Dr. Rich Blundell & Rita Leduc. Collaborating with Nature

Arts & Ecology is a new podcast all about the vital role art and culture play in creating a regenerative future.  Each season we ask artists, authors, and curators one question. This season we ask, how can we tell better stories?

This week's guests are ecologist Dr. Rich Blundell and artist Rita Leduc.

Guest Bios:

Rich

My lived-experience is a deeply reciprocal relationship of continuity with nature. Over a lifetime this has provided access to an inexhaustible source of natural knowledge. 

But when the science I "know" is coupled to first-hand participation in the story of the cosmos, it affords much more than knowledge. Living in a relational mode with nature cultivates a forgotten form of human wisdom that's aligned with nature itself. Not only does this have profound ameliorative effects on one's body and mind, I believe it has become an essential aspect of the future (if there is to be one for humans).

Every human has access to the intelligence of nature through the long and intimate histories of our ancestor's relationships with the habitats of Earth. However, very few of us have the time or opportunity to live in sustained touch with this intelligence. I believe remembering our ancient endowment has the power to heal our injuries, restore justice, detoxify our culture, and put us on a path towards a more realistic, healthy, and hopeful technological future. One way I propose and teach this idea is Earthling Theory.

In addition to founding Oika, I am currently the Scientist-in-Residence at the Maria Mitchell Association on Nantucket Island. In both capacities, I collaborate with ecosystems, artists, and other creatives on cultural transformation projects. You can learn more through my podcast and talks. 

I also manifest Oika philosophy artistically by co-creating wooden surfboards (yes, surfboards) through a deeply participatory design process that I developed. Learn more about this and how it fits into my Oika worldview through the narrative bio below.

"If we are to thrive into the future, we must re-invent what it means to be humane by re-aligning our selves and our culture with nature." 

Rita

Originally from New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, Rita Leduc is an interdisciplinary artist now living in New York’s Hudson Valley. In her creative practice, she absorbs insights from nature-grounded relationships and applies them to novel endeavors on human and societal scales. 

Current examples of these endeavors include multifaceted projects with Oika, a living philosophy that merges creativity, natural science, deep time, cognition, and spirituality. One such project is Extending Ecology, a collaboration with ecologist Dr. Rich Blundell and the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest. Additional ongoing engagements include GROUNDWORK (process-oriented creative direction), and The Place Collective (using art to enrich community research).

Leduc’s work has been shown throughout the greater New York City area and beyond, including exhibitions at the Museum of the White Mountains (NH), Stand4 Gallery (NY), Maria Mitchell Gallery (MA), Mount Saint Mary College (NY), Glasshouse Project (NY), Terrain Biennial (NY), Wells College (NY), Nizhny Tagil Museum of Fine Art (Russia), Governors Island (NYC), RAW (Miami), and Ortega y Gasset Projects (NYC). Past residencies include i-Park Foundation, PLAYA, Tofte Lake, and Vermont Studio Center. She has received support from NYFA, the Jerome Foundation, Atlas Obscura, Oika, Broto, Wells College, and Rutgers University, among others. She has published and presented her work widely including on the cover of Signal House Edition as well as in unpsychology magazine, Artis Natura, and at Art.Earth’s conference, “Sentient Performativities: Thinking Alongside the Human” at Dartington Hall. 

Leduc received her MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, BA from the University of Pennsylvania and is certified in Oika, an applied philosophy of natural, ecological intelligence. She currently teaches at Rutgers University within their new, interdisciplinary program, Creative Expression and the Environment.