In Derrick Jensen’s 1995 book Listening to the Land, Chickasaw poet and environmentalist Linda Hogan said, “There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story.” Decades on, we continue to grapple with an increasing detachment from nature as unfettered urban development continues, the current administration rolls back environmental protections for emissions and public lands, and escalating reliance on A.I. in work and daily life has led to a massive surge in data center construction.
Our collective clamoring for so-called progress and our obsession with creature comforts and endless technological advancements mean we’re removing ourselves both physically and psychologically from a world humans were once much more in tune with. For artist Meg Webster, this fraying relationship to our environment has long informed an interdisciplinary practice that advocates for nature.
Through immersive environmental installations and large-scale sculptures made from organic materials, Webster interrogates the delicate yet resilient balancing act sustained by the earth’s ecosystems, which are continually degraded. In direct opposition to the extractive processes society relies on for fossil fuels and other natural resources, the artist invites us to commune with elements such as soil, salt, sand, and more, by experiencing them in unexpectedly precise geometric forms.
For Sculpture Milwaukee, an aluminum and glass spiral fitted with an irrigation system nourishes an intimate garden. At Paula Cooper Gallery earlier this year, a monumental installation made from plant cuttings loosely unfurled in a coiled, almost fox-like form. And a long-term installation at Dia Beacon filled the organization’s post-industrial space with monumental sculptures made of salt, earth, beeswax, and dried brush.
The works most recently at Dia, which included installations like “Cono di Sale (Salt Cone)” (1988) and “Wall of Wax (1990)” draw on the post-minimalist tradition of using easily accessible materials and unlike the movement’s predecessor, not obscuring the way it was constructed. Webster’s pieces are simultaneously meticulous and organic; she creates precise domes, cones, and concave slabs that are fragile, even precarious, yet they also possess an inherent strength.
Webster’s works incorporate ancient shapes, such as spirals, which manifest often in her installations. Ubiquitous and universal, these forms were carved into stone thousands of years ago at places like boulders used to build the Newgrange passage tomb in Ireland and on carefully selected slabs of sandstone in the American Southwest, where Ancestral Puebloans observed the solstices. Webster’s “Soft Broch,” which she first created in 1984, is a tribute to the unique drystone towers found in Scotland, which may have been fortified, high-status homes and the nucleus of local Iron Age communities.
Works like “Glen” (1967) and “Concave Room for Bees” (2016), the latter of which was installed at Socrates Sculpture Park along the East River in Queens, are rooted in the Land Art movement of the mid-20th century. Both installations are evoke ancient Roman amphitheaters, except in Webster’s imagining, these open-air spaces are attended by pollinators, and flowers are the entertainment. It’s not just a visually striking garden; we’re also reminded how essential insects are to plants’ survival and vice versa, and how both continue to dramatically decline due to habitat loss, pesticides, and other human-triggered factors.
Webster’s oeuvre is also characterized by a beautiful sense of openness, both literally and conceptually. The work is never didactic; it is meant to be experienced and interpreted uniquely by the viewer. One can walk inside of her spiral works, and in the case of “Glass Spiral” in Milwaukee, peer out from wherever you are to see different vantage points of the piece. In “Thicket,” visitors enter what feels like the beginning of a maze. And “Soft Broch” envelops you within its its textural, organic walls.
In “outdoor installations designed to enhance the community’s appreciation for and understanding of the earth’s ecosystem,” Paula Cooper Gallery says, Webster venerates the natural world, giving us the immersive opportunity do the same and, hopefully, to continue to do so outside of the gallery walls.
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