Sensing Change: Village Green

Part of the Institute’s yearlong Sensing Change initiative, Village Green by artist Vaughn Bell featured suspended greenhouses that allowed visitors to pop their heads inside the structure to experience a worm’s-eye view of the plants within. Our presence in these mini-ecosystems reminds us of the many ways we can interact with and connect to our landscape.

I think a lot of people now acknowledge that to be a good environmentalist, you need to live in the city, in a dense place, and you need to take the train to where you’re going. But at the same time, we have a lot of romantic ideas about solitary experiences of landscape that are really deep in our narratives. How do we bring those two things together?

—Vaughn Bell 

Vaughn Bell is a multimedia artist who explores questions of how landscapes are observed and stratified and how to connect to and experience the physical world around us. In an interview with our staff, Bell ruminated on the ways Village Green brings us to a more personal awareness of landscape, on our understanding of constructs such as “natural” or “wild,” and on what makes the practice of an artist relevant to environmental issues.