On the morning I write this, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the Ohio Department of Agriculture indicate that they’ve received no reports of animals dying in East Palestine.
While that might be a factually true and perfectly defensible statement, it belies the troubling reports coming from those people in the vicinity of last week’s disastrous train derailment; specifically, those people who are not affiliated with the ODNR or the ODA. Listen to those locals and you’ll hear something very different and very troubling.
There’s a saying, “Every system is perfectly designed to get exactly the results it gets.” This adage, often credited to W. Edwards Deming, goes a long way towards helping understand how we can watch a sleepy eastern Ohio town turn into an ecological hellscape in the blink of an eye. It’s because that’s exactly what the system we created does. Oh, not every day, and maybe not intentionally; maybe this happens infrequently enough that we’re willing to accept the consequences, shrug them off, and move on. But make no mistake, this is a system we’ve engineered and supported, offering exactly the kinds of outputs it’s built to. The train derailment in East Palestine was not random and it was not an accident. It was predictable and preventable. It was systemic.
Carmen Ostermann knows a thing or two about systems and a thing or two about the natural world as well. She’s not one to shy away from predictions either. Ostermann is not an engineer, environmental scientist or even a clairvoyant. She’s an artist; an artist whose work focuses on ecological succession, extinction, and the harrowingly destructive effects of human activity on our environment. Her current exhibition, I Am One of Those Animals address our current ecological state with such single-mindedness, with such clarity of purpose, that I don’t so much recommend you see it, as I oblige you to see it.
Through a variety of mediums (embroidery, ink and vellum, porcelain, and wood) Ostermann explores our relationship to the environment and asks us to reflect on what may very well come to pass if things don’t change.
Ostermann’s preferred subject is birds. This makes sense. As noted in the Exhibition Statement, the worldwide population of birds has been reduced by three billion since the 1970s. Similarly, author and journalist Michelle Nijhuis notes in Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction that since the 1500s, “Humans have entirely eliminated more than 150 bird species.” These stark facts elevate the oft-used “canary in a coal mine” metaphor to a global scale.
But birds are not just statistics or predictors. Despite their declining numbers, they have managed to maintain a certain level of ubiquity in the world around us. While human activity has banished much of the native fauna to places beyond human habitation, birds remain. In this way, they provide many of us with a vital link to the natural world. Often, they are our only link. That connection sees birds not just in our daily lives, but in our art as well, representing everything from spirituality to peace to freedom.
For Ostermann, birds offer the chance to reimagine their distinctive forms and intricate details while simultaneously exploring our potential future. Many of the works are done in porcelain, a medium the artist prefers for its longevity and its ghostlike appearance. Most of the pieces depict endangered birds, each covered with tiny nodes that take on the appearance of fungi, barnacles, or coral. This is Ostermann’s reference to the process of ecological succession. It’s a way of illustrating those elements that will replace the birds if/when they’re gone. The effect is startling and surreal. In these haunting specimens Ostermann has compressed a lengthy evolutionary process down to an instant; effectively freezing the frame for our inspection. Further, the naturalistic way these birds are rendered make the prospect of their impending ecological succession seem all the more real.
And if some of these concepts are starting to sound a bit scientific, I feel confident suggesting that’s exactly where Ostermann is leading us. I Am One of Those Animals brims with references to the history of science and scientific inquiry. Title cards include Latin names. Drawings offer the kind of exacting detail you’d find in Audubon’s Birds of America. Embroidered microbes are displayed as if in giant petri dishes (or maybe under an oversized microscope). Several of the sculptures are presented inside bell jars, looking like they’d be no more out of place in a laboratory or natural history museum than an art exhibition. There are even footnotes and citations on the placards.
These invocations of science strike me as conceptually important here. First, they serve as a nice bridge between two disciplines (science and art) that don’t always play well together. They also provide a kind of preemptive rebuttal to those who might suggest this is all an exercise in climate alarmism and nothing more. Lastly, these references (offered in the context of artwork describing the Anthropocene) present a reminder to viewers that science – this discipline we so revere and so rely on – really is a two-edged sword. That this business of classifying the natural world, of categorizing it, naming it and ultimately trying to control it is part of reason we have plumes of toxic smoke billowing over eastern Ohio.
It goes without saying that Ostermann’s work raises concerns that are being expressed loudly, passionately, and globally by countless others, scientists and artists alike. Her voice is one among many ensuring that none of us can claim, “But we didn’t know.” And for better or worse, this knowing comes with responsibility. I’m not sure what that means for each of us individually, but I’ve got an idea about how we might start.
Pick a nice day. Go to the Cultural Arts Center and see I Am One of Those Animals. Spend time with Ostermann’s work. Think about all those empty nests. Appreciate exactly how small and fragile that hummingbird is. Reflect on Martha and the fate of the Passenger Pigeon. Then, if you’re able, go to Scioto Audubon Metro Park. If you can manage it, walk along the Lower Scioto Greenway (It’s a little over a mile and a half).
Pay attention to the river and the birds, then the traffic and the construction. Listen. See if you can hear nature amid the road noise. Do this, and I expect you’ll understand even better what Ostermann is getting at. You’ll appreciate the tightrope we’re walking. You may even begin to sense that we are all of us those animals.
I Am One of Those Animals is on view at the Priscilla R. Tyson Cultural Arts Center through March 4, 2023. For more information, visit culturalartscenteronline.org/exhibitions/main-gallery.
All photos by Jeff Regensburger