Client: PARTNERING NON-PROFITS: Oak Spring Garden Foundation and Piedmont Environmental Council

Overview

Ridgeline Project, hosted in collaboration with the Oak Spring Garden Foundation and Piedmont Environmental Council, invited community members to learn about local environmental challenges and to unite in a unique art-centric experience. With participants carrying illuminated umbrellas showcasing endangered flora, images inspired by books & etchings housed at the Oak Spring Garden Library, the gathering becomes a dance of light. From afar, participants transform into nature itself; a field of reseeded flowers blooming, backlit insects pollinating or constellations of stars twinkling against the backdrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains. All occurred in the face of today’s extreme weather patterns: this time, Hurricane Ian.

Goals

VISION
Surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains, Ridgeline aims to combine the passion for protecting and preserving our habitat with joyful communal art experiences. We believe that shifting our patterns can change our world, imagining together is a first step. Inspired by the stories of endangered local flora, Ridgeline highlights the current fragility of our surroundings. When we bring local communities together as environmental advocates through creative play, we feel the power of optimistic collective action.

Process

EXPLORING JOY and PURPOSE while BUILDING COMMUNITY
1. Dreaming together to create a work of art—larger than an individual—transforms. Together participants feel the hopeful power of their community. Ridgeline aims to protect our environment's infinite beauty and resources which is only possible together. ET Projects uses experiential art as a platform to educate and inspire communities to become one, creating social sculptures focused in nature, the space where we are rejuvenated.
2. Ridgeline shines a light upon the native flora and fauna of Virginia, to highlight the beauty of the local environment and how that beauty needs curating for all of our legacy.
3. Working in collaboration with the Oak Spring Garden Foundation and Piedmont Environmental Council we expanded the reach of each of our nonprofit organizations. We created a unified moment of joy, even during this time of division—all inspired by the rich history of nature's beauty.

Additional Information

CIVIC LANDSCAPE Ridgeline highlights the ephemerality of nature, the unexpected joy within connected communities and the inspired collective memory-- one which expands when shared with others. The next step is to project the video creations of the many communities together and publicly. We are looking for billboard opportunities and/or building mapping projection sites because; "Shifting our patterns can change worlds."