I'm Gail Browne.
I want to welcome you to the final presentation in our art
and ecology series, Oh Earth, Wait for Me:
conversations about art and ecology.
We want to express our very deep gratitude
to the Center for Biological Diversity
for co-sponsoring this series with us.
Also, thankful to the Institute for the Environment
for their support of the David Dunn presentation.
Of course, thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts
and our very, very generous friends of the Poetry Center.
30 years ago, Gary Snyder wrote, "biological diversity
and the integrity of organic evolution of this planet
is where I take my stand.
Not a large pretentious stand but a straightforward feet
on the ground, like my grandmother
nursing her snapdragons and trying at grafting apples.
It's also inevitably the stand of the poet, child of the muse,
singer of saneness, and weaver of rich fabric
to delight the mind with possibilities, opening
both inward and outward."
In our December e-newsletter, Eric Magrane
drew us a map in the form of a permaculture flower.
Of the many directions, inward and outward,
our conversations on art and ecology
have taken us so far, the poets, musicians, scientists,
and visual artists we've heard from this fall
have demonstrated, from a variety of perspectives,
the urgency for taking a stand for better
stewardship of the Earth, certainly before another 30
years passes us by.
At the same time, it's been interesting to observe
our struggle for hopefulness.
I see it especially in the current exhibit of artwork,
created in response to this series
by Barbara Penn's advanced contemporary drawing students.
Undergraduate George Belcher says in his artist's statement
accompanying a watercolor portrait "Sense and Sensation,"
"possibility is unrelenting as is the power to change."
But we have one more artist to hear from.
And I can think of no one more fitting
to close our series than poet Eleni Sikelianos, Colleen
Burns, with a very informative shoptalk on her work, Monday,
this past Monday.
And this afternoon, we had the opportunity
to pose questions to her.
Eleni's books are available for sale,
courtesy of U of A Bookstore.
And she'll be happy to sign them after the reading.