Caryl Henry Alexander- Curator "Oasis in the Woods " Long Beach

 August 23rd - August 25th, 2024, Loiter Galleries, Long Beach, California. 

Visual Arts Development Project welcomes curator Caryl Henry Alexander as she presents and explores her installation from "Nzinga Nature Tour Oasis 2023", the topic of "Land Art" or "Earth Art" in a three-day installation.  

Caryl Henry was born in Highland Park, New Jersey, in 1955. She has been a practicing artist her whole life and has exhibited widely in galleries and museums in the US and abroad. 

Her practice focuses on social and environmental justice, women's rights, and cultural equity. She is a proud founding member of several artists and women's grassroots advocacy groups in the Bay Area. 

Her education is a mélange of traditional art schools, residencies, and collaborations with artists in communities internationally. She is a 1980s adapter of non-traditional arts education projects, including community public art, artists in the schools, and as a curator of storytelling art exhibitions. Caryl has also taught in art schools and universities and is today a mentor to many of her former students.

For the last two decades, Ms. Henry Alexander has focused on visually communicating our not-so-natural environment's catastrophic changes and its joys and sorrows. Today, her work is collaborative and leans into community, a sustainable world, and joy! 

Environmental art encompasses historical approaches to nature in art and more recent ecological and politically motivated works. It has evolved away from formal concerns, such as monumental earthworks using earth as a sculptural material, towards a deeper relationship to systems, processes, and phenomena related to social concerns.

Integrated social and ecological approaches developed as an ethical, restorative stance emerged in the 1990s. Over the past ten years, environmental art has become a focal point of exhibitions worldwide as climate change's social and cultural aspects come to the forefront.

What is Deep Play?

Play allows one to encounter risky or potentially life-threatening experiences, develop survival skills, and conquer fear.

This type of play is defined by play behavior that can also be considered risky or adventurous.  Deep play can happen alongside any of the other types of play – Creative play, communication play, dramatic play, exploratory play, fantasy play, locomotor play, imaginative play, mastery play, object play, recapitulative play, role play, rough and tumble play, social play, symbolic play, and socio-dramatic play. 

Learn more about the 16 play types in our blog post, “What are the Playwork Principles and Play Types?”