Art at the Edges
an offering
an invitation
a provocation
Art invites us to look again, askance, anew.
It speaks to the spirit and ignites imagination.
It whispers of possibilities we might not be ready for.
It prepares us for change.
EcoGather laments the ways in which art has been exited to the very edges of education, captured and either cheaply commodified or enclosed for elite engagement only. We long to see bright mosaics in village centers, marvelous murals on the sides of the buildings we where we go about our business, and artists honored and fed in our communities.
In a small but meaningful effort to make art a bigger part of our experiences at the end of the modern era, EcoGather has commissioned Contributing Artist Renée Barry to create a series of twelve block prints that support sense-making in the space between. Each month, EcoGather will share a new piece of Renée’s work and a brief statement about the print or its inspiration. The collection will build over the next year, populating this page with art that is intended to be accessible. We encourage you to download these files, print them, post them, share them, given them as gifts… We ask only that you credit Renée (@reneebarryart) and point folks toward EcoGather (@eco.gathering) when you do.
Complete Creative Commons license details below.
The World is Changing
June 2024
An inky block print, black and white, of a groundhog grounding itself in the grass with the text “THE WORLD IS CHANGING” and a dandelion.
For this piece, Renée connected with the groundhogs she often watches through her kitchen window, as well as the ones who venture into the neighbor’s yard. Her neighbor keepss trying to get rid of them, but the groundhogs keep coming back. They have no intention of leaving their their favorite spot, their home.
Staring at groundhog’s brought to mind Groundhog’s Day, the holiday, and started a wonder about what the groundhog might have to say about the changing climate.
This activity also got Renée thinking about Groundhog’s day, the movie, which seemed especially relevant to a quote on EcoGather’s vision board, which reads: “We are the world breaking old habits..”
This piece encourages comfort with what can’t be denied and reminds us that we can be part of good endings, breaking out of patterns that repeating over and over again. Embracing change means that we do not have to stay stuck.
Deepen
July 2024
A linoleum block print, presented in black and white, of a loon in the act of diving, looking down, resolute, creating ripples on the surface of the water, ink texture giving the impression of small bubble. The loon’s webbed feet are the only parts of its body still above water, but for how long? The word DEEPEN appears in the lower left corner, within the dark water.
Ahead of EcoGather’s late August conversation with Dougald Hine, Renee visited with and took inspiration from Hine’s writing, and was particularly moved by ideas from the Dark Mountain Manifesto (2009) written with Paul Kingsnorth.
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Loons are skilled swimmers, migratory birds, and able to adapt in both fresh and saltwater. They are known for diving, kicking from webbed feet and following their pointed bills deep, up to two hundred feet below. Renee’s memories of loons kept coming to mind as she read the Manifesto.
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“There is a fall coming”
(A loon tips into cold water) -
“There is an underlying darkness at the root of everything we have built”
(The loon is investigating something deep) -
“We show no sign of slowing down… The bubble is civilization… Consider the structures on which that bubble has been built”
(There is a call to join in this journey). -
What would happen if we looked down?”
(To follow the loon swimming below) -
“This is a moment to ask deep questions and to ask them urgently”
(Asking questions like what if we looked down?What is this bubble?) -
“We believe that the roots of these crises lie in the stories we have been telling ourselves”
(What have we been telling ourselves? Who is this we?” Who is this ourselves? What and who else is there? Including the loon?) -
“Words and images can change minds, hearts, even the course of history” (They can)
Weave
August 2024
A linoleum block print of a spider weaving a web at night between two arching solomon seal stems, with stars and the moon and drops of water glistening. The word “weave” curves at the bottom.
The piece was edited digitally.
For September’s print, Renée was inspired by Ecogather’s recent themes of weaving, (re)connection, lines, and shapes. These prompted her to think about spiders in the dark making webs. This is something that honestly used to unsettle her, but more recently, she’s begun to think about spiders and their webs in new ways and with new feelings.
Renée slept with this piece of linoleum by her pillow as part of the creative process, reclaiming the night as something connecting rather than alienating, aware of the spiders probably out there making their own pieces of art throughout the night, inspiring her.
There Are Choices
September 2024
A linoleum block print of three of Renée’s neighbors: a squirrel, skunk, and deer representing different biological stress responses. The squirrel runs in flight, the skunk’s ready to fight, and the deer chooses quietly to fawn, energy vibrating off each of them. The text reminds “THERE ARE CHOICES,” even in moments of trouble.
This month Renée was moved by themes of trauma and responses that can arise in complex social environments during times of weaving, collapse, and change. Renée was thinking about the role of boundaries in relationships and how to practice them more actively as opposed to allowing
unconscious patterns to reproduce through history. Sometimes you just need a reminder of your list of options, however small, like to reconnect with your breath. An awareness of even this can be powerful.
“Being oppressed means the absence of choices” -bell hooks
“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears” -Nelson Mandela
Renée got to attend a local film screening of “Where Olive Trees Weep” about occupation and survival in Palestine which is on her mind and heart a lot lately. Her friend Jonathan Brenneman lovingly introduced the documentary and led them through guided questions afterward, focused on
ways to understand and move through ongoing traumas toward new possibilities. This experience, as well as attending the Diagonalism EcoGathering, were meaningful to her this
month, witnessing groups of us face our world together and not run away. We stayed together even when it was hard, and that means a lot to her. We did that and she wants to keep doing that.
She started thinking about the series as a poem or prayer, because so far, it kind of reads like one:
the world is changing…
deepen.
weave.
there are choices.
Thank you, Grief
October 2024
A linoleum block print with the words “Thank you grief” appear underneath a borage plant glowing at night. Color enters the series with blues, purples, pinks, and neon green. The star
shaped flowers have five points like the gates of grief. Some of the petals are not yet ready to open, their heads hanging heavy, covered in bristly feelers. Some blossoms look down, others gaze up. One is staring directly as if with eye contact. A heart is in the center. The piece was edited digitally.
Renée was fortunate to be part of an EcoGathering this month on grief, a container she imagines many of us must have really needed, perhaps our entire lives, or even for generations before. At the end, when people were transitioning out of the virtual room, as Nina Simone played in the background, she typed a short note in the chat including “thank you grief” in the spirit of appreciating its presence with us, a sure continuation of love.
Welcoming and even celebrating grief’s arrival inspired this block print of a borage plant.
She remember’s when she first met borage in an herbalism intensive class at Sterling in the garden. Immediately she noticed how the “star” flowers had a heaviness yet glow to them. “Borage for courage” she was taught, and this started building a connection in her mind between courage and
grief, darkness and color. She imagined starflowers bioluminescent at night, all the buds at different points in their journey. What connected for her in the EcoGathering was how grief seems to revive us, offering us something to feel even in times of loss, opening us to proof of a connection still going on. So it feels right to her that grief would be what introduces color into the series.
The world is changing
Deepen
Weave
There are choices
Thank you grief
Release the Dams! Reverse Enclosure!
November 2024
Liquid, pooling letters flow into each other like a river altogether in the shape of an EcoGather-blue teardrop or allium at night. The text offers two reminders or invitations to
“RELEASE THE DAMS!” and “REVERSE ENCLOSURE!” Its font is reminiscent of a Bob Masse-style concert poster, evoking the emotional and fluid human experience of being in a crowd and listening to live music together, co-regulating.
Renée was moved by an EcoGathering on “enclosure” for this piece. She thought about how she could break out creatively of the aesthetic enclosure she often works within, limits shaped by the medium of linoleum itself, in blocks that are often rectangular with straight, square edges. At first, she started with the visual of a wall about to break. It was a liberating process to change her mind and carve that part away, releasing the subject. She imagined words like water meandering freely, breaking out of the dams created by unmetabolized grief and disconnection. But it seemed important to her that there remain some space between the lines of text, suggesting a distinction between boundaries and enclosure. She thought of branches that give each other room in the tree canopy and geese flocking responsively to avoid collision and how boundaries allow us to maintain and sustain healthy relationships.
It was neat that Nissa picked up on an earlier perhaps unconscious inspiration of Renée’s – rock concert posters. It got her thinking about how music has helped humanity to channel and validate powerful emotions like grief and love. She remembered all these incredibly positive experiences of being in large crowds even as an anxious homebody introvert, yet feeling safe because of the way the particular music and artist and emotions kept the crowd connected together. Then her body recalled being at the White House back in January for the March on Washington for Gaza, likely by far the densest crowd of her life. She had never felt more grounded. Children kept being centered, adults were handing them the megaphones, listening. Her nervous system noticed these values. Young voices leading the chant set a bright and heartfelt sphere as the sun was setting and the air was getting cold. They danced and gathered, circling around the drums, calling out again and again for an end to violence and a free Palestine until their throats were sore.
Just Breathe
December 2025
Two pink and red saturated lungs expand and glow beneath the message to “just breathe,” a reminder for all respirating beings. The anatomy vaguely resembles ginger root, mycelium
networks, candelabras, fingers, coral, or tree branches reaching out and exchanging vital materials such as oxygen and carbon dioxide. The piece was edited digitally.
Renée really appreciates the somatic elements interspersed throughout EcoGatherings like the grounding activity. Somehow it feels revolutionary and new each time whenever she is encouraged to experience her breath consciously. Erik has been leading us in groups lately toward mindfulness. This image serves as a visual gesture also inviting us back to time travel into the present moment where we find and inhabit our ever changing bodies and environments and where we are capable of learning new things together.
While she was sitting alone and carving around lungs into linoleum, she kept getting lost in her thoughts over and over in the same old familiar patterns. She could feel her chest tightening and she was becoming visibly red once again. Something felt urgent as she grew impatient over finishing the
task as quickly as possible and with the most pressure, but without ever making a single mistake. In perfectionism, she got distracted by overthinking as she made irreversible marks with a sharp tool until the piece spoke back at her to interrupt the cycle, reminding her to just breathe, like so many teachers and friends in her life had reminded her before. So when she looks at this print now she remembers how all these people including herself helped her to continue on as it was emerging, how she breathed throughout the process, unconsciously first and then with actively positive
reinforcement.
She recognize that trauma, dissociation, displacement, pollution, police brutality, misinformation, climate change, covid-19, and other state-sanctioned violences of many disproportionate scales are all contexts surrounding the pair of words. Just breathe isn’t such a simple statement nor is it as accessible as it could be. This is a loving invitation to expand through breath into holding complexity and to hold all the dynamic colors flowing in between black and white thinking.
Deconstruct Indoctrination
January 2025
A family of growing dandelions pair with the encouraging words to “Deconstruct indoctrination.” The roots planting deep into the dark soil echo neural pathways of the brain as flowers above ground reach out in different directions.
For this piece Renée was reflecting on a recurring theme of EcoGatherings she attended; how a big part of learning may be unlearning. She thought of when she started working as a gardener and asked she coworker how to know which of the plants were “weeds.” She explained that weeds are more of a matter of perspective than a biological reality. Renée decided from then on to try to learn and call each plant by their name, finding the whole categorization derogatory.
Looking back, this was just the beginning of Renée unraveling a lot of value-laden language she had been taught and taken for granted about the natural world, including the word “natural” or even “human nature.” Unlearning seems to require us as a species to understand our ways of thinking by the root, seeing where they come from to re-examine and then to choose to build new neural pathways as we change our brains quite literally. Dandelions are too often treated as “weeds” and marginalized, even demonized, from many ecological spaces like the “perfect” green suburban turfgrass lawn. Renée can’t help but notice wherever she lives how they grow anyway, resisting and existing even in sidewalk cracks. She is inspired by how dandelions defy human categorization and attempts at controlling the living world.
Pray Through Questions
February 2025
One rabbit follows another curiously in a hole deep into the dark ground. Their front paws are together and glow devotionally while in free fall. The text reads “PRAY THROUGH QUESTIONS.”
Nicole and Renée were brainstorming over email a possible new direction to take in the series. Nicole suggested the language – “deconstruct indoctrination, pray through questions” and Renée split them into a pair of images that can go side by side. She was inspired to move toward curiosity by a comment in an EcoGathering recently about questions being a type of prayer. As a researcher who’s grappling with spirituality, she really loved that idea.
While designing this print, Renée was thinking about how her younger sister helped her to start questioning their once firm held beliefs. Her indifference to the world they were taught and her personal interest in freedom led the way for them both to fall down the rabbit hole of religious deconstruction together. So now Renée thinks of that rabbit further along as her sister and sense-making processes as sacred and bonding. It’s nice when you get to have company while going on a quest.
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