How did you come to be interested in the Hudson River?

The Hudson is a unique cultural, social and environmental symbol in this country. The river was the inspiration for America's first native school of art. These artists not only interpreted the grandeur of the river landscape but sometimes portrayed the rapid environmental change brought about by the industrial revolution. For example, Thomas Cole, the founding father of the school, viewed nature as sacred and often depicted environmental degradation as a symbolic violent storm disrupting an otherwise serene picture frame.

A century later, the environmental organization Scenic Hudson led a battle against utility giant ConEd to prevent them from building the world's largest pumped-storage hydroelectric plant on Storm King Mountain. After a seventeen-year legal struggle, Scenic Hudson won! The lawsuit against ConEd became a legal landmark because it established for the first time that citizens have the right in federal court to intervene when polluters or developers threaten public resources—this in turn formed the basis for the National Environmental Policy Act in 1969.

Finally as an artist who participates in ecological research, I am interested in connecting people with their local environments. Through these hybrid art and biology projects, I hope to inspire people and help them understand the need to protect ecosystems both locally and globally. It is only natural for me to research the Hudson; after all, it is part of my home.

How long have you been observing and collecting species from the Hudson?

Last summer, I taught at the University Settlement Camp in Beacon, NY, where I started collecting and doing simple scans with the campers. Since then, Pete Warny and I have continued to survey fish, amphibians and invertebrates at various locations. The specimens for this exhibit come from a number of places. For the Freshwater Tank, I collected darters, dace and sunfish from tributaries near Beacon. In July, I collected brackish species—silversides, Japanese shore crabs and white perch with the girls from Wave Hill’s Environmental Science Camp at Dyckman Pier in Inwood Park. We’re borrowing saltwater species such as horseshoe crabs from the AREAC lab at Brooklyn College and from The River Project in lower Manhattan.

What happens to the animals after the exhibit?

The borrowed ones go back to where they came from and the others are released.

You’ve scanned many species from the Hudson. Why did you select these five species to include as prints in the exhibit? What do they tell us about the health of the river?

I have scanned dozens of species on a specialized, super high-resolution scanner that creates a direct, greatly magnified image. There are five uncommon and potentially declining species displayed here—the horsehair worm, the clearnose skate, the Atlantic sturgeon, the striped killifish and the mudpuppy. To my knowledge, only about dozen horsehair worms have been found in the Hudson and now the mudpuppy may be extinct from the river. Stan Sessions and I have been experimenting with scanning techniques at Hartwick College where both the sturgeon and the skate were research specimens that we cleared and stained prior to scanning. In the staining process, you can see so much more of the fish.

Since many species are declining, the scans are a way of recording species that are hard to find, as well as a way of showing them as incredibly beautiful creatures. They are declining due to habitat alteration from human activity that has occurred continuously along the Hudson since its settlement by Europeans. As an artist, I am interested in demonstrating the connection between habitat alteration and species adaptation.

In this installation you present information in the form of scanned images, aquariums filled with aquatic life that comes from different points in the river, and maps from the EPA’s Enviromapper system. How do you think people will connect this information? What do you hope they will take from the installation?

The maps and the fish tanks are a tangible way for people to engage the river and become interested in plants and animals that they wouldn’t typically be able to see. I would like people to recognize that the river is not separate from their daily lives; it is not located somewhere else, but is integral to the interconnected communities along the shoreline. From the phytoplankton that helps to create the air we breathe, to the fish that we eat, we’re connected to the river. Anything that affects the health of the river will eventually affect us. I would like people to see that their daily activities have an impact on the life of the river.

Your work blurs the boundaries of art, technology and science. How do you see your role as an artist?

I want to get people involved in their local environment. Scientists don’t usually make their work accessible to the public. As an artist, I take the scientific research and make it available to people. Contemporary artists should engage the public. It’s not enough to work in the studio. I see the real world as a medium, and art as a form of engagement.