The Living Art & Ecology Lab
Our Mission
The Living Art & Ecology Lab is an interdisciplinary hub at the intersection of art and science in the Department of Art.
This studio laboratory supports diverse and expansive creative research related to environmental justice, human/non-human interactions, and sustainable futures, with an emphasis on restorative and equitable practices in the arts and life sciences. It draws from the emergent field of Living Art, which brings together knowledge and methodologies from ecology, biomimicry, art, design, landscape architecture, and indigenous stewardship practices.
As a Living Lab, LAEL uses Ohio State’s campus as a study site for students to explore how big picture patterns show up in our local landscape through project-based learning. In doing so, LAEL encourages students to practice communicating across disciplines while also highlighting art as a way of thinking and creative problem solving when approaching “wicked” environmental problems.
LAEL supports curriculum, faculty research, graduate work, and student projects, as well as community engagement beyond OSU through workshops and guest artist events that are open to the general public.
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We acknowledge that the land that The Ohio State University occupies is the ancestral and contemporary territory of the Shawnee, Potawatomi, Delaware, Miami, Peoria, Seneca, Wyandotte, Ojibwe and many other Indigenous peoples. Specifically, the university resides on land ceded in the 1795 Treaty of Greeneville and the forced removal of tribes through the Indian Removal Act of 1830. As a land grant institution, we want to honor the resiliency of these tribal nations and recognize the historical contexts that has and continues to affect the Indigenous peoples of this land. https://art.osu.edu/about/land-acknowledgement-statement