All-ages Playground Emerging Artists Exhibit; Interactive Alchemy

[Randy Eady]

Emerging Artists (All-ages Playground) Garden exhibit Miami Beach Botanical Garden.

Exemplified how fun and creativity can result when art and nature are merged in the natural environment of a botanical garden.

 

This Emerging Artist series exhibition -- inspired by the Danish artist Palle Nielsen's project The Model: A Model for a Qualitative Society, that took place in 1968 at the Moderna Museet Stockholm - a playground in the museum - where Nielsen posed questions such as to have the chance for the artists to "become themselves," and express their own reality through play in a setting unfettered by the urban environment and adapted to their energetic activity. One of Nielsen's significant achievements was to open doors to discuss how this project encourages engagement in new directions (such as all-ages interaction) with small-scale, concrete interactive components. 
 

An interactive day at the Garden with landscape installations by six emerging artists, (Aida Tejada--Reflections featured here) a performance of dance vignettes by Momentum Dance Company, yoga class, art of a reiki master, drawing and multidisciplinary arts and learning activities in First Steps in the Art World for wee ones, the Artisans Lounge, and interactive learning curated by artists and their installations. . .

Attended in preparation for Env4Aging Roundtable: "Speaking Intergenerationally"— Restorative Design & Lifespan Engagement, Env4Aging Conf. 2012, Orlando, FL

 

For pics, see:  http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2844688890377.131027.16540...

 

For Conference info, see: 

 

Speaking Intergenerationally—Restorative Design and  Lifespan Engagement

Randy Eady, Therapeutic Specialist, Member of International Council on Active Aging, US Play Coalition, TaiChi4Health and Generations United

Tuesday, May 1, 2012 | 8:15 a.m. – 9:15 a.m.

More and more generations are overlapping in senior living. CCRCs are finding if they have a better appreciation for the changing demographics coming into their midst, they can better position offerings that meet this variety and create enticing, eco-aware and highly-functional living environments.  Multiple-generation interaction and physical activity enhances quality of life for older adults; adding outdoor settings and children to the mix magnifies these benefits. Unfortunately, myths and assumptions about these types activities -- across the life span -- may limit opportunities to create optimal design features that consider both eco-psychological and recreational therapy aspects.  This roundtable explores opportunities for "intergenerational programming" that build relationships between the natural environment, youth and older people.  Participants will explore seven prevailing barriers to Lifespan Engagement (health and sense of well-being across generations and natural physical environments).

 

More on Tejada:

Aida Tejada's approach is "slow art".   The images captured apply only natural reflections from perspectives in slow, often natural tempo and motion.  Her images are created in a shot.  The composition of these photographs is done in the milliseconds the camera is letting in light, not through composite layers of computer-manipulated editing.

 

Eye of the Child, Reflecting an Integrated Vision of Mastery

Her appreciation of the depth of focus/breadth of field, layers of imagery and substrate "transference"  are woven with her degrees in psychology and communication  ~~  not photography ~~ which informs the substance of visual perception.  Delving into the various alternatives to reality; her "magic wand~transport tool" is the camera.  The origin of perception, itself, is challenged and heightened.  She renders the visual subject irrelevant by turning her eye to what emotes from the soul; using shutter speed. ambient light and color to derive the meaning in a moment of time.  This is particularly vital in the world of sensory-challenged people, individuals who have lost limbs, and children that experience a spectrum difference in perception:  all are adapting to various forms of altered reality.

 

Nature Therapy, Science, Somaesthetics, and Quantum Physics

Like the psyche, Tejeda's craft is a palimpsest of transformative possibility; juxtaposing, nature therapy, brain science, somaesthetics, and quantum physics.  She gets us to the heart of the matter:  that we "see" and "feel" with our body, mind and emotion.  For instance, there's a child-like, realist magic to the poetic narrative  in her expression of the emotion, empathy and movement that allows a rehabilitation therapist to apply her reflected representation of body parts (hands, ears, feet, eyes) to clinical protocols associated with a natural, ephemeral process of remapping the cortex (and reducing the symptoms of "phantom pain" in lost limbs through a technique commonly known as Mirroring Therapy.

 

A Reflective Story about Myth Body, Limb Injury and Nature Therapy

Native mythology abounds about Jaguars.  The cats often settle near, and can be found in the reflection of bodies of clean, fresh water (a vital resource to the ever burgeoning Native American communities of South America).  Living alongside these wild creatures, indigenous populations used their secretive, powerful beauty to reflect on questions of deep philosophical importance like the nature of power and human duality.

Such duality courses through fable, myth, and fact about the jaguar. Both fear and admiration spark jaguar stories, but at least one story recognizes why this third largest cat in the world doesn't have the reputation of "man-killer" and, curiously, represents this through a limb injured on two occasions.

It is said as god created people out of mud, jaguar, curious, watched.  God didn't want jaguar to know how this was done, so he sent jaguar to the river to fetch water, using a leaky calabash to fill a jar.  God figured to finish people by the time jaguar returned.  At the river, as jaguar was mindlessly scooping water with the leaky calabash, frog advised patching the holes with mud.  Very quickly, jaguar filled the jug and returned to the god who had finished 13 of the people and 12 arms; god was in the process of making a dog.

Jaguar said the dog looked tasty.

God said the dog was to serve people and that the arms were to teach jaguar respect.

When the jaguar boasted superiority, god made jaguar stand in the distance, and one of the men harm the jaguar in the paw.   The jaguar, after the human bandaged the paw, still claimed the dog as a good meal.  This time, the man sent the dog after the jaguar who ran up a tree to escape; the human wounded its paw again. That's how Jaguar learned to leave humans alone.

[Randy Eady]