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Isabel Beavers

School: School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts

Department: Museum Studies

TIE Affiliation

Environmental Research Fellowship

Research

The Communicative Power of Contemporary Art investigates how contemporary art can foster interdisciplinary relationships on current environmental issues. It involves two distinct but related projects, Upstream in which I author my own art installation about water quality in southwestern Montana, as well as Waterworks, a series of large-scale public art works in which I assist in production and educational programming. Through the TIE Environmental Fellowship I will expand the scope of these projects asking how these projects function to integrate scientific research on water conservation, artistic research that seeks to understand the communicative power of contemporary art, and how art can function for social and environmental change. Through participation in community panels, informal and formal interviews, discussions and other assessment methods I will evaluate the effectiveness of the public artworks in creating a community awareness and knowledge of water conservation. This project fosters collaboration within Tufts, between Tufts and Montana State University, and most importantly within the Bozeman and Southwestern Montana community. It fuses scientific and artistic research practices, utilizing both in the creation of a shared knowledge about environmental conservation and water resources.

Biography

I am an artist who lives and works in Boston, MA. My professional experiences performing field work and ecological data collection informs my current engagement with interdisciplinary artistic research. The same motivation that led me to work on the ground in conservation now fuel my artistic practice. I am currently investigating the Arctic marine environment and its responses to climate change.

I visualize scientific research through immersive installations that utilizes a range of media including video, animation, painting, drawing, sculpture, sound and light. I am interested in the philosophy of science, the intersecting histories of art and science, and how both are implicated in conceptions of nature and current cultural responses to climate change.

I hold a BS from the University of Vermont in Natural Resources and am currently a candidate in the Master of Fine Arts program at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. My work has been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston’s William Morris Hunt Memorial Library, Emerson Media Arts Center, the Waterworks Museum, Boston Convention and Exhibition Center and Mountain Time Arts in Bozeman, MT. I am the recipient of the National Service Corps MLK Drum Major for Service Award, Montague Travel Award, and now thrilled to embark upon the TIE Graduate Environmental Research Fellowship.