Exhibition: "Out of the Darkness: Light in the Depths of the Sea of Cortez"

Artist and Delta Visiting Chair for Global Understanding Rebecca Rutstein has worked in painting, sculpture, installation and public art and has an ongoing interest in abstraction inspired by science, data and maps. She has exhibited widely in museums, institutions and galleries and has received numerous awards including the prestigious Pew Fellowship in the Arts. Samantha Joye is Athletic Association Professor in Arts and Sciences in the department of marine sciences at the University of Georgia. Joye’s research examines the complex feedbacks that drive elemental cycling in coastal and open ocean environments, and the effects of climate change and anthropogenic disturbances on critical environmental processes to gain a better understanding of how future changes will affect ecosystem functioning. The two of them are collaborating on research-informed art.

For this exhibition, as part of her tenure as Delta Visiting Chair, Rutstein has created a 64-foot-long interactive sculptural installation with laser-cut steel and LED lights (on view through Oct. 27, 2019) and a monumental painting installation (on view through March 31, 2019), both of which reflect Joye’s expedition to the Guaymas Basin, shedding light on the unique processes occurring at this unusual hydrothermal vent location. The exhibition opens during UGA's 2018 Spotlight on the Arts festival and the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities conference, which will happen concurrently. While the exhibition is up, Rutstein and Joye will be going on an expedition to the ocean floor in the Guaymas Basin in an Alvin submarine.