Bio-Art After Dark: A Sanctuary Sustainer Soirée is a fundraiser that will feature music by Ryder Cooley and members of her band, Dust Bowl Faeries, and a scandalous insect symposium with visiting bio-artist, Brandon Ballengée. Light refreshments (including artisanal bug pizza) included.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

More about the Soiree:

From 8-9pm you will be serenaded by artist and musician Ryder Cooley & members of her band, Dust Bowl Faeries, playing their original blend of Dark Carnival dream music. The unique compositions of Dust Bowl Faeries have roots in klezmer, circus and old-timey music. Accordion, singing saw, ukulele, lap ­steel, electric guitar, bass & percussion combine to create the Dust Bowl Faeries’ otherworldly sound. The band started as a girl group trio and has now expanded to include five generations of musicians. Hazel, a taxidermy ram, joins the Faeries as mascot-spirit animal.

SEED SONG is a seed-sharing project that pairs plants with extinct and endangered animals. The packets include hand-harvested seeds, printed artwork, information about the plant/animal, planting instructions and a link/download to a song about the animal. The first packet contains Husk Cherry seeds, which are dedicated to the extinct Dodo bird. This project is a bi-coastal collaboration between art farmer Zoey Kroll & artist/musician  Ryder Cooley. Seed Song packets will be available, all proceeds will benefit The Sanctuary for Independent Media-Nature Lab. http://edibleoffice.wixsite.com/animaliaseed

From 9-10pm join artist/scientist/culinary team Brandon and Aurore Ballengée who will talk about the merits of insects in our ever warmer world. Enjoy eating Bug Treats and Bug Pizza, (some deliciously made with real bugs!), and observe UV-lit sculptures attract nighttime bug visitors who frolic and have bug sex in the UV glow!

Join us along with artist/scientist Brandon Ballengée for bug-watching and an insect tasting at the Love Motel for Insects in Collard City Garden! Here we will look for nocturnal bugs attracted to ultraviolet black lights such as beautiful moths, bold beetles and other segmented critters that go bump in the night! Not only will we watch bugs but we will eat some too! Entomophagy is the human use of insects as food and is considered a “future diet” as insects are full of protein, ecologically sustainable and downright tasty. So come on down to enjoy scrumptious crickets, mouthwatering mealworms and other deliciously yummy bugs!

www.brandonballengee.com

More Information

Ryder Cooley is an inter-disciplinary artist, musician and performer. Weaving together chimeric visions with songs and projected imagery, she creates cinematic performances and musical dream worlds. Ryder performs with Hazel, a disembodied taxidermy ram, and with the band Dust Bowl Faeries. She is based in the New York Hudson Valley.

Zoey Kroll is an artist, designer and urban farmer based in San Francisco, CArydercooley.com

Brandon Ballengée is a visual artist, biologist and environmental educator based in Louisiana.  Ballengée creates transdisciplinary artworks inspired from his ecological field and laboratory research. Since 1996, a central investigation focus has been the occurrence of developmental deformities and population declines among amphibians. In 2001, he was nominated for membership into Sigma XI, the Scientific Research Society. In 2009, Ballengée and SK Sessions published “Explanation for Missing Limbs in Deformed Amphibians” in the Journal of Experimental Zoology and received international media attention from the BBC and others. This scientific study was the inspiration for the book Malamp: The Occurrence of Deformities in Amphibians (published by Arts Catalyst & Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK) and a solo exhibition at the Royal Institution of Great Britain (London, England: 2010). From 2009 through 2015 he continued his amphibian research as a Visiting Scientist at McGill University (Montréal, Canada) and, in 2011, he was awarded a conservation leadership fellowship from the National Audubon Society’s TogetherGreen Program (USA). In 2014 he received his Ph.D. in Transdisciplinary Art and Biology from Plymouth University (UK) in association with Zürich University of the Arts and Applied Sciences (Switzerland). In 2015, he was the recipient of a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA)

Currently, he is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Biological Sciences Department at Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge, Louisiana), studying the impact on fishes from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. His project, Crude Life Portable Museum: A Citizen Art and Science Investigation of Gulf of Mexico Biodiversity after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, is ongoing thanks to an Interdisciplinary Projects Grant Award from the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative (NAKFI), a project of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

Ballengée’s artwork has previously been exhibited throughout the USA and internationally in more than 20 countries, including Canada, Argentina, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Slovenia, Russia, India, China, South Korea and Australia. In the summer of 2013 the first career survey of Ballengeé’s work debuted at the Château de Chamarande (Essonne, France), and travelled to the Museum Het Domein (Sittard, Netherlands) in 2014. A mid-career retrospective of his work opened in the fall of 2016 at the University of Wyoming Art Museum (Laramie, Wyoming), which will travel to the Rowan University Art Museum (Glassboro, NJ) and the Acadiana Center for the Arts (Lafayette, Louisiana).

His art has been featured in several major US publications, including ARTnews, Art in America, The New York Times, New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Orion, Audubon Magazine and Sculpture. Internationally, it was also featured in Beaux Arts (France), Greenpeace Magazin (Germany), Liberation (France), L’Oeil (France), The Observer (England), The Guardian (England), Financial Times (England), BBC News (England), D’Ars (Italy), Domenica (Italy), Il Venerdi (Italy), SNACKS (China), The Sunday Guardian: New Dehli (India) and others.

We are committed to lowering the barriers to access for events at The Sanctuary for Independent Media. For people who are hard of hearing or deaf, blind or low-vision, or whose physical limitations can interfere with a satisfying experience, let us know two weeks in advance so we can make appropriate arrangements.