Working with Steffen Thomas Museum of Art (STMA), this environmentally-focused exhibition explores at STMA, with artists and writers and audience, our place in the natural world: do we exist as a part of nature? Or outside of nature, experiencing the environment as a tourist or a consumer? The title is a play on the internet phrase “touch grass” or “go touch some grass” that may be said to suggest to someone that they have been online too much and are disconnected from the real world.
Studies show that the impact of experiencing art in person is as impactful as experiencing nature in person. Viewing art and nature on our screens is not enough – we need to touch grass. The invited artists in this exhibition have deep connections to the environments, as did Steffen Thomas. In viewing how these artists used different media to express that connection, we hope to spark curiosity, wonder, and a sense of custodianship about the natural world in students, as well as adults, who experience this exhibition.
Raven Waters uses a variety of paint and drawing media to capture people, animals, birds in their environments. Waters received a Fine Arts degree from Georgia Southern and lives (and paints) on a farm in southern Georgia with his partner, Janisse Ray.
Senora Lynch is a contemporary clay artist who is an enrolled member of the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe of North Carolina. Her work has been displayed in the National Museum of Women in the Arts and is in the collections of the NC Museum of History and the National Museum of the American Indian. Lynch is an educator who teaches many traditional arts as well as cultural competency.
Steffen Thomas expressed the joy and peace he found in observing animals, in sitting by ponds, and walking in forests, through his art and his writings.
