For Gretchen Scharnagl, a Miami-based environmental artist and professor in the Art History department at Florida International University, her art and subject matter are her way of connecting — connecting herself to others, and others to her art.
For her exhibit “Terra Ephemera,” at the Coral Springs Museum of Art running through Oct. 8, Scharnagl, 64, brings a number of “stepping into her subject works,” some more mature works, and pieces created specifically for this show.
“Terra Ephemera” makes use of traditional and nontraditional media in a way that provokes visual, conversational, human, and scientific interest.
“Gretchen is a risk taker,” says Jill Brown, executive director of the Coral Springs Museum of Art. “This translates into an important component of her creative process. Gretchen’s art transcends the familiar and leans heavily into difficult and unknown territory, leaving viewers to think and rethink what they are seeing.
“‘Terra Ephemera’ tackles the mundane while exploring the environment with a strong sense of place,” Brown says. “It makes us think about our relationship with the world and each other from the present, past, and future.”
Scharnagl lives with her husband, Robert, 64, a carpenter/contractor who often plays a role as her art assistant; two large Dobermans; and three cats.
From her backyard studio in suburban Miami, where she has lived for 40 years, Scharnagl examines common artifacts from her environs, reads copious amounts of scientific environmental studies, and is fascinated by her own compulsions, leading her to discover and explore little-known phenomena.
While visiting the Field Museum in Chicago, Scharnagl became fascinated by the story of migrating birds who collided with urban architecture and died. Her raison d’etre is to highlight little-known environmental issues — such as this and other facts like a worldwide sand shortage — through her art-making.
The mother of two women scientists, Scharnagl reads about science, the earth, and the environment and finds inspiration for her art.
She cites Edward Humes’s “Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash,” Susan Strasser’s “Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash,” Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s “Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene,” and David Wallace-Wells’ “Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming” as influences.
“I feel an urgency that art should take a responsibility,” Scharnagl says. “Art that is speaking of something important has to jump the fence and speak to those that would not necessarily have exposure to it.”
For someone intensely committed to her art and teaching, Scharnagl came to her calling in her 40s, calling herself “a reluctant artist.”
“I did not consider myself an artist for the majority of my life,” she says. She was prodded into it by a comment she overheard by a mother saying she was wasting her talents by volunteering in her children’s school.
“She could be right,” thought Scharnagl, who hasn’t looked back since.
Her series “The Anthropocene” consists of eight works depicting climate change, water-level rise, and other “planetary boundaries” we are crossing, such as crimes against animals (think wet markets and COVID-19). “Elegy for Earth,” a melancholic lament about the state of the earth, includes three parts, “Earth Retold,” “Earth Tracings,” and “Earth Remains,” which are designed to make the audience think about the state of our earth.
A performance piece scheduled for the opening reception on Sept. 22, “The Earth Piñata Performance,” symbolizes mankind’s treatment of Mother Earth. Participants will break open the 28-inch, earth-like piñata, releasing 2,000 plastic animals, plants, and fungi, creating a new piece of work.
“The Globe Maker” (“a labor of love”) consists of 20 papier-mâché globes that Scharnagl created with her husband, born out of an “obsession” with the word “biophilia” (an innate and genetically determined affinity of human beings with the natural world, a theory developed by biologist E. O. Wilson).
The littlest globe, made from pages from her collection of National Geographic magazines, is titled “Little Blue Marble” — an homage to astronomer Carl Sagan. The globes are cradled in vintage camera and transit tripods used for surveying the earth’s surface that Scharnagl found online, a synergy she couldn’t resist.
“Every part has something to say,” she says. “What you make it with, what kind of papers, graphite, glue, or other media you use. I consider the art-making a way to think, a way to discover and explore. It’s a way to discover things about your subject and yourself.
“When I create art, it’s a personal narrative embedded in a universal idea,” she says. “I identify with the bird who hits the building, with the earth itself, and identify with poetry and cultural mythologies about Mother Earth.”
Scharnagl credits German painter Albrecht Durer as an influence and her professors at FIU, including Clive King, Manny Torres, and Bill Burke, for teaching her to self-critique.
She admires African-American artist Mark Bradford for his large-scale abstract collages; Jamaican-born American artist Nari Ward for his sculptural installations addressing consumer culture, poverty, and race; and art writer Linda Weintraub for her writings on environmental consciousness.
In her spare time, Scharnagl admits to being a “total Trekkie.” “If push comes to shove, I call ‘Star Trek’ my martini — it feeds my soul.”
Future plans include a possible residency at the Deering Estate in Miami and continuing to create art.
“I don’t want to sound like I’m blowing my own horn,” Scharnagl says, “but people have told me, ‘You’re giving a gift to the world.’”
Exhibition Dates
Aug. 23–Oct. 8, 2022
“Ask the Artist” Talk
Thursday, Sept. 8, 6:30 p.m., mingle/gallery view; 7 p.m., talk
Opening Reception
Thursday, Sept. 22, 5:30–8:30 p.m.
“Earth Piñata” Performance Piece
Live during reception