Cave conservation artist to demonstrate at Venue

Art and science are unlikely subjects to pair together.

But that’s what the National Speleological Society did this summer to educate the public.

By utilizing this pair of subjects, the Outreach Through the Arts subcommittee of the Environmental Education committee was created to unite arts, conservation and education under one cause.

Val Hildreth-Werker, co-chairwoman of the NSS Conservation Division, said she hopes that through the arts, the NSS’s message will reach more people.

“The more people can be involved on a visual, audial and kinetic level, the more ownership of the conservation message for caves and karsts will be created as they experience it,” she said. “It’s about creating, understanding and ownership.”

The NSS is a national organization committed to the study, exploration and conservation of cave and karst resources.

Hildreth-Werker said the organization would like to make “karst” a household term. Karst regions, she said, contain aquifers of all sizes that provide a large groundwater supply, and the water found in these aquifers is clearly exposed and easily vulnerable to contamination caused by human activity of the surface.

Hildreth-Werker also said that 25 percent of the United States is underlain by karst, including Bloomington. About 40 percent of the people who use groundwater in the United States depend on karst aquifers, yet many people are not aware that they live on karst terrain.

Kriste Lindberg, Chairman of the NSS Environmental Education committee, said the fact that Bloomington is on karst terrain helps make the NSS’s message more relatable for her and the community.

“We’re in a karst area, and we’re completely surrounded by it, so the more we take care of it, the better off it will be and we’ll be,” she said.

Another goal for the NSS is to bring public awareness to White-Nose syndrome, a wildlife disease severely affecting the bat population. The NSS hopes to educate the public about this issue and other conservation issues dealing with cave-dwelling species.

The arts, Lindberg said, offer an opportunity to reach even more people by balancing artistic activities and scientific understanding.

“This committee is kind of like a bridge to bring science and art together,” she said. “We don’t know many others who are doing this. We recognize that this is valuable, and it can work, and it has worked so far.”

Lindberg will have a demonstration Tuesday at The Venue Fine Arts and Gifts in Bloomington called “Green Halloween.” She will be painting species of cave-dwelling animals on pieces of glassware and paper.

“Not much of the work I have here can relate to scientific fields,” Gabriel Colman, curator of The Venue, said. “It’s exciting to now have something here rooted in hard science.”

Hildreth-Werker said she hopes to create more opportunities for community art projects dealing with cave and karst conservation efforts. For now, Hildreth-Werker said, the possibilities are endless.

“We have so many ideas, and we are limited only by our imagination,” she said. “This fun outlet for collaboration brings the big picture all together.”