Photo by Laura Dawe

Artist Statement

I grew up rough in rural Texas, conversing with creeks and herons, snakes and trees.  My mother, raised as a field laborer in Lithuania, never lost her connection with animism. She taught through example that the natural world offers potent, practical guidance and is ready to teach us when we remember how to listen.

In my studio practice, I continue my relationships with the more-than-human world. I reach out to rocks, the ocean, spores or trees and ask, “OK, what are we making today?” and allow the work to flow through me. Invariably, I am delighted and sometimes startled by our collaborations.  

My current projects, installations titled The Chapel of Natural Intelligence and The Classroom of Natural Intelligence, are extended experiments in facilitating interspecies communication for groups.

In recent years there have been enormous breakthroughs in learning about Earth’s vast, networked intelligence.  These discoveries are critical. They aren’t, however, always relational. That is, they often look at mycelial networks, tree families, flocks and other interwoven beings as beautiful models to study, not vastly intelligent beings who can guide us personally.  The Chapel and The Classroom aim to offer respite from our fiction of human dominance and separation. They are places to join together in asking, listening and, importantly, collaborating with ones who are wiser than we.

In these extraordinary times I am driven by a few beliefs. It seems to me that our species has much to learn and, if we look around, we can see that learning it sooner would be better than later. I believe that working in groups helps us regain our ability to hear the other-than-human world. And I believe hearing is critical: if we hope to do our part to repair the environment we broke we really need to get our instruction manual from the beings who know how it works.

BIO

Lydia Idel is an interdisciplinary artist. Her work arises from a series of experiments in collaborating directly with other-than-human beings. A large part of her practice includes “ephemeral sculptures,” short-lived pieces made in collaboration with other consciousnesses, which she documents with digital photographs.

Two current projects, The Chapel of Natural Intelligence, and The Classroom of Natural Intelligence are nuanced installations which create conditions for people to converse and collaborate with other-than-human beings. She believes that plants can–and will–communicate with us and educate us when we remember how to hear. As we contemplate our planetary situation it seems wise to admit that unaided humans are incapable of fixing what we’ve done. Her bet is that plants and other networked intelligences can teach us to design a functional, perhaps even beautiful, future.

She received her BA with a concentration in Studio Art from Williams College. Prior to beginning her formal arts practice she worked extensively in experience design research and systems strategy.

Ever impelled to bridge worlds, she also once owned and operated what might be the world’s only native plant nursery + biker bar + music venue.