ARTIST STATEMENT - Regina Flanagan

Refugia = Resilience, The Beauty that Requires Health

Philosopher Marcia Muelder Eaton argues that the aesthetic experience of landscapes should be informed by ecological considerations of function and fitness, and what is perceived as beauty in a landscape includes an ethical dimension. In her essay, “The Beauty that Requires Health,” in the book Placing Nature – Culture and Landscape Ecology, Eaton says that how a landscape looks – its colors, textures and primary forms – are intrinsic properties. But there are many extrinsic properties whose presence or absence cannot be settled by simply looking, and many of the ways in which individual landscapes work are not only inconspicuous, they are invisible. She asks if they cannot be perceived, how can they be part of an aesthetic experience?

The series Refugia = Resilience, a longitudinal study of change in the landscape, takes up Eaton’s challenge to make extrinsic properties and ecological processes visible. Refugia such as the quiet backwaters of a river provide safe havens for fish and other animals during times of flooding, affording resilience and enabling them to survive the disturbance. Resilience is the capacity to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change. There is no “balance of nature”– nature is always changing and chaotic.

The photographs show the land forms and plant communities of savannas, river bluffs, flood plains, stream edges and glacial moraines that experience often-extreme cycles of flood and drought, alternately presenting threat and refugia. Processes are observed, from the small cycles of change through the seasons, to catastrophic alternations such as flooding or fire in images that are occasionally picturesque, but more often messy and complex.