Mrill Ingram

media release: Arts + Literature Laboratory (ALL) is pleased to announce a book launch celebration for the forthcoming Loving Orphaned Space: The Art and Science of Belonging to Earth on Saturday April 30, 2022 starting at 7:00pm. The book, due out from Temple University Press in May, is an invitation to see the world differently, and to recognize the power of the arts in connecting to everyday space. The gathering will include a reading by the author and geographer Mrill Ingram, presentations from artists Kristin Thielking, Lisa Beth Robinson, and Lillian Sizemore, music from the MurmurMurmur Collective, and followed by a moderated QnA with writer Erik Ness and a reception. The gathering is free and open to the public. Attendees should review ALL’s COVID-19 safety policy at artlitlab.org.

Catalyzed by the work of artists including Mierle Laderman Ukeles and M. Jenea Sanchez and by a series of case studies of art-science collaborations, the book offers a guide to seeing everyday space as a portal through which we can discover old stories and tell new ones about how we dwell on Earth. Charting new paths can be challenging and complicated, the author reveals, but good stories always have twists and turns.

Environmental artist Stacy Levy has said of the book, “In a time when people need places to gather and be outside in nature, Loving Orphaned Space is an essential guide for how to activate forgotten spaces in our landscape.” Gary Paul Nabhan, author of many books including Food from the Radical Center: Healing Our Land and Communities, comments, “Mrill Ingram gets it right in this hopeful yet haunting book: the only way to restore purpose and power to abandoned, uncared-for spaces is to re-story them as places of the heart. Always a deep, compassionate thinker, Ingram now joins the ranks of America’s most compelling writers—Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gretel Ehrlich, Janisse Ray, and Rebecca Solnit—who help us reflect on broken landscapes and our longing to heal them to heal ourselves.”

Samuel Dennis Jr., professor of planning and landscape architecture and director of the Environmental Design Lab at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, says, “Ingram’s stories have changed the way I see and think about the land around me. I now see orphaned land wherever I go, and because of this book, I know how—and why—to love and care for these places.”

About the Participants

Mrill Ingram is a writer and researcher, and currently participatory action research scientist at the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, UW-Madison. Along with investigating knowledge networks, her work has focused on environmental art-science collaboration, narrative in environmental social movements, environmental policy, organic agriculture, and microbial biopolitics. After years of chasing artists involved in environmental art-science collaborations, she decided all she learned deserved a book. The forthcoming book, Loving Orphaned Space, the art and science of belonging to Earth, is a geographer’s take on the enormous amount of territory we dedicate to infrastructure, and a call for us all to recognize the potential of new occupations of such space. Other work includes a 2013 co-authored book with Raul Lejano and Helen Ingram, The Power of Narrative in Environmental Networks, on how story and narrative can enable grassroots environmental action. Previously, she’s worked The Progressive magazine, Upworthy, the journal Ecological Restoration, and the Farley Center for Peace, Justice and Sustainability. You can read more about Mrill Ingram’s work at www.mrillingram.com. 

Kristin Thielking is an artist with a special interest in environmental and public art and glass and professor at UW Stevens Point. Lisa Beth Robinson is a book and glass artist and professor at East Carolina University. Lillian Sizemore is a Madison-based artist and mosaic historian whose project this past winter was the construction of a 89-ft diameter labyrinth built with recycled Christmas trees, sited in an open field at Olbrich Beach Park (@HowLovelyLabyrinth). Her works center around themes of ephemerality, light, and geometry. Erik Ness has been writing about science and the environment for more than 30 years.

ALL is a community-driven arts center that increases access to the visual, literary, and performing arts and arts education in Dane County. ALL’s new 10,500 sq. ft. facility in the downtown Capitol East District features performance and visual arts exhibit space and the Ellen Kort Mezzanine dedicated to the literary arts with a lending library of over 3,000 titles. ALL recently completed Phase 1 of its capital campaign, and is continuing to develop the space as a resource for people of all ages and backgrounds to create, share, and enjoy art.