In conjunction with New York Climate Week 2025 Jeannie Rhyu and Alex Procton will present a panel touching on the scientific inspiration behind the Entanglement installation.
Presented as part of the 2025 WE ARE NATURE residency series the panelists will discuss topics ranging from the native birds of Newtown Creek bird migration and how New Yorkers can support migratory birds to the entanglement of human animal and environmental health. Kingsland Wildflowers a one-of-a-kind rooftop wildlife sanctuary on the bank of Newtown Creek is the perfect place to learn about the importance of green corridors and urban waterways to New York’s migratory birds. The 45 minute panel will immediately precede an artist-led tour of the Entanglement installation followed by the separate Watercolor for Birdwatchers workshop presented by Jeannie Rhyu.
Panelists:
Alex Procton (Agriculture Climate and Sustainability Researcher) – New York-based data scientist climate researcher and science writer. Procton studied animal behavior while pursuing a master’s in Conservation Biology at Columbia University and most recently has led data operations for the nonprofit Ecosystem Marketplace’s research on carbon markets. He is also the author of the newsletter Green Tech Futures which focuses on the intersection of technology climate and commodity production.
Jeannie Rhyu (Artist) – Korean-Canadian artist living and working in Queens New York whose interdisciplinary practice spans across painting printmaking and ceramics. Rhyu traces ancestral memories and emotional impressions by deconstructing and reimagining her cultural visual traditions excavating the structural remnants of cultural collective memory. Throughout Rhyu’s body of work images including the fathomless ocean migrating birds intrepid seafarers and the night sky recur with the rhythm of memory and experience.
Ellie Diamant (Urban Ecologist & Evolutionary Biologist) – Assistant Visiting Professor at Bard College and Associate Director of the Counterforce Lab. Diamant is an ecologist and evolutionary biologist interested in how organisms and populations respond to rapid human-caused environmental change and how human and non-human organisms and systems relate to and affect each other through collaborative and transdisciplinary work. Passionate about fostering connectivity to our natural world – especially in the spaces where it is so entwined in the human one – she is also active in transdisciplinary art and design advocacy growing interconnections between the human and more-than-human amongst a group of designers artists and thinkers.
Gus Perry is a Restoration Associate at Newtown Creek Alliance a community-based organization dedicated to restoring revealing and revitalizing the urban waterway of Newtown Creek. Through his role at NCA Gus helps with restoration work in and around the brackish waters of Newtown Creek including water quality monitoring intertidal habitat projects and green space maintenance. Gus studied Journalism and Environmental Studies at Eugene Lang College and lives in Ridgewood Queens.
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