Ecotherapy: A Challenge

ALFONS GALLERY “CHALLENGES” WISCONSIN VISUAL ARTISTS
September/October online exhibition, open to WVA members, focuses on ecotherapy

While Alfons Gallery has temporarily suspended its regular hours of operation for in-person visits as a public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Gallery has launched online exhibitions that are available to anyone with an internet connection.

For the Gallery’s new exhibition, “Ecotherapy: A Challenge,” Valerie J. Christell, the Gallery’s director and curator, has created a “challenge” for members of Wisconsin Visual Artists. Artists were asked to create a new work that expresses the benefit of immersing themselves in the natural environment while we are in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak.

Ecotherapy—also called nature therapy or “green” therapy—is a practice that asserts human beings are part of their environment and can benefit from being immersed in it.

“This creative challenge is born out of this time of global social, physical, and mental upheaval,” Christell said. “By offering Wisconsin artists’ unique views on nature and their existence in it during the trying times of this global pandemic, the exhibition will reflect how people are spending more time in nature rather than inside buildings, and the benefits of that immersion.”

Christell said the creative submissions have been laid out within the virtual website space as an exhibition of a variety of artists’ works, but with something extra.

“The individual artist’s work is placed into a template that presents it along with an artist statement about the immersion that inspired the artwork,” she said. “We’re also including a link to the artist’s website, if available, to encourage viewers to search out more works by each artist.”