Resilience

Artists and ecologists documenting decades of recovery of the wildlands of Monhegan Island

Bowdoin College Museum of Art in 2025

This multidisciplinary project, curated by Frank Goodyear, director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and Jennifer Pye, director of the Monhegan Museum of Art and History will be at both museums in 2025.

Initiated by Bowdoin Biologist Dr. Barry Logan, the concept is to tell the ecological story of resilience and regeneration on Monhegan island following human decisions and their unintended consequences. A research focus of Dr. Logan examines Arceuthobium pusillum (common name dwarf mistletoe), a parasitic plant that redirects nutrients to infected branches, gradually killing the tree over a period of years.

Dr. Logan noticed that artists, such as Rockwell Kent who began coming to the island each summer, had in fact, painted reliable record of change giving scientists insight about forest and meadow growth for over 120 years. White spruce trees began their life cycle on the island growing in meadows that had been cleared in the last century to pasture sheep for the wool trade.

My contribution to the project is a series of woodcut prints describing the progress of the disease that is devastating the white spruce. Drawn on site, the 14 x 14-inch woodcut prints will tile or link together into a single large work of linear patterns that read as art and science simultaneously. Subtle color differences associate paper they are printed on as a botanical element.

Download Monhegan exhibit prospectus.