CANCELED – Inside Outside: An interactive event about access with The Nature Conservancy

Join Artspace and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in Connecticut for an interactive event exploring the boundaries between internal and external experiences in indoor and outdoor spaces. Inside Outside will begin with a panel followed by tactile activities for event attendees to visualize how we access indoor and outdoor spaces and what our bodies need to feel welcome and be present once we are there. The panel will feature a conversation between Sophie Duncan and Hannah Rhodes from TNC’s preserve accessibility team and interdisciplinary artist Opal Ecker Deruvo and will be facilitated by Diana Nguyen.

If you have additional accessibility need, do not speak English as a first language, use ASL or other interpreting devices, please email gabe@artspacenh.org by October 20, 2022. We will plan accordingly to give access to those who need. The event will be recorded.

Speaker Bios:

Sophie Duncan is a land steward with The Nature Conservancy in Connecticut. They tend to preserves statewide with a particular focus on Griswold Point during shorebird nesting season. In addition to monitoring and maintaining TNC’s land, Sophie also leads the Accessibility Implementation Team which focuses on equitable preserve access. When they are not roaming the shoreline or forests, Sophie can be found swimming in the ocean, dreaming up garden schemes with the Leisure Cilantro Society, or doodling outside with their very long dog Gromit.

Diana Nguyen (she/her) is a Vietnamese-American environmentalist passionate about bringing together people, knowledge, and resources to build more just and equitable communities–for this generation and next. As the Community Engagement Associate at The Nature Conservancy in Connecticut, she cultivates relationships with diverse stakeholders across Long Island Sound and holds spaces for communities to engage in decision-making on local conservation and resilience initiatives. Diana can be found recreating her mother’s Vietnamese recipes with plant-based twists or sharing food, art, and spontaneity with the Leisure Cilantro Society.

Hannah Rhodes is a junior at the University of Massachusetts Amherst studying Natural Resource Conservation with a concentration in Wildlife Conservation. She is passionate about equal and intergenerational access to nature and its resources and spent the past summer interning at The Nature Conservancy in Connecticut as a Yale Conservation Scholar focusing on preserve accessibility. In her free time, Hannah loves creative pursuits such as singing and playing the ukulele, as well as visiting museums.

Opal Ecker DeRuvo is a transfeminine transdisciplinary artist and collaborative printmaker. Using historic photo-processes, large scale image transfers onto architectural substrates, and laser imaging techniques (re-engineered from machine vision technology), their practice connects the materiality of photography with experiences of trans-embodiment. They began printmaking as an apprentice to a master printmaker at the age of 14 and received their BFA in printmaking from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. For 6 years following their BFA they worked as a collaborative printmaker at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk CT. They grew up in a family of darkroom photographers, during their MFA at Yale in the painting and printmaking department their work has come to investigate the origins of photography within the materials and history of printmaking. They are interested in the role of images in the formation of identity. Incorporating fundamental physics of light and the intricacy of our perception, their cross-disciplinary research looks to expand trans representation beyond the ways in which we are seen and toward new ways of seeing.