The ‘ebb and flow’ of kelp in art at UC San Diego exhibit

There’s something about freediving into the giant kelp forests off the local coastline that elicits a sense of magic and wonder in artist and marine scientist Oriana Poindexter. What started as a desire to use her visual arts degree from Princeton University to photograph the marine collection at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, turned into earning a master’s degree in marine biodiversity and conservation that helps inform her art.

“I’m a particularly visual communicator, so for me, my way of communicating the things that I’m interested in is to visualize primarily photo-based processes. I’ve had these two intersecting interests for a long time, both as an interest and an ability,” she said. “I’ve intersected them in this space where I’m using the photography and the photo-based processes to communicate the wonder that I feel about the marine ecosystems that we have here. The fact that I can access them physically by freediving from shore is another kind of layer. It’s both a space I feel comfortable in and one that I feel really a lot of awe in.”

That interest in, and respect for, ocean life can be seen in the new exhibition, “Ebb and Flow: Giant Kelp Forests through Art, Science and the Archives” at UC San Diego’s Geisel Library through April 21. Poindexter is curator and one of the contributing artists, whose cyanotype photography will be on display alongside the contemporary work of ceramic artist Julia C R Gray, the classical Japanese gyotaku art and European nature printing of Dwight Hwang and the ecological and optimistic kelpinspired work of Marie Mckenzie. (An opening reception with the artists is being hosted from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Thursday on the second floor of the Geisel Library. Registration is free and recommended.)

Poindexter, whose work has been exhibited locally, nationally and internationally, took some time to talk about the exhibition, her artistic process, and the wondrous world of giant kelp forests. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For a longer version of this conversation, visit sandiegouniontribune.com/sdutlisa-deaderick-staff.html.)

Q:

Can you talk about your artistic process? What it looks like and how you came to develop it?

A:

I learned how to scuba dive, and it’s wonderful. It’s a great tool for certain things; I prefer to freedive, which is holding your breath and going down and looking around because, for me, it’s a better experience. Occasionally, it’s great to have a tank and be able to breathe at the bottom, but on a daily basis, I much prefer not having all of that equipment and getting in the water without it. You’re just able to move in a way in the ocean that is so different than when you’re constrained by all of the scuba diving equipment.

The most exciting place to be in the ocean when you’re freediving, for me, is the kelp forest and to be able to spend time in three dimensions, going up and down through this forest environment, is really magical. There’s nothing like it anywhere. Diving in warm places is wonderful, but this is my favorite diving because we have this incredible, three-dimensional ecosystem from the bottom to the top that is like flying through a terrestrial forest.

Q:

Can you talk about your approach to curating “Ebb and Flow”? What were you looking for? What were some priorities for you in terms of your ultimate vision for this exhibition?

A:

There are a couple of origin points. Ellen Browning Scripps, the founding benefactor of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and her sister, Virginia, I knew had done seaweed pressings in the late 1890s, early 1900s. I knew these existed, and I thought it was just really fantastic to think about these women at that time, sort of doing the same thing that I was doing — going out into the environment, collecting material, and bringing it back and creating something beautiful out of it that had this connection to place. Also, one of the very first books of photographs in the world is a collection of cyanotypes of algae made in Britain in the 1840s by a woman named Anna Atkins, so this idea of theory being a throughline through time was really exciting to me, specifically here, in this place.

The throughline for me with this show was kind of illustrating, through different artistic processes, this common urge of going out into nature, observing closely, and kind of interpreting it in your own artistic way. So, we have four artists working in different mediums. Then, we have 134 years represented with the seaweed pressings from 1890 to 2023, all focused on the kelp forest and those associated species that we have there. I was really trying to collect these kinds of evidences interpreted in different methods, of the same environment, done by different people at different timesbut focused on the same place.

Q:

Kelp forests are common along much of the California coast, providing food and shelter for a wide variety of underwater plants and animals. Can you talk about how these kelp forests also benefit humans?

A:

They are historically widely distributed along the Pacific coastline of the United States, in North America from Baja to Alaska. They need a rocky substrate to attach themselves to, so big, sandy areas don’t have these environments, but rocky coastlines do. For humans, there’s a lot of research going on right now on the carbon sequestration potential of kelp forests. They grow at an incredible rate (up to two feet per day is the most cited statistic for giant kelp in field conditions), so they’re just putting on biomass really fast. There’s a lot of controversy about how, exactly, that can be removed from the environment and sequestered fully, but they’re consuming carbon and producing oxygen at an incredible rate. Also, healthy kelp forests can mitigate the effects of erosion on the coastline, which is something that a lot of coastal landowners are particularly interested in. Kelp and other seaweeds are a fantastic food source. We don’t really utilize that in Southern California as much, but I think there’s a lot of momentum growing on the food front for the California cuisine, incorporating seaweed further into restaurants and diets.

Q:

What’s your hope for how this exhibit might compel viewers to behave in their relationship with the environment?

A:

I hope that it encourages people to develop their own relationship with the environment. I wanted to portray artwork that was a representation of each different artist’s relationship with the same environment. I think the best outcome that I can see of this is more people wanting to go down to the tidepools at low tide, or get in the water and develop whatever their interpretation of that environment is, whatever their interpretation of that relationship is. Whether they can access the tides or not, if that’s just a relationship with the nature that they have access to, outside of their homes, whatever that relationship is interpreted as, that’s what I hope people can develop from this.