Attending the Annual Right Whale Conference
This is a campaign to raise $850 so that I can attend the Annual Right Whale Conference, in Portland Maine from November 13 - 15, 2019.
- The funds will cover my transportation from Virginia to Maine via the train, and my lodging while I am in Maine. They will also cover the fee towards attending the conference.
- I am an artist whose research includes migration and extinction in human and non-human populations. I am particularly interested in the impact of anthropogenic extinction on whale populations, particularly the North Atlantic Right Whale.
- I have created different projects about extinction, all with an aim to help us "see" something that exists as a vanishing. This makes it hard to accurately visualize, and I have been compelled to this theme for the past ten years because I see the role that art can provide in this context.
- My most recent project with whales as the main character and theme has been "Whale Watching in October", a conceptual practice of whale watching everyday for the month of October. Each day I post a new "sighting" to an online interactive calendar. I am making this work in-residency with the online gallery GATE.
- During this month I have become more connected and obsessed with the life and death of Snake Eyes, #1226, a Right Whale who died in September 2019 after an intense two-month entanglement with rope. He was found floating, terribly decomposed, off the coast of New York. Being one of only about 400 in his remaining species, any death is a terrible sign.
- I want to attend the conference to directly connect with the experts in the field and learn from their presentations about the actual state of emergency that these whales face on a daily basis. From these connections I will begin to accumulate and create a new body of work that addresses, in a more engaged and informed way, the plight of this species and what we can still do to help assure their survival. I want to get as up-close to this species as possible, and attending this conference is certainly essential to that pursuit.
- Attending the conference would illuminate and inspire my practice for the coming months and years.
- I am selling artwork inspired by whales on my website, and any sales will go directly towards this campaign as well.
-I would need the funds by November 10.
- Any help you provide is met with SINCERE GRATITUDE and true appreciation! I have never done a campaign before but feel this is an urgent and necessary cause that will continue to manifest and inspire my work for months and years to come.
THANK YOU.
Whale Watch in October, my most recent work with whales
