Seagrass and Community Building through Art & Environmental Activism

In conjuction with Nedret Andre’s contemporary art exhitbition, The Air We Breathe, on view November 4-January 5, Beacon Gallery hosts a talk with the artist and activists in the field, featuring Samantha Woods, Executive Director of the North and South Rivers Watershed Association, Sara Grady, Ecologist at Massachusetts Bays National Estuary Partnership and North and South Rivers Watershed Association, and Dr. Randall Hughes, Professor in the Department of Marine and Environmental Sciences (MES) and Associate Dean for Equity at Northeastern University

The Air We Breathe focuses on the importance of seagrass for our ecosystem and how seagrass (also known as eelgrass) preservation is tied to our everyday decisions, through abstract painting and sculpture. Whether we recognize it or not, humanity is an active participant in marine life. Our hands hold the weight of decisions that will conserve or decimate the remaining 70% of seagrass. Andre’s visual aesthetic and participatory works draw the viewer’s attention to the crucial nature of our symbiotic relationship with this delicate plant: it oxygenates the ocean, is a carbon sink, and provides vegetation for sea creatures that provide nourishment. Andre’s brush bridges the mathematical and emotional by depicting the beauty of the remaining amount of seagrass in the water.

Nedret Andre is a painter and blogger working in South End, Boston. She earned her BFA in Painting at Massachusetts College of Art and received her MFA in Visual Arts from Maine College of Art. Her abstract oil paintings are process-based; exploring color, texture, mark-making, gestural drawing, and experimentation of oil paint through drips and flows. Inspired by the urban landscape of New England which has evolved from its coastal marshland and Sienese frescos by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, her paintings explore the vitality of seagrass for oxygenation. She works on restoration projects and collaborations with local marine ecologists. Part of each sale or commission proceeds is donated to nonprofits that advocate for ocean awareness and participate in seagrass preservation.

“From the surface, everything looks serene, however, underwater there are many variables affecting water quality and the life these habitats support. My goal is to encourage the audience to help shape the narrative of the role we play and our interdependency with the natural environment. We all have the agency to make change and connections to the coastal environment,” Andre says.