Join the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability & Media, and the Museum for Art in Wood for a discussion with artists and their call to action for our environment. Dr. Michael Mann will moderate the conversation with artists Katie Hudnall, Kiersten Adams, and Jessica Gath. This event will be in person and recorded for posting on YouTube later (this will not be live-streamed).
This event will be in person in the Agora Room at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104.
Click HERE to RSVP
Pictured: Katie Hudnall, The Blower (detail), 2024. Photo by John Carlano
About the Speakers
Michael Mann is Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication. He is director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media (PCSSM), and the Vice Provost for Climate Science, Policy, and Action at the University of Pennsylvania. He has received many honors and awards, including NOAA’s Outstanding Publication award in 2002 and selection by Scientific American as one of the fifty leading visionaries in science and technology in 2002. He contributed, with other IPCC authors, to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He received the Award for Public Engagement with Science from the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2018 and the Climate Communication Prize from the American Geophysical Union in 2018. In 2019 he received the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, and in 2020, he received the World Sustainability Award of the MDPI Sustainability Foundation. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2020. He received the Leo Szilard Award of the American Physical Society in 2021 and was named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association in 2023. He is the author of several books including Dire Predictions, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, The Madhouse Effect, The New Climate War and Our Fragile Moment.
Jessica Gath is a possibilitarian who makes artwork in paint, garments, zines, food, correspondence, community, activism, songs, dirt, plants, videos and whatever else gets the job done. Cycles of life and our connections to Earth and one another are integral to her practice. Jessica is a founding member of Artists Commit, an amorphous collective of artists working to support one another, arts workers, institutions, and businesses built up around art and the art world in bringing environmental justice into mainstream conversation and practices.
A Philadelphia native and [word] enthusiast, Kiersten Adams writes proudly about her hometown and community. She is a West Chester University and Covid-19 pandemic graduate holding a B.A. in English with a focus on writing. A lover of art and culture, Kiersten explores these concepts in multitudinous forms. Through journalism, non-profit work, photography, and creative writing she is constantly finding new ways to obsess over what’s going on around her. Current Obsessions: Black joy, Black futures, Black Lives
Katie Hudnall received her BFA in Sculpture from the Corcoran College of Art & Design and her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Furniture Design/Woodworking. Hudnall lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she runs the Woodworking and Furniture Program at the University of Madison, Wisconsin. When she’s not teaching, she spends her time making tools for problems both real and imagined. Hudnall’s distinctive work is held in public and private collections and has been presented in exhibitions throughout the United States, including Making a Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking (Museum for Art in Wood, 2019). She was a 2016 artist fellow in the Museum’s Windgate International Turning Exchange residency and a 2022 documentary artist fellow in the Windgate Arts Residency Program in Wood (WARP Wood). Katie Hudnall’s first museum exhibition, The Longest Distance between Two Points, is on view at the Museum for Art in Wood until July 20, 2025.
Questions?
Please contact Katie Sorenson, Director of Outreach and Communications, at [email protected].
