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ART for CHANGE

Art can be a powerful tool for change, disseminating ideas and inspiring people to act.

Sea Change, an exhibit at the Hayward Shoreline Interpretive Center, is doing just that — with the aim of bringing together art and concern for climate change.

Enid Baxter Blader, chair of the Teledramatic Arts and Technology Department at CSU Monterey Bay, served as guest curator for the exhibit. It includes a diverse collection of contemporary projects by artists, architects and scientists who explore the shifting interactions of land and sea – specifically, the rising sea level in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.

She was invited to curate the show by “a wonderful and respected group, WEAD (Women’s Environmental Art Directory,” Blader said.

Lauren Elder, a WEAD board member, “was a true partner in creating this exhibition which we have been working on for a year.”

Blader has worked on a number of science and art participatory exhibitions. In the last two years, she has curated or co-curated exhibitions at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento; the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena; and the prestigious Bay-Delta Science Conference in 2012, where she organized the conference’s first-ever arts exhibit, gave a plenary talk on science and art to 1,800 scientists and chaired a related panel.

Since her childhood growing up in a mining town – where she watched a mountain get razed – she has been interested in the intersections of landscape, history and community.

“All of my work resonates with these themes – plantord, waterca, local909ers. So do the workshops I founded through the Monterey Bay Film Society,” she said. “People, ecology and history.”

She makes work about “where I live or where I’m invited to investigate. I love people, histories and landscapes.

“I have a mind for science as an artist, and many scientists have a mind for art. There is a deep kinship there.”

Details: The Sea Change exhibit will be on display June 8-Sept. 15 at Hayward Shoreline Interpretive Center, 4901 Breakwater Ave., Hayward, (510) 670-7270. The center is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays. More information and driving directions are available here. Learn more about sea-level projections here.

Photos courtesy of Walter Ryce Top: Professor Blader at the Hayward Shoreline Interpretive Center exhibit opening Bottom: A crowd gathered at the opening reception

Learn more about what faculty members at CSU Monterey Bay are doing.