkweed.15 She mentions her interaction with an older woman who recalled that,

during her childhood, she saw the masses of beautiful monarchs everywhere. This specific

13 “Milkweed Dispersal Balloons,” Jenny Kendler Environmental Artist & Activist, Accessed December 8, 2019,

https://jennykendler.com/section/399993-Milkweed-Dispersal-Balloons.html. 14 Ibid. 15 Jenny Kendler, COD Visiting Artist Series, Cleve Carney Museum of Art, Glen Ellyn, Illinois, September 20,

2017.

https://jennykendler.com/section/399993-Milkweed-Dispersal-Balloons.html

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ecological problem was personal for this woman, and she lamented the noticeable decline.16 The

photograph of the artist-participant interaction (Fig. 7) particularly captures the social

engagement, and consequently the social aesthetic, that this piece elicits. Both participant and

artist gain valuable connections to each other and the local ecology by sharing knowledge and

experience while engaging in this piece. Although Kendler says she does not define herself as a

performance artist, she nevertheless puts her audience into the role of performing activist in this

piece.17

Kendler is not the first to enact eco-related performance in their practice; Spaid credits

Agnes Denes as the first to engage with the concept.18 In 1982, Denes’s Wheatfield -

Confrontation (Fig. 6) transformed the two-acre Battery Park Landfill in the middle of

Manhattan into a flourishing wheat field over the course of three months. The monetary value of

wheat yielded by the field was a tiny speck in the midst of the $4.5 billion valuation of the land

itself, situated between the Statue of Liberty and the Twin Towers – a symbolic critique of

capitalist society.19 The project replenished the land and cultivated another function for it as a

food-provider instead of its former use as a repository of human waste. While she worked

alongside volunteers in the effort that culminated in a successful wheat harvest, the most popular

photograph from the project features her alone in the golden field, which emphasizes the agency

of the artist alone. Later that decade from 1987-1990, seeds from the harvested Wheatfield would

make their way through several cities around the world for the exhibit The International Art

16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Spaid, 120. 19 Ibid., 121.

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Show for the End of World Hunger in which visitors were invited to plant the seeds.20 Unlike

Kendler’s Milkweed, only in this later form of the project were audience members engaged.

Kendler seems to have taken cues from Denes’s project. As an eco-art predecessor, there

are noticeable parallels between Wheatfield and Milkweed: ecovention and opportunities for

participation. However, in these very aspects the two projects differ also. The ecovention Denes

undertook is layered with symbolism and social critique, but it is not necessarily, at least

explicitly, addressing a specific ecological problem. Denes instead focuses on a social one

(although it does revitalize the land-but for primarily human benefit, and not, it seems, for the

sake of nature itself). In contrast, Kendler’s Milkweed and many of her other ecoventions address

a specific ecological issue, how the natural world suffers from it and then provides a practical

entryway for participants to engage in. As for participation-although there were a small number

of volunteers that helped with Denes’s project, this aspect is not central to the message or

impetus to the original project.21 The project required the help of others to complete, but the

volunteers themselves were not integral to the final aesthetic of the project. They were more a

workforce to implement the project rather than intended participants. The later convention to

spread the seeds to museum-goers seems to have been an afterthought to fit a traveling exhibit,

not a crucial part of its original framework.

In Kendler’s Milkweed, participation is the lifeblood of the project-its existence depends

on the engagement between artist and participant. Denes was undoubtedly a pioneer for eco-art

and performance pieces-and someone Kendler would have surely been familiar with from the

20 Phoebe Hoban, “Agnes Denes’ Prophetic Wheatfield Remains as Relevant as Ever,” Artsy.net, November 6,

2019, https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/agnes-denes-prophetic-wheatfield-remains-as-relevant-as-ever. 21 Karrie Jacobs, “The Woman Who Harvested a Wheatfield Off Wallstreet,” New York Times, June 14, 2018,

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/t-magazine/agnes-denes-art.html.

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/agnes-denes-prophetic-wheatfield-remains-as-relevant-as-everhttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/t-magazine/agnes-denes-art.html

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course of her art education, especially with her focus on ecology-using ecovention in a clever

way to send a powerful message to audiences. However, earlier eco-projects such as these, while

important, were often not as far-reaching or impactful as perhaps they could have been. While

Kendler draws from this important ecovention precedent, she cleverly adapts the concept in order

to engage directly with an ecological problem and participants through performance.

Kendler also employs sensorial and aesthetic pleasure to engage participants. The

material and sensory aesthetics of each component in the project go hand-in-hand with the

actions involved in the performance-the milky-white balloons, filled with the floating, featherlike

milkweed, are to be popped, upon which a firework-like burst of seed will appear in the air

(Fig.8). Participants, after enacting their art-activism onto their chosen site, are left not only with

the accomplishment of their act but are also gifted with the beauty of the balloon popping itself-

the opportunity to bear witness to an intimate, whimsical moment alone or with others. This is a

very special, if very ephemeral, experience the project offers. In addition, participants may keep

the more enduring handout and pin to commemorate the event, that may serve as reminders to

continue engaging in ecoventions of their own.

While other environmentally-engaged projects from the last decade such as Eve Mosher’s

HighWaterLine (2007) (Fig. 9) feature an interactive element, the artist does not invite audience

engagement in the same immediate and visceral way that Kendler does. In the piece, Mosher

walked around New York City with a chalk machine to demarcate where the future water line

would exist on city streets due to climate change. During the course of Mosher’s performance,

she would often stop with passers-by to engage in conversation around what she was doing. In

this sense, it was interactive. However, in its initial manifestation, the artist was the agent of

action, the doer performing change onto the streets by drawing white lines. Although it has now

15

been replicated in many cities by many people across the U.S., and is undoubtedly a helpful

visualization tool that may inspire more people to engage in environmental activism, it still does

not offer participants a practical solution or activity to perform that will impact the environment.

In direct contrast, Milkweed is an immediate entryway into activism with a real-world affect.

However, in the same vein as HighWaterLine, the inventiveness of the Milkweed project

also lies in how Kendler makes this work accessible to the public. No admission fees are

required when she is out on the streets with the food cart. She treks around college campuses and

down city streets to seek out participants rather than them finding her. Participants may present

themselves to designated routes if the event is announced, or, by chance, if they happen to be

nearby when she passes-increasing accessibility through her outside route, lack of fees, and

potential exposure to people not necessarily seeking out art, nature, or environmental activism.

By doing this, she broadens her audience by engaging people that she may not reach in museum

or gallery settings. Interacting with the largest possible audience is a practical goal for any eco

artist, as it increases the chances of creating a wider awareness and environmental impact. Since

2014, Kendler herself has enacted this project more than once in different cities and museums-

but, perhaps more importantly-she, like Mosher, has made this work an open-source project that

may be replicated for non-commercial use by anyone who asks her. This is another useful tactic

related to ecovention Kendler employs here-by open-sourcing this project, Kendler creates

opportunity for a larger impact. People who do not meet her while she performs this piece in

various cities across the U.S. may still engage with the project and the essence of its mission,

furthermore, not only as participants, but as the primary agents and facilitators of the

environmental activism Kendler offers through this project.

16

In another participatory ecovention, Herd Not Seen (Fig. 10), Kendler assembled a herd

of sculptural bison on the ground of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago in 2016

as a memorial to the species that once boasted a population of 50 million but, after enduring the

massacres from European-American colonizers nineteenth century, today has only around 500

left.22 While the physical exhibit was still intact, the placement of the tiny herd on the expanse of

the museum floor made the forms seem delicate, vulnerable-almost unbearably small-amongst

the wide, open plane of ground. These tiny bison, presumably made using small sculpted molds

compacted with the soil and other biomaterial, are skillfully created, exhibiting small, sensitively

rendered anatomy-the indication of minute details such as ribs and the impression of miniature

eyes, horns, fur tufts, and hooves are all present on each separate bison. At least two separate

types of molds were used, one resulting in freestanding sculptures and one incorporating a small

platform for the bison to stand on. This sensitivity to individualizing the different bison within

the herd is another signature of Kendler’s deep-looking into and respect for diversity in the

natural world that defines her approach.

These tiny bison sculptures are made from the same soil and seeds of the prairies the

buffalo once roamed in, and at the end of the exhibit, visitors and guards of the museum were

asked to “adopt” these small bison, to take them home and plant them in places around their

community.23 Participants were asked to send documentation of the bison biodegrading back to

the artist, again, creating a collaborative relationship between participant and artist through

ecovention (Fig. 11-12).

22 “Seen Not Herd,” Jenny Kendler Environmental Artist & Activist, Accessed December 8, 2019,

https://jennykendler.com/section/436305-Herd-Not-Seen.html. 23 Ibid.

https://jennykendler.com/section/436305-Herd-Not-Seen.html

17

In tandem with Herd Not Seen (Fig. 10), Kendler held a workshop entitled People’s

Porphyry (Fig. 13) at the MCA Chicago. In the class, participants were provided old Sotheby’s

catalogues and Wall Street Journals, organic beet dye, “and prairie flower seeds hyper-local to

the area where Chicago was built.” They were prompted to tear apart the old papers and combine

them with the dye and the seeds then form them into small spheres that could be tossed outdoors

to create new plants. These seed bombs both symbolically and literally transformed remnants of

our “current imperialist/capitalist system” into “seeds of change.”24 In Kendler’s own words, her

intention was that museum-goers were “remaking this symbol of wealth and empire into one of

public beauty and ecological renewal.”25

Kendler’s use of seed dispersal as takeaways for projects such as this one takes its

precedent from eco artist Kathryn Miller’s seed bombing projects throughout Santa Barbara, the

first to employ this in public art in the 1990s (Fig. 14). In these projects, Miller distributed

packets of seed “bombs,” packed with everything needed to grow plants local to the ecology.

Kendler has clearly taken notes from inventive strategies such as Miller’s, and further imbues

such approaches with her own symbolic meaning. People’s Porphyry is an exploration of the

human constructs of wealth and power and at the same time is a defiant act with the potential to

positively affect the ecosystem.

Another work in the same vein as Milkweed, Herd Not Seen, and People’s Porphyry is A

Place of Light & Wind (For Lost Prairies) (2014) (Fig. 4), also created during her NRDC artist-

in-residency, she photo-collaged thousands of photographs of the native pollinators of the area in

Chicago; the mural of weather-proof vinyl was displayed outside the speakeasy The Violet Hour

24 “People’s Porphyry,” Jenny Kendler Environmental Artist & Activist, Accessed December 8, 2019,

https://jennykendler.com/section/436304-People-s-Porphyry.html. 25 Ibid.

https://jennykendler.com/section/436304-People-s-Porphyry.html

18

in Chicago. The eye-popping colors burst from the laser-printed fabric in hopes of drawing

attention to the fact that 99% of the prairie that once inspired Illinois’ moniker as the “Prairie

State” has been diminished.26 Certain images of these pollinators were embedded with QR codes,

which passers-by could scan with their phones. They would then be given the opportunity

through the QR code platform to sign up for prairie seeds to be delivered to their house. In this

project, she once again offers a simple, direct, easily accessible entry point of activism and

conservation through interaction and ecovention with her artwork. The combination of strategies

such as symbolism, engagement, and takeaways, all interwoven with ecovention, is a powerful

element of Kendler’s work.

Kendler creates entryways into environmental conservation through ecoventions in her

projects-a powerful tactic to engage her audience. Although Kendler also participates in

ecovention in solo performance pieces, her offering ecovention to her audience is an important

part of her activist practice. By engaging people on a personal level and providing them with

small-scale, intimate ecoventions of her own design to engage with, the visuality of her work

takes on an additional purpose-that of the participant interacting in a meaningful way with the

natural world. The viewer not only takes on agency, but becomes a conduit for the work to be

fully-realized, an essential part of the medium and the work itself. This creates a personal

connection with nature and an avenue for her audience to engage in tangible, immediate

ecovention, and thereby, environmental activism.

26 “A Place of Light and Wind,” Jenny Kendler Environmental Artist & Activist, Accessed December 8, 2019,

https://jennykendler.com/section/405972-A-Place-of-Light-Wind-For-Lost-Prairies.html.

https://jennykendler.com/section/405972-A-Place-of-Light-Wind-For-Lost-Prairies.html

19

Ritualizing Interaction with Nature

Alongside her frequent use of ecovention, Kendler also creates ritualistic experiences in

her projects that allow participants to engage with nature in a space removed from the everyday.

She offers spaces to contemplate the “other” of nature through various methods of

transformation. This allows the potential for a “rewilding” of her participants to occur through

their special encounter with aspects of the natural world. While in the biological sciences,

rewilding refers to regenerating a specific ecosystem, in eco art it is an emerging term that refers

to a reintegration of humans with their “wildness” and their innate place within the natural world.

The term is frequently used by Kendler when she describes the more ritualized aspects of her

projects. In our disconnected, technology-driven world, Kendler offers a space to engage in

something elevated and separate from the monotony and familiarity of everyday experience

through the opportunity of rewilding through ritual.

Kendler achieves rewilding in part by aligning her practice with the Deep Ecology

philosophy that encourages humans to respect nature for its inherent worth as a living system

over its usefulness to us. Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss coined this term in 1972, and

alongside American environmentalist George Sessions, wrote a set of principals for it in 1984.27

The philosophy calls for a radical reevaluation of humans’ perception of themselves as separate

from nature by emphasizing humans as inherently a part of the natural world and argues that

humans should engage in environmental safeguarding in order to protect the innate value of

living beings and the natural world versus the way nature may benefit us. This philosophy has

met criticism for its spiritual or metaphysical undertones and its placement of human value as

27 Peter Madsen, “Deep Ecology Environmental Philosophy, Encyclopaædia Brittanica, Accessed February 24,

2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/deep-ecology.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/deep-ecology

20

equal to the rest of nature versus more anthropocentric worldviews.28 For these reasons, this

philosophy has not always been popular in ecological conservation discourse.29

Through the structure of her participatory pieces, Kendler taps into the Deep Ecology

philosophy by offering a ritual to follow that is meant to move participants from their everyday

lives into a transcendent realm of the “other” in nature, where participants may reacquaint

themselves with nature and their own wild nature in an intentional way. By allowing meaningful

encounters with the natural world through her projects, the spark of connection she initiates

between audience and nature has the potential to move beyond the context of her works and into

the everyday lives of participants and their connection with and regard to the natural world.

Ritual is not often defined in the context of participatory art. The only pertinent definition

I have encountered is that of Heinrich Falk in his book, Performing Beauty in Participatory Art

and Culture:

Although participatory art must be observed as an outcome of technologically advanced

societies, its demand for participation and interaction seems to bring this art form again

closer to the performative characteristics of rituals. First, interactive art is strongly

structured by either a computational system of algorithmic procedures…or a preset

framework of rules of participation. Second, like rituals, interactive art must be

instantiated by the participants’ (inter-)actions.30

While this definition touches upon the interconnectedness between participation and ritual, it

alone is not sufficient for this discussion. For the purposes of this discourse, I will be using

“ritual” to mean a special experience curated by the artist for participants to engage in, one that

has a set of prescribed actions for the audience to follow in hopes of offering an unusual and

28 Alan Drengson, “Some Thought on the Deep Ecology Movement,” Foundation for Deep Ecology, Accessed

February 24, 2020, http://www.deepecology.org/deepecology.htm. 29 Ibid. 30 Heinrich Falk, Performing Beauty in Participatory Art and Culture, (Routledge: New York and Oxen: 2014), 85.

http://www.deepecology.org/deepecology.htm

21

moving encounter, with the intent that through their elevated experience, a reconnection, in this

case, to the natural world, may occur.

In the previous section, many of the ecovention projects discussed featured a ritualistic

element, even if the most prominent function was to implement a beneficial act upon an

environment. In Milkweed, participants were asked to pop the special milkweed balloons in their

neighborhoods. Participants would not only be met with the beautiful sight of milkweed popping

before them, but the knowledge that they were making a positive impact on the environment on a

personal level. In Herd Not Seen, participants would again take home a piece of the artwork to

their own backyards that would biodegrade into new plant life, and the ritual of taking and

planting the bison in natural areas, as well as observing and documenting the bison’s

transformation, is a clever and important part of the work-essentially a ritual that may evoke a

sense of empathy and connection for participants by way of observation and perhaps

contemplation of the bison’s plight. In the People’s Porphyry workshop, participants are actually

making the seed bombs in a highly symbolic ritual, as well as planting them afterwards in a

secondary ritual. In A Place of Light and Wind, participants searched the mural for QR codes,

snapped them with their phone to sign up to receive seed packets in the mail, and then, again,

had the opportunity to engage in a ritual of seed-planting in the intimate venue of their own daily

experiences. Each work involves aspects of an enticing ritual that offers a compelling entry point

into environmental activism.

Perhaps the first precursor to Kendler’s use of ritual in ecologically-engaged art is Allan

Kaprow’s EASY from 1972 (Fig. 15). In the piece, he asks participants to select a stone from a

riverbed, wet it, carry it and walk down the side of the river until the stone is dry, and to then

repeat the process. Although quite simplistic, the performance was meant to re-orient participants

22

with the sensations and contemplation of the natural world through ritual. Kaprow is cited as

among the first to create an ecologically-engaged performance piece with participants where they

experienced visceral interaction with nature elements.31 This melding of nature, participation,

and ritual is a tactic Kendler has clearly adopted and evolved in her own practice.

Kendler’s interactive project Bewilder (Fig. 16) utilizes ritual, and was another work

conceived during her artistic residence with NRDC. It debuted at the San Luis Obispo Museum

of Art in Spring 2016. It has since made several appearances at other museums, mostly in

California. The material elements of the project consist of a printed backdrop and fabric

wrapping covered in a barrage of photo-collaged camouflage eyespots from the wings of moths

and butterflies. Participants are invited to have their faces painted with the same eyespots and are

then directed to pose in front of the colorful wall, wrapped in the matching cloth fabric. After

they are photographed, if the images are posted to social media, the torrent of bulls-eyes on the

printed surfaces confuse facial recognition software used on social media platforms, obscuring

the participant’s face and creating an intentional camouflage to the digital world. This

phenomenon simulates the same function that eyespots serve for butterflies and moths, creating a

direct parallel experience between participant and flying creature.32

In addition to the symbolic value, by isolating, magnifying and multiplying a variety of

moth and butterfly eyespots into overwhelming motifs on printed surfaces, an often-overlooked

part of the butterfly and moth aesthetic in popular culture is brought to the forefront as powerful

and dominating subject-matter. The circular forms of variously-sized eyespots, brought to life by

blacks, yellows, oranges, reds, and blues, create a powerful contrast to the stereotypical pinks,

31 Weintraub, 90. 32 “Bewilder (Deimatic Eyespot Camouflage),” Jenny Kendler Environmental Artist & Activist, Accessed December

8, 2019, https://jennykendler.com/section/436164-Bewilder-Deimatic-Eyespot-Camouflage.html.

https://jennykendler.com/section/436164-Bewilder-Deimatic-Eyespot-Camouflage.html

23

purples, and browns often associated with butterflies and moths in popular culture and consumer

imagery.33 The sea of eyespot bubbles, while taken from actual photos, are presented removed

from their original context in a manufactured and somewhat overwhelming composition. Here,

Kendler, by use of repetition and by isolating, magnifying, and layering the surfaces with these

motifs in such a way, has created an exaggerated impression of striking natural wonder. The

unusual, otherworldly effect lends itself very well to the title, Bewilder. Moreover, in Kendler’s

own description of her work, Bewilder does refer to an encounter and a succumbing to the

sublime elements of nature. A description of this work from her online portfolio reveals that the

title, “extends Rumi’s concept to that of being subsumed by the beauty of the natural world-a

horror vacui of dazzling complexity. The 13th century mystic and poet hints at how we might

thus approach nature in a new way, saying: ‘Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.’”34 As

we have seen, Kendler regularly enjoys finding ways to captivate her audience through sensory

stimuli. In this project, the bewilderment, or overwhelming of natural beauty meant to be evoked

through ritual, is artfully employed to create a meaningful impression of natural wonder on the

participants and viewers. The senses are played upon in hopes of striking a connection between

humans and their sense of place in the natural world, encouraging them to bewilder.

As a participatory, ritualistic art project, the most crucial element of the composition, in

this instance, is certainly the human element. As photographs are the only remnant of the project

fully-realized, they are useful for conducting a brief formal analysis of the composition as a

whole (Fig. 16). Stepping into the prefabricated elements of Kendler’s Bewilder, their face

adorned with paint, visitors become the striking focal point of the piece, posed centrally in the

33 Ibid. 34 Ibid.

24

frame, their gazes direct and powerful or downcast and pious. At the same time, the rest of their

body is almost fully obscured in the camouflage-save for their face and occasionally the hands-

partially disappearing into the piece as well. Both in an immediate, visual sense, and

concurrently in an online sense, participants are partly obscured from us as viewers, creating a

defense mechanism for the predatory perils of having an online presence in the current age with

the same elements from moths and butterflies that they are adorned in.35 This creates a channel in

which human participants may engage in connection, and empathy, with these flying creatures,

through parallel.

If photographs of the piece show us the moment that all elements unite and the

symbolism of the project is complete, then the ritual act of engaging with the piece itself is

another dimension of the project that should be discussed. In Bewilder, participants not only

become a part of the composition, but, as previously stated, are situated as the focal point of the

piece. The preparation to create this moment involves the ritual undertaken to prepare for the

picture. During this ritual, many parallels to a theatrical play or a ritual emerge-participants

become performers, embodying a space of otherness as they partake in the piece. In the same

vein as a ritualistic performance, participants are instructed to clothe themselves in a particular

dress and their faces are painted. They experience the special cloth being wrapped around their

body and neck, their head, sometimes even partially obscuring their face. The cloth utilized in

this piece is often wrapped in such a way that resembles a robe or veil, drawing a noticeable

parallel to dress associated with devout religious figures, such as robes, habits, and veils. Their

bodies are swathed in symbolic fabric adorned with butterfly and moth eyes and their faces are

painted with striking, wild imagery from nature-drawing associations to ancient, earth-based

35 Ibid.

25

rituals. These ritualized interactions prepare participants to inhabit a space of otherness, not only

by the imagery they are shrouded in, but also through the act of entering the ritual and

transforming themselves in a ceremonial way outside of their daily routine.

Specialized clothing and body painting have long been part of religious and spiritual

rituals. From veils and robes used to denote religious standing to body painting for ceremonies

used in earth-based practices, the act of adorning the body with specific ornamentation has deep

roots in human cultures across the globe. By “dressing up,” Kendler is tapping into powerful

ritualized acts to engage participants in rewilding through sensorial experience and imagination.

Further, by inviting her audience to re-wild themselves, Kendler strives to re-sensitize viewers

with not just their connection to, but their identity as, part of the natural world. This ritualized

interaction with nature, or in this case, symbols of nature, of inhabiting a mysterious otherness

that is nonetheless a part of the same natural world we derive from, Kendler strives to remind

participants that we are still very much connected to the “otherness” of the natural world-another

fundamental theme in Kendler’s artistic practice.

There are precedents for Kendler’s approach in Bewilder. In 2007, a pair of eco-artists

who call themselves Red Earth, Caitlin Easterby and Simon Pascoe, initiated their project

Enclosure (Fig. 17).36 Whereas Kendler’s project places participant as agent and focal point of

Bewilder, Red Earth place this emphasis on a single performer to create a symbolic ritualistic

presentation. The work commenced on the sunset of the autumn equinox. In it, a man, with his

exposed body and long hair caked with mud, walked through the landscape that housed earth art

created by humans from the Neolithic period. On his ritualistic journey-meant to evoke the

36 Weintraub, 253.

26

artists’ imagined experience of the Neolithic people-he walked across, over, and below the hills

on the ancient site, through the throngs of audience members, among participants who played

music and carried flags. Incorporated into the ritual were primal elements such as fire, earth, and

music. As Pascoe recounts, “This was an experience. Hard, cold, powerful, unforgettable. [the

audience] were allowed to enter a liminal world, scraping away what they always see so they

could see something else, something other. Many people have never been there before.’”37

Easterby and Pascoe strove to create a visceral ritual that reacquainted participants with the

sacredness of the earth and its place as central to human experience, and furthermore, existence.

As Weintraub explains in To Life! in her chapter on Red Earth:

The artists’ research included controversial studies indicating that the capacity for

religious experience is hardwired into the neurology of the human brain. This

means that experiencing the divine is integral to being human. According to this

theory, this inherent spirituality receded as the components of civilization that

demanded logical accountings develop, but still dominated the lives of the

premodern humans who constructed the site for Enclosure.38

Their research also centered around the Deep Ecology worldview.39 This desire to re-sensitize

viewers to their inherent connection to the natural world through a religious or spiritual ritual

drove Enclosure. While it provided a ritualistic spectacle for participants to revel in, the main

action was still enacted by the central performer-the man moving through the landscape and

crowds.

In contrast, the power of Kendler’s Bewilder when compared to other ritualistic,

participatory eco-artworks such as Enclosure lies in the role in which Kendler positions her

audience. Dressed for the part, posed in front of stunning nature scenery, and positioned centrally

37 Ibid., 257. 38 Ibid., 256. 39 Ibid., 256.

27

for the resulting photograph, the participant inhabits the space of otherness or the unfamiliar in a

similar ritualistic vein that the artist-performer acts out in Enclosure. It is true that there was a

level of audience participation in Enclosure, but it was not the focal point. By Kendler providing

this entry point into the center of ritualistic experience in Bewilder, she departs from other

ritualistic performance pieces centered on nature in a crucial way, placing more agency and

direct experience with the participant.

Given the pleasing sensorial experiences offered in Bewilder, it seems reasonable to

conclude that participants experienced at least some enjoyment or fun from the ritualistic dress-

up and face-painting involved in the project, as well as the act of inhabiting an unusual space,

obscured and posing in the eyespot camouflage for a camera. I want to underscore how powerful

her use of ritual is in her practice, particularly through Bewilder. In Heinrich Falk’s book,

Performing Beauty in Participatory Art and Culture, he explores different ways that interactive

artwork can evoke experiences of beauty through participation. Falk discusses the notion of

embellishment as it relates to ritual in performance art through a literary review on the subject,

and notes: “in Dissanayake’s account, embellishment means a transformation of something into a

ritual object. The embellished object is not a knick-knack or kitsch; instead, it is an object that is

able to open a whole world of meaning attributions that concern not only the individual but the

entire community.”40 This relates to the symbolism of the elements Kendler uses in Bewilder. By

providing ornate and beautiful, enchanting embellished objects for participants to inhabit and

transform themselves through ritual into the “other” in nature, Kendler provides powerful

attributes of a ritual that create a platform for deep, meaningful engagement with these symbols

of nature. This notion of “enchantment” that Kendler uses regularly to engage participants in her

40 Falk, 89.

28

practice alongside ritual, is an interesting method of engagement, or reform strategy, emerging in

the current age of eco-art.41 By creating an atmosphere of delightful sensations, eco artists such

as Kendler remind audiences of all of the natural wonder that surrounds us removed from

“consumption and possession” so often tied to our notion of the natural world.42

Rewilding audiences is a powerful approach that Kendler uses to engage viewers. In

Bewilder, Kendler connects participants to the natural world through a shared experience of

being camouflaged from predators. Kendler’s strategy of activating empathy in this piece can be

experienced in a metaphorical sense through the participant, and a more visual sense for those

viewing the photographs. As viewers of the final work, we are confronted with beautiful

photograph that melds imagery of human and nature-and bear witness to the aspects of

connection, ritual, and enchantment that Kendler offers through rewilding in this project.

Another of Kendler’s projects that offers an opportunity to partake in ritual is Tell it to

the Birds (Fig. 4). The work had two appearances, the first in 2014 in EXPO Chicago and the

second the following year for a special one-day event at Millennium Park, Chicago. The first

incarnation of the project took place indoors and included more elements, while the second one

was held outdoors in the middle of a field. The second was an abbreviated version of the project

with a different outdoor context, so I will instead focus on the first version of the project.

Before entering the tent of Tell it to the Birds (Fig. 18), participants are handed an

informational sheet featuring illustrations and descriptions of 15 endangered bird species. They

are asked to choose their favorite among the selection, and then enter the tent. The tent, a

handmade geodesic dome made from 500 transformed thrift-store t-shirts, had an interior lined

41 Weintraub, 45 42 Ibid., 45.

29

with custom lichen-printed fabric and filled with a microphone, laptop with custom software,

speakers, various audio equipment & cables, LED lights, antique piano stool, scented lichen

sound-collecting dish.43 Participants were then invited to share a “secret” with the natural world,

whatever that may be. Inside the dark, intimate space, they encountered a background of

magnified lichen on the walls of the tent. Centrally placed was the lichen-covered and scented

microphone dish for them to whisper their message into-their voice was then by translated into

the specific song of the bird they chose.

This experience relates to ritual on two levels. First is the intimate act of sharing

personal thoughts aloud in a dark enclosure that is translated into birdsong. This symbolic

context is heightened by the sensory experience Kendler constructs-the magnified

representations of lichen crowding the walls and the forest-scented dish also covered in actual

lichen (Fig. 19). The elements within the tent create an elevated space of liminality in which

participants connect with representations of nature through transformation in a deeply intimate

and profound way. Inside, it is fantastically illuminated with LED spotlights against the green

lichen wallpaper and fragrant dish. The second level of ritual is the transformation of the voice

itself. This phenomenon quite literally changes the speaker’s voice into that of a bird-a direct and

powerful transformation that forms connection, and the potential for empathy, through a striking

experience that blends human and animal in an enthralling encounter.

Another of Kendler’s works, One Hour of Birds, is noteworthy for its way of orienting

participants towards a re-sensitization to nature through ritual by engaging in crowd-sourcing.

Kendler posted instructions for the ongoing project on her website, asking anyone to go outside

43 “Tell it to the Birds,” Jenny Kendler Environmental Artist & Activist, Accessed December 8, 2019,

https://jennykendler.com/artwork/3647847-Tell-it-to-the-Birds.html.

https://jennykendler.com/artwork/3647847-Tell-it-to-the-Birds.html

30

and photograph all the birds they see for a one-hour period. In crowd-sourced projects,

community members are asked to collectively contribute to the larger end-goal of a project.

Websites such as Wikipedia are one of the most readily-recognizable examples of crowd-

sourcing, but this trend has increasingly become a very useful and clever tactic used in the

contemporary art world. Here Kendler employs it not only for others to contribute to her body of

work, but to find themselves in a direct connection with nature through ritualistic close-looking

and contemplation outside. She asks participants to photograph every bird they see over the

course of one hour. Then, she layers the photographs into one image, creating striking

impressions of the subjects in one picture-and in her ideal scenario, she hopes to re-enchant

participants with these winged creatures that are so often overlooked in people’s daily

encounters. Crowdsourcing here seems to be used for an unusual purpose. The project allows

participants to spend a dedicated period of time close-looking and considering an everyday but

often overlooked aspect of birds in our daily lives, creating a space for meditative, ritualistic

contemplation. The pleasing aesthetic of the end-result is but a by-product in Kendler’s ultimate

goal for this project-to create a channel of connection with humans and birds through intimate

ritual.

Kendler has vocalized wanting her audience to experience a type of revelation through

her projects which is facilitated through the rituals she offers. In both project statements for her

works Bewilder (Deimatic Eyespot Camouflage) and Tell it to the Birds on her website (which,

although no author is cited, presumably, Kendler either wrote herself or approved), the sensorial

aspects involved in ritual are mentioned: “Through participation, seductive beauty and an

awakening of the senses, Kendler asks us to allow ourselves to be bewildered by nature-and

move beyond cliché and consumerist engagement, to an engaged ethics of openness and care.” In

31

the statement for Tell it to the Birds, the potential of ritualizing the transformation of human

voice to bird call to create cross-species empathy is discussed: “Though the act of translation, by

its nature, is always inadequate, it also creates an open-ended and unpredictable channel for

connection, suggesting an implicit kinship between speakers. This act recognizes the inviolable

difference of the other, while also attempting the first and necessary step of any boundary

crossing.” In these projects, as in many of her others, Kendler cleverly uses ritual to connect

human to animal.

We see ritual on a more intimate scale in her solo performance pieces where she engages

in her own personal rituals with nature. In these, she can be seen quite literally transforming parts

of her body to meld into nature-as in Offering (2017) (Fig. 19), where she paints her ear red and

fills it with hummingbird nectar to attract the pollinators to seek nourishment in her ear. This

ritualistic use of the artist’s body is also present in Water Lens (2010) (Fig. 20), where she

submerged her face in a pond full of duckweed for as long as she could hold her breath. Upon

surfacing, her face would be covered in the tiny aquatic flowering plants. Kendler also asserts

her agency within an environmental context to improve it in pieces such as Underground Library

(Fig. 21), where she among others creates new environmental factors to improve local ecologies.

Unlike many eco artists, Kendler uses these concepts of ritual and agency to not only enact her

own engagement but to activate her audiences to directly engage with the natural world in

personal, meaningful ways.

The way Kendler connects human and animal through the types of rituals discussed here

is a powerful tactic in her practice. By providing these unusual, specially-curated experiences,

she gives participants a space to engage with nature in a special and meaningful way. These

intimate encounters set the stage for participants to rewild themselves and engage in a deeper

32

appreciation of the natural world, and further, their place within it. Kendler invites participants to

remember their innate wild nature within and the wonder, and value, of other living beings in the

natural world around them. She offers her audience a means to recognize this vital connection

through thoughtfully-curated rituals.

33

Deconstruction of Cultural Canons and their Return to Nature

The deconstruction and repurposing of long-held material symbols of human wealth and

power towards ecological conservation is a prominent tactic in Kendler’s practice. This notion is

strikingly clear in Sculpture→Garden (Fig. 22). For this work, Kendler created twelve sculptures

that she placed along the Chicago lakeshore; the initial ones were installed on the winter solstice

of 2016. Commissioned by the Chicago Parks District, this project consists of a collection of, as

Kendler describes, experimental sculptures, wrought “entirely from soil and biodegradable

binders [such as clay], suffused with plant prairie seeds,” created in the shape of ancient Greek

statuary. The ritual surrounding the installation of the pieces around the park was highly

symbolic; in the same vein that Red Earth’s Enclosure was enacted on the autumn equinox, each

round of installations for Kendler’s sculptures took place on equinoxes or solstices. The

biodegradable human forms would with time transform into self-sustaining gardens of local plant

seeds.

In each of her sculptures, she depicts a version of Venus found throughout the Greco-

Roman canon that has subsequently been rendered in various mediums and times, again and

again, down through the timeline of Western art history.44 She refers to them as Venus I, Venus

II, and so forth with each new incarnation of her sculptures. In Kendler’s own words:

“Sculpture→Garden helps us envision a counterpoint to the aesthetic-historical justification for

Human Exceptionalism-reminding us that we belong to the natural world-and not the other way

around. Even the human body itself is part of the cycles of nature-eventually going back to the

earth to nurture further growth.”45

44 “Sculpture→Garden,” Jenny Kendler Environmental Artist & Activist, Accessed December 8, 2019,

https://jennykendler.com/section/416824-Sculpture-Garden.html. 45 Ibid.

https://jennykendler.com/section/416824-Sculpture-Garden.html

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By rendering her Venus out of the biomaterials of plant and soil instead of the canonical

marble of its Greek forebearer, Kendler is literally transforming the iconic representation of a

nude female body eternalized in stone by an ancient Greek sculptor into an ephemeral, nature-

wrought form. Perhaps this is further a statement on the legacy of Western culture and a

reference to the fall of ancient civilizations-the ancient Greeks created arguably the perfect

human form in marble, yet fell to the Romans, whose Empire in turn came to an end. Now, by

transferring the material of her work to that of natural materials that will soon biodegrade,

Kendler seems to be addressing the hubris of these ancient civilizations-and suggests that,

instead, we begin recognizing our inherent place within the natural world.

Kendler has put forth her own reasoning for the project. After emphasizing the long-

held cultural symbolism of Greek statuary of perfection of the idealized human form, in her

project statement for the piece, she explains:

…in Sculpture→Garden, this idealized [Greco-Roman] form moves quickly towards

multiple ruptures.

First, Venus herself has become more of a ‘real’ body through time, weathering

and losing her limbs, even before the process of biodegradation begins.

Secondly, the works are cast not from the original Greek marble, but from a

home-garden facsimile from a local, family-run statuary company-an accessible

version of the great Classical work-reinterpreted again and again by anonymous

artisans.

Thirdly, in these works, the ‘perfection’ of white marble is countered with the

beautiful perfect/imperfectness of earth, seeds, and wild growing plants,

suggesting that we (artists, humans) perhaps cannot hope to rival the wild,

perfect/imperfect beauty of the natural world.46

Here, Kendler repurposes a powerful symbol in Western art history and recreates it as a nature-

derived facsimile. The sculptures naturally biodegrade to replenish the earth, and leave no trace

46 Ibid.

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of their once-human resemblance behind. This process becomes a powerful symbol for the

ephemeral lifespan of manmade cultural objects. The statues’ gentle deconstruction over the

course of the season mirrors the transitory nature of human life, accomplishments, and objects,

illustrating the universal truth that despite all of our efforts, we and all of our constructions will

one day return to the soil.

This piece is characterized by its ecovention and ritualistic aspects as well, taken upon

directly by the artist herself. The sculptures function first symbolically and then very much

practically to replenish the barren areas along the Chicago lakeshore once it fully deteriorates. It

also utilizes ritualistic aspects of performance art, such as Red Earth’s Enclosure-the artist

traveling to the site-specific location of installation along the lakeshore and installing the

sculptures on equinoxes and solstices is a deeply symbolic and ritualistic act. The sculpture itself

enacts its own natural ritual of biodegradation throughout its lifespan as a sculpture, until it

returns to the earth to take on a new form.

In her People’s Porphyry Workshop (Fig. 24), previously discussed, she, also invited the

deconstruction of material symbols of power in the canon in human history. By using the old

catalogues of long-established art auction powerhouse Sotheby’s and Wall Street Journals, the

most prestigious financial newspaper published in the United States, she invites participants to

destroy and repurpose materials from two imposing institutions of wealth and power.

Additionally, she repurposes these powerful and coveted symbols of power by designing the

participant-made seed-bombs to bear a resemblance to Imperial Porphyry-now no longer present

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in the earth as it was mined out long ago-but a purple stone coveted throughout history.47 She

recycles them to instead benefit the earth.

In a different piece, Underground Library (Fig. 21 and 23), Kendler enacts another

ecovention embedded with ritual and once again, symbolically and literally deconstructs a

powerful symbol of human knowledge-the book. The project, initiated in 2017 on the College of

Du Page campus in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, is ongoing and has since appeared in other art

institutions both in a gallery and outside-as the final, fully-realized step of the project-buried

beneath the earth in various unspecified sites. Kendler began with a collection of “defunct”

books on environmental conservation from the 1960s, 70s, and onward, gathered from thrift

stores, free book bins, and deaccessioned from libraries-significant, she says, because the

information within has been largely ignored by the general public.48 In an act that renews the

latent materials with a new use, she bio-chars the books, creating new forms of blackened, stone-

like iterations of the pieces. The biocharring process sequesters carbon from the atmosphere,

transforming the books into carbon-neutral entities, aiding in a decrease of factors that contribute

to global warming while also acting as beneficial to plants and animals in a number of other

ways.49 Biocharring, though it has been used previously for thousands of years by indigenous

peoples of the Amazon, is gaining popularity as a trend in current ecological practice. Believed

to have a large potential to help combat the negative effects of global warming, it is achieved by

burning wood and other such natural materials. The char left behind sequesters and traps carbon

47 “People’s Porphyry,” Jenny Kendler Environmental Artist & Activist, Accessed December 8, 2019,

https://jennykendler.com/section/436304-People-s-Porphyry.html. 48 “Underground Library,” Jenny Kendler Environmental Artist & Activist, Accessed December 8, 2019,

https://jennykendler.com/section/457238-Underground-Library.html. 49 Ibid.

https://jennykendler.com/section/436304-People-s-Porphyry.htmlhttps://jennykendler.com/section/457238-Underground-Library.html

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from the atmosphere for thousands of years. This creates healthier soil that is carbon stable that

may have positive far-reaching positive effects on the environment.

The practice of biocharring in Underground Library results in a practical use alongside a

deeply symbolic act. As many exhibit reviews observed, the work is inextricably linked with

loss-the loss of the object’s former life as a book and the loss the world faces from

environmental degradation. One reviewer commented on the work as “a haunting elegy to books

that have outlived their function.”50 This notion of loss is routinely found in the projects in which

Kendler deconstructs canons-the loss of knowledge (Underground Library), the loss of form

(Sculpture→Garden), the loss of power (People’s Porphyry). But the notion of loss also makes

way for transformation in her works: transformation into a biofriendly, carbon-sequestering

form; transformation into a self-sustaining garden; transformation into seed clusters. Kendler

deconstructs cultural canons of symbolic power to make a point about the nature of humanity

and all things related-that all things will sooner or later return to the earth. Acknowledging the

folly of unheeded warnings and calls for actions in Underground Library, Kendler once again

transforms symbols of human culture to return to and benefit the earth.

By subjecting canonical symbols of culture, art, and knowledge such as ancient Greek

sculpture, precious gemstones, and books, to the various methods of deconstruction:

biodegrading, repurposing, and burning, Kendler cleverly situates herself and her audience in a

position to confront the fact that all manmade and cultural symbols aggrandizing human

achievement will ultimately return to the earth, as we all will. Further, she uses the cyclical

nature of lifespans to transform materials that make space for environmental activism. This

50 Ibid.

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powerful message underlies much of her practice, and often culminates with the previously

discussed ecovention and ritual. It may, in fact, be her most urgent message to her audience and

the impetus behind most, if not all, of her work.

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Conclusion

The world often criticizes artists for their perceived lack of ability to implement

meaningful change into an immediate, physical reality through their practice. Kendler’s work

dispels this misconception in new and exciting ways, creating accessible opportunities for

tangible change in the realm of environmental activism through her projects. Kendler’s large

portfolio of environmental activist art with very practical applications is groundbreaking in its

scope and scale. It demonstrates that art can be a unique catalyst for meaningful change in the

physical world with the right project design and tactics to engage people in a meaningful

connection with environmental activism.

Ultimately, Kendler’s goal, and a reason eco art exists, is to bring awareness of pressing

ecological and environmental concerns to audiences. While other eco artists strive to bring

awareness and concern for environmental degradation to their audience, few, if any, have created

such direct entry points into environmental activism through their projects. The reform tactics set

forth by Kendler are worth noting by other artists who seek to inspire environmental change.

Kendler strategically designs her works to invite empathy towards nature as well as to educate

and engage viewers by providing information on a specific environmental problem and then

introduces a beneficial action to perform that works towards solving the problem. Rarely, if at

all, are these tactics seen as integrated or to the same extent in an eco artist’s practice, past or

present.

Kendler’s tactics showcase her ability to place people in the neglected nexus between

human and nature. Ecovention, ritual, and the deconstruction of canons of knowledge, art, and

culture demonstrate this and, most importantly, mobilize her audience towards environmental

conservation. First, by creating ecovention projects, she seeks to inspire empathy and to engage

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her audience in these notions-providing them opportunities to become agents of change. Second,

she masterfully invites viewers into her art by ritualizing interaction with nature through

intimate, sensorial experiences for them to rewild themselves-reconnecting with their place in the

natural world. Third, her art practice also reveals the potential for cultural, material symbols of

wealth and power to be repurposed, returned to the earth and benefit nature-the same symbols

that contributed to society’s neglect of nature are reused to nourish the earth. This potent

reminder weaved through her practice certainly reinforces human relationship with the natural

world as forever succumbing to, and forever in, the same cycle.

Although her practice continually voices the current environmental threats we face, the

beauty and opportunity for change Kendler provides is at least as hopeful as it is cautionary.

Kendler herself has ceded that environmental activist art lends itself more easily to the way she

uses it than other types of activist art might because of its inherent beauty.51 The advantage of

beauty and sensuousness inherent in nature has indeed been skillfully employed to entice

participants in Kendler’s practice, and is perhaps often overlooked in the field eco art. In an age

where we face so much environmental loss and feelings of defeat, Kendler offers beauty as well

as hope through her projects. Hope, and just as important, concrete ways to help the planet in

small but significant ways. Her projects are carefully curated works where audiences may rewild

themselves while contributing to safeguarding this precious earth of which we are intimately part

of-encounters that may bring a meaningful and stirring r