As advocates for the Joseph Beuys Sculpture Park, part of our mission is to promote inspirational outdoor community environments,  where passersby pause to sit with nature or gather to be with friends. While we love it when the park is buzzing with community workshops or performances, we also know that there is much beauty to be found in the quiet, serene moments in this unique UMBC space.  

Stephen Bradley, Associate Professor of Visual Arts, Director of the Linehan Artist Scholar Program, and UMBC community member recently captured one of these moments on August 30 at the beginning of this semester when he was researching sonic environments right on campus at the Beuys Park. 

Listen to his 11-minute recording of this lively cicada chorus in the park here! 

About the artist

Stephen Bradley is an interdisciplinary artist, engaged in acoustic ecology and material culture.   He maps and traces our relationship to place through ecology, sound and sculptural objects, including recorded narratives juxtaposed with artifacts discarded or lost in the landscape.

 To learn more about Stephen Bradley’s work, visit his website and check out his sonic research and his land mapping research.

 Whether urban or rural, the sounds of our home environments give us - often unconsciously - a strong "sense of place".  

-Hildegard Westerkamp, The Local and Global “Language” of Environmental Sound

Join us next Wednesday, October 28th at 1pm EST to learn more about the Arbor Day Foundation’s Tree Campus Healthcare recognition program which celebrates leadership in wellness and community engagement through trees among health institutions. At the Joseph Beuys Sculpture Park, it’s part of our mission to nurture the trees in our park and in our surrounding community. In this webinar, the Arbor Day Foundation will offer a framework for campuses and communities to get involved and become leaders within their urban forestry "ecosystem."

RSVP to erobertson@naturesacred.org for more information!

To learn more about the Arbor Day Foundation click here

Check out this article from Nature Sacred that shares research from the National Nature Sacred Awards program about nature’s impact on health workers who are coping with stress and burnout. This study, which was recently covered by BBC World News, investigates the role of hospital gardens and their positive effects on nurses’ emotional exhaustion.

Article Link: https://naturesacred.org/new-study-out-reduced-symptoms-of-burnout-noted-in-nurses-who-spent-one-break-a-day-in-a-hospital-garden/

This final week, in our discussion with the Association of Black Artists on Maurice Berger’s Race Stories, ABA Secretary and visual artist, Justin Okpara, has reflected on “On the Streets of Harlem, a Sense of Erase and Replace.” In his response, Justin reflects on the education system’s role in gentrification and deliberate disregard of Black narratives in core curriculum courses, redlining and gentrification in Baltimore, and his role as an artist to address racial issues in his work.

Check out his reflection here: tinyurl.com/yyuzxwm9

We would like to thank the Association of Black Artists for furthering this conversation about race in art and we’re looking forward to seeing and supporting all they continue to do on campus!

Today, we’re closing our audio meditation series, “Nature as Teacher,” with our third meditation, “Cultivating Peace in Uncertain Times.” This meditation focuses on grounding ourselves with gratitude and setting practical goals in order to calm any anxieties or worries that arise amidst these uncertain times. 

Thank you so much for joining us for the past three weeks for this “Nature as Teacher” mindfulness practice. We invite you to revisit these meditations on our website when you feel the need to recenter and refocus. 

Each meditation is kindly presented by UMBC’s Director of Workplace Learning, OD & Wellness and Founder & CEO of Wardell Development Group LLC., Jill Wardell and supported by the Joseph Beuys Tree Partnership with a generous gift from Nature Sacred (https://naturesacred.org/).

Check out the meditation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck5cYHczVk8

Website: https://cadvc.umbc.edu/nature/

We’re concluding our eight week retrospect on Maurice Berger’s Race Stories by revisiting "On the Streets of Harlem, a Sense of Erase and Replace.” This article features large-scale color photographs of Harlem by photographer Dawoud Bey, which address the gentrification and erasure of the mecca of Black heritage and history. The photographs expose the unsettling juxtaposition of fading Black cultural hotspots with the colonialist connotations of the white tourist.

Article: https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/10/11/on-the-streets-of-harlem-a-sense-of-erase-and-replace-dawoud-bey/

Thank you for joining us for the past eight weeks to reflect on Black American history and culture, as well as to commemorate Maurice Berger’s contributions to and research on Black narratives. We encourage you to continue to revisit the remaining essays in Race Stories that are archived on our website (https://cadvc.umbc.edu/race-stories-essays/).

While this eight week retrospect has come to an end, our dedication to Black artists, voices, and communities has not. 

We look forward to seeing you this fall at our upcoming exhibition, Southern Rites, that features the work of photographer, Gillian Laub and looks at one community’s struggle to confront longstanding issues of race and equality in Montgomery County, Georgia.