Touching Earth EcoArt Collaborative short course: Environmental Sensory Awareness, Day 2

This spring, Touching Earth EcoArt Collaborative (TEEAC) and the Wells Reserve offer two-part workshops in environmental sensory awareness, nature writing, and landscape photography, taught by accomplished practitioners. While delivered separately, these areas of study are presented as an integrated unit and are used as vehicles in your exploration, reflection, and expression of your personal connection with the natural world.

Each Touching Earth EcoArt workshop provides you with the opportunity to engage in this personal creative/artistic process through experiential and interdisciplinary art work.

Advance registration and payment are required. A one-year Wells Reserve membership is included in the regular workshop fee. To register for this workshop, please email ecoartcollaborative1@gmail.com or call 207-251-0619.

Short course: Environmental Sensory Awareness

In this two-part workshop, mindfulness and awareness activities will be explored. These activities bring more breadth and clarity to your sensed experience of the natural world.

The first session of this short course, included in the fee, will be held on Saturday, May 20.

Agenda

Morning Gathering

Coffee, Morning Treats, Registration, Personal Introductions

Introduction to the Touching Earth EcoArt Collaborative

Introduction to the Touching Earth Introductory EcoArt Workshops

Mindfulness walk

Soundwalking

Group Reflection

WORKSHOP INSTRUCTORS:

Mark Emerson

Landscape Photographer, EcoArt Educator, Founder/Director of Northeastern EcoArt Center, Founder/President of Touching Earth EcoArt Collaborative

Mark Emerson comes to the Touching Earth EcoArt Collaborative with a breadth of knowledge and experience that encompass the fine arts, the natural environment, and experiential and interdisciplinaryeducation. Mark graduated from the Maine College of Art and received his MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art. While attending art school, he immersed himself in the fine art of landscape photography and the questions surrounding the human relationship with the natural world. Upon completion of his fine arts education, he attended the Extended Teachers Educational Program through the University of Southern Maine. In this program, he probed the experiential and interdisciplinary aspects of the Foxfire educational philosophy. Upon completion he founded the Northeastern EcoArt Center, a nonprofit environmental arts education organization. Mark taught for several years at the University of New England where he was an adjunct professor of photography and is the founder and president of the nonprofit environmental arts education organization Touching Earth EcoArt Collaborative. Prior to his post-secondary education, Mark worked for many years with Salt Magazine as an instructor of photography.

Along with his artistic and educational pursuits, Mark attended Buddhist seminary and has been a practicing Buddhist and student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Sakyong, Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche for more than thirty years.

Jim Cummings

Jim Cummings is a writer and editor. After twenty years of freelance writing, in 1999 he founded EarthEar, a record label and online catalog of environmental sound art. From the start, EarthEar was meant not as escapism into recorded fantasies of nature, but as a means toward deeper listening to the living world around us. This focus expanded, eventually spawning the Acoustic Ecology Institute in 2004.Since then, AEI has become a leading source of clear, unbiased information on a full array of sound-related environmental issues. Jim is the author of many freelance magazine articles, including “Listen Up!Opening Our Ears to Acoustic Ecology” (Zoogoer, 2002), edited books Why do Whales and Children Sing? (1999) and Investing With Your Values (2000), and is executive producer of eleven EarthEar CDs. He received a B.A. from Wesleyan University in 1979 and a M.A. from John F. Kennedy University in 1987.

Linda Grenfell

Linda Grenfell is an environmental educator at the Wells Reserve at Laudholm. As an environmental educator, she works with the reserve’s volunteers, leads guided kayak tours and environmental mindfulness walks, and much more. Linda’s skills and experiences come from her background as a United Methodist clergy and as a college teacher; where she taught world religions and ethics, with a focus on environmental ethics. Linda has researched the indigenous cultures of the Southern Maine coast and incorporates her understandings into her environmental mindfulness walks.