SLOW GROWING IN THE TIME OF TREES: A PANEL DISCUSSION

May 2, 2025 - 2:00pm - 4:00pm

Slow Growing Panel

Free

Artist-in-residence Yevgeniya Kaganovich and her Collaborators, Lisa Moline, Lane Hall, Katharine Beutner, and Jim Charles, will discuss the outcomes of the speculative projects undertaken by the Slow Growing in the Time of Trees Collaboratory. Katharine Beutner will read work produced during the Collaboratory.

This event is organized by Slow Growing in the Time of Trees, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee C21-sponsored collaboratory formed to cultivate an interdisciplinary creative space that examines the long duration of tree-time in the face of human and non-human interventions. It is part of their Slow Knowing program series.

More About Yevgeniya Kaganovich and Slow Growing in the Time of Trees

Artist-in-residence Yevgeniya Kaganovich is a Belarus-born, Milwaukee-based artist, whose hybrid practice encompasses jewelry and metalsmithing, sculpture and installation. Yevgeniya received an MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz and a BFA in Metal/Jewelry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Yevgeniya has been an active art practitioner since 1992, exhibiting her work nationally and internationally. Her work has received numerous awards and has been published widely. Yevgeniya’s interest in craft scholarship and pedagogy lead her to undertake curatorial projects, panel and symposium organizing, and other contributions to contemporary craft discourse. Yevgeniya has worked as a Designer/Goldsmith at Peggie Robinson Designs, Studio of Handcrafted Jewelry in Evanston, Illinois and has taught Metalsmithing at Chicago State University, Chicago, Illinois, and Lill Street Studios, Chicago Illinois. Currently Yevgeniya is a Professor in the Department of Art and Design, Peck School of the Arts, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, heading a thriving Jewelry and Metalsmithing Area with a graduate and undergraduate programs.

In 2019, Kaganovich planted trees on the Lynden grounds for her tree intuits chair residency project. They have continued to grow in and out of the shape of chairs ever since. Slow Growing in the Time of Trees considers and contextualizes the time and materiality of the trees themselves, as well as the trees in relation to the human and non-human species that come into contact and engage in transformations with them. It focuses on the aesthetic possibilities of intermixing human and nonhuman processes in complex webs of entanglement inherent in durational processes. Throughout the growing season, Kaganovich and her collaborators will create speculative forms out of reused plastic bags and cardboard, inoculate grain and straw medium with three varieties of oyster mushroom spores, and situate the forms in and around the trees on the grounds of Lynden Sculpture Garden, documenting the ways in which these cultivated fruiting bodies develop and distort Kaganovich’s fabricated forms.

C21 is the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee College of Letters & Sciences Center for 21st Century Studies. C21 believes that the complex challenges we face in the 21st century are best met through collaborations across areas of expertise and experience, and that the humanities are a vital part of addressing these challenges. Collaboratory funding is an opportunity to bring together teams of scholars across disciplines, across university and community partnerships, and across emerging and established scholars (students / staff / faculty) to inspire the generation of new ideas.


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