Stacy Levy

Visiting the University in 2021, Stacy Levy was an artist in residence in Cuyahoga Falls working with the community to consider the river and natural resources of Northeast Ohio. Levy guided students in a parking lot chalk drawing intervention highlighting the importance of water in the ecosystem.

People often think that nature ends where the city begins. My projects are designed to allow a site within the built environment to tell its ecological story to the people that inhabit it. As a sculptor, my interest in the natural world rests both in art and science. I use art as a vehicle for translating the patterns and processes of the natural world.

In my practice, I search for sites that provide the opportunity to make visible some of the forces at work on the site. Interested in watersheds, tides, growth and erosion, I make projects that show how nature functions in an urban setting. My previous projects have been about invisible microorganisms and their complicated relationships of eating and being eaten; spiraling hydrological patterns of a stream, mosaic of growth in a vacant lot, prevailing winds and their effects on vegetation, the flow of rainwater through a building.

When I was little, I grew up near a city park. And I used to play in a creek that smelled really different after a rainstorm. And it was years later that I realized that the creek I used to play in was a sewage outfall drainage channel and not really a “natural” creek at all. And I think that got me interested in the different kinds of water that cross the land. So, I wanted to investigate these different types of urban waters and bring them into view…I try to show change in many of my projects, and I work to have my projects collaborate directly with nature as nature changes over time. Nature is quite slow. Depending on the natural process, these projects can take a long time to show natural changes. I am not sure I’ve ever changed scientific practice. However, I have visualized scientific understanding in a new way. I believe this can help scientists understand that their world needs to be re-visioned— so that people outside of science can understand what scientists are quite intimate with. I think awareness is the first step to actionable change. And so, my job as an artist is to create awareness. Most people have no idea how the world works, and even I am fairly confused by its various systems, so it’s essential to take a deeper look at those systems and get to know what nature is really doing. And I hope that I can be part of starting that understanding. – Stacy Levy

@stacylevy