Digital image still from featured video work, Down, Up, Down: Pine Mountain Breathing (2014)

This week’s featured wilderness thinker is Zoé Strecker, artist, writer and art professor.  Zoé’s ‘multi-modal thinking’ is consolidated through her durational exploration of  Pine Mountain, a ridge in the Appalachian Mountains that runs through Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee. Pine Mountain represents the last great contiguous stretch of unfragmented forest in Kentucky, breached only by six roads in 110 miles and  is also a significant unprotected wilderness area.

Zoé’s engagement develops a  mindful ecology around Pine Mountain extending her wilderness thinking into other communities through the students and volunteers with whom she works and collaborates, which includes SITE, an arts-led interdisciplinary educational collaboration with philosopher, Prof. Peter S. Fosl at Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky. This exploration of Pine Mountain generates creative and scholarly responses along with Zoé’s personal arts practice, which celebrates the exceptional biodiversity of Pine Mountain in southeastern Kentucky.  Read More….