On the power of the arts:
"New ways of thinking about and interacting with the environment are urgently needed. The arts excel in connecting different disciplines and synthesizing divergent viewpoints. They are an important means of collaboration, where new perspectives can be created and communicated."
"The arts have the power to revitalize society’s relationship to nature, and to create more inclusive narratives that help broaden the scope of our vision of the non-human world. The arts have the power to make the environment matter. And what matters to a society is what it works to preserve."
On how SVMoA helped further her work:
"Forests, Foraging and Fires at SVMoA in 2014 gave me the opportunity to produce a major new work: Colonize the Earth, a twenty-foot photographic scroll including thirty separate photographs, that merged together to create the finished work. By bringing together the work of eight artists, Forests, Foraging and Fires opened a dialogue about society’s changing relationship with the natural world. It was exciting to see this section of my long-term, multi-media Leafcutters project come together for the very first time."
—Catherine Chalmers, Exhibiting Artist, Forest, Foraging and Fires
