Being an Elephant at Art

We recognize that environmental science is but one path, and often a more difficult route, along which and individual can come to appreciate Nature. Research in environmental psychology, ecopsychology, neuropsychology, and now sustainability psychology demonstrates in various ways that individual experience of and in nature raises appreciation of others, human and non-human alike, through our inextricable interconnectedness. 

The visual and performing arts communicate our connection to Nature in abstract, potent, and effective ways. Please visit our News & Events page frequently for articles featuring artists in the wild and devoting their works to human ecology and Asian elephant sustainability. 

April 2015: 

We began working with Gainesville artists, Raymond Rawls and Lorraine Duerden, to develop the Asian Elephant Kinetic Bike Sculpture. This three-wheeled bike will hold a rider and a puppeteer who will work the moving head and ears as we participate in community street festivals and the Global March for Elephants and Rhinos in October 2015. 

February 2015: 

On February 14, as part of this program, we screened a music video by conservationist and world-class musician, Ibson Lal Baruah, from Assam, India at the Cinema Verde Film and Arts festival in Gainesville, FL. “Deepor Beel Paare Paare” is a musical and visual tribute to how we must understand our impact on the environment and the contrast between foraging elephants and fishing boats, with speeding trains in the Deepor Beel wetland that elephants and many other animals call home. The screening created quite a stir in mainstream press in Northeast India. There were at least five newscasts airing a clip of Ron Chandler talking about the video, and many newspaper articles reporting the screening in the USA.  After all the media attention, the Assam Government issued an urgent order to clean up a trash dump adjacent to the wetland. See the related article here.