SF Weekly

Kate Stirr

Ardent Evolution

​”Sometimes it’s not obvious how one can relate to a trout,” says artist Karl Cronin.Um, yes. That would probably be true for most people. But maybe we should give it a try, suggests Root Division‘s upcoming interdisciplinary exhibition A Live Animal, which explores the relationship between humans and other species. It opens Saturday atRoot Division.

A Live Animal presents the works of more than 20 artists from a diverse range of art disciplines, all seeking to explore aspects of interspecies exchange and to understand what other species have to teach us about our own nature.

The four Bay Area artists who spoke with SF Weekly echoed the same themes.

“I find it funny that we as humans think that we aren’t animals,” says S.F. artist Sarah Smith. “To fool ourselves that we’re different in any way is misguided.”

Berkeley-based Kate Stirr agrees: “I think the show … acknowledges the fact that we are animals too, which I think sometimes people forget, because we like to distance ourselves.”

While many artists feel the same urge to reconnect with nature, their approaches are very different. One of Smith’s drawings for the show depicts an owl among trees barks that is so well-camouflaged that it’s hard to find.

“As a person, I try to tread very lightly on the world,” she says. “So maybe it’s sort of a self-portrait.”

Sarah Smith

Owl

​Stirr, meanwhile, created a stop-motion animation of a paddler in a kayak who goes out to sea. In a series of metamorphoses she describes as “our wistful relationship with the natural world,” the paddler melts into the kayak, the boat disintegrates into the skeleton of a seal, and the skeleton morphs into a fully fleshed seal that swims off into the ocean depths.

“When we pay attention to animal behavior on a more regular basis, I think it helps us simplify our own lives a little bit,” she says. “Even just watching the gulls soaring around, it’s good to be reminded of the joy of life.”

Less conventional is Cronin‘s installation Somatic Natural History Archive, a documentation of his encounters with 10,000 plants and animals which he estimates will take 50 years to complete.

By “encounter,” Cronin means that he films himself in nature, mimicking each one of these species. It is a bit bizarre to watch Cronin swaying in a forest, fluttering his fingers like leaves, or crouched on the sidewalk twitching in time to an insect’s antennae. Yet his attention to detail highlights characteristics of the plants and animals a more casual observer might overlook. Having “encountered” 150 species so far, he says, “I’m already feeling the boundaries between what I am and what the other species are softening.”

The show also incorporates more academic pieces, such as Gail Wight‘s book Restless Dust. Wight, who teaches art at Stanford University, created the book in celebration of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday.

“I had a fantasy that as a birthday present, I’d take [Darwin] on a tour of the Bay Area,” says Wight, explaining the inspiration behind her hand-printed letterpress creation. “He went almost all the way up the west coast of South America, but never made it to the Bay Area.”

Michael Bartolos

Restless Dust, Gail Wight

​With such a diverse range of pieces, it is inevitable that the show raises questions and sends some contradictory messages, but to co-curator Christopher Reiger, this is exactly the show’s appeal.”I think there is definitely a push-pull in the pieces on display,” says Reiger, “But I love the big questions that get really messy.”

The artists also have different visions of the roles their pieces play in the exhibit.

“Artists construct their art to propose a way that one can live their life,” Cronin says. “Often this is done in an extreme way.” He seesSomatic Natural History Archive as “a documented proposal to my community and culture of a new way of being.”

“Artists are not moral gatekeepers,” Wight adds, “but [art] gets people talking. It’s a medium that tends to draw people in with visual playfulness or beauty, and then the content comes as a second layer, like the jelly inside the doughnut. If nothing else, it’s definitely a conversation starter, and we need to have public discourse in different modes of seriousness and scholarliness.”

Certainly, A Live Animal promises to provoke a good conversation. The exhibition will be followed by a TED-style night of lectures and performances on July 19, featuring scientists and artists.