Artist and Adventurer Nina Elder Comes to Campus

Faulconer Gallery will host artist and adventurer Nina Elder for a week-long residency, which includes a narrative presentation of her work, “Nonlinear Creative Research: From Piles of Rocks to Polar Bears,“ made possible through the gallery's Artists@Grinnell program.

The presentation is scheduled for 4 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 15, in the Faulconer Gallery, Bucksbaum Center for the Arts. The event is free and open to the public.

Elder travels to some of the most environmentally impacted, geographically distant, and economically important places on the globe. She explored Alaska and the Western Arctic, researching how the natural environment is changing through human-centered activities, gathering more stories, images, ideas and correlations than can be translated into traditional two-dimensional art work.

The result is an evolving narrative presentation that art critic and author Lucy Lippard called "Something that embodies a social energy not yet defined as art."

The presentation is equal parts travelogue, artist talk, poetic narrative and a scrutiny of assumptions about the North. It weaves together unlikely associations between piles of rocks, Elder's father's untold military history, climate change, Native cultures, obsolete communication technology and the need for curiosity.