Gabríel Peralta, Art Environment and Sustainability
Texas Tech University, MFA
The majority of my studio practice combines science and art-based research to explore the prevalence of hybrid creatures in myths around the world, and uses such chimeric entities as a lens for examining and celebrating the way all living beings exist within a framework of interconnection and blurred microbial boundaries. The art I made during my time in Paonia focused on using the materials gifted from different species of Cottonwood (Poplar) in sculptural applications. Commonly regarded as “trash trees” by present day municipalities, Cottonwoods persist as a collective of beings who not only continue to offer many cultural and ecological benefits to their communities as “pioneer species,” but also represent a number of survival strategies in the face of climate change. The resulting artwork features everything from wild clay foraged from the roots of an Eastern Cottonwood tree, to mycelium growing on partial Western Cottonwood bark substrate, to Black Cottonwood buds rendered into a medicinal extraction for use as an olfactory, alchemical element.
