EARTHWRITING: Public Art & Practices of Attention to Public Space
An Online Roundtable Discussion with Erin Genia, Clara Wilch, and Darrah Cole
Hosted by Greenway Public Art
February 27, 2025, 12pm EST
Location: Zoom (RSVP for link)
Join us for a lunch-hour talk on the role of Public Art in climate action. Greenway Public Art & Ecology Fellow Maggie Poost will moderate an online conversation between artist Erin Genia, scholar Clara Wilch, and Greenway horticulturist Darrah Cole on their own land-based creative practices, reflecting on the ways that each of them cultivate a relationship with public space.
The event marks the publication of a community zine on the subject, produced by Greenway Public Art, designed by Chen Luo, containing contributions from Alula Hunsen, Ananth Udupa, Chenoa Baker, Dylan Merzenich, Jaina Cipriano, Katharine Schassler, Milica Denković, and Yolanda He Yang.
About the Panelists:
Erin Genia (she/her), an enrolled member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, is a multidisciplinary artist, educator and community organizer specializing in Native American and Indigenous arts and culture. Erin has an M.S. in Art, Culture and Technology from MIT, an M.P.A. in Tribal Governance from the Evergreen State College and studied at Institute of American Indian Arts. Erin’s public arts commissions include the Rose Kennedy Greenway, Boston University, the Minnesota Historical Society, the City of Saint Paul, and the City of Seattle. Genia lives and works in the greater Boston region, was a 2020 artist-in-residence for the City of Boston, and is a lecturer in the sculpture and performance department at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Photo by Jonathan Wiggs
Clara Wilch is an interdisciplinary scholar who researches how ecology and performance interrelate, with an interest in social and material forms of climate change mitigation and adaptation. Through scholarship, teaching, and creative collaborations, she strives to interweave methods and insights from the humanities, arts, and sciences to help reconceive and address vital concerns of environmental and multispecies justice. Her writing has appeared in TDR, Performance Research, Theatre Journal, and elsewhere. She holds a doctorate in theater and performance studies from UCLA, a bachelor’s degree in biology from Occidental College, and has held postdoc positions at both Harvard and Vanderbilt Universities.
Darrah Cole is the Senior Horticulturist and Designer at the Rose Kennedy Greenway, where she has been caring for the land for the past 14 years. Cole originally studied glassblowing and sculpture at Rhode Island School of Design, before finishing her studies at San Francisco State, where she earned a degree in Interdisciplinary Creative Arts. Following graduation, Cole became part of a community of farmers and food activists in the Puget Sound area, running her own small-scale organic farm and working at the Heronswood Nursery (which runs today as a nonprofit of the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe). From there, Cole managed a series of gardens, including Martha Stewart’s Mt. Desert Island home, as well the historic Chimney’s property in Manchester-by-the-Sea, before landing at The Greenway.