Deering Estate Arts In Deep Exhibition Catalogue | Page 9

In Deep Show Statement
Curated by mentor artist, Lucinda Linderman, In Deep is an
exhibition and community interaction that seeks to explore,
define, and actualize works of Environmental Art and its
subset Eco Art within the community and our unique historic
site, the Deering Estate at Cutler. Upon contemplation,
Man’s traditional approach to his environment has been
egocentric; defining our environment in terms of our needs;
how we manage, protect, or exploit for our benefit. The In
Deep artists and organizations explore the exocentric
relationship between people and their environment, creating
works and artistic practices that facilitate education and
change in an ever-threatened environment that supports
and sustains humanity.

In Deep at the Deering Estate at Cutler:
An Artist’s Reflection by Felice Grodin
In a city that averages only six feet in elevation, Miami
would seem out of context for an exhibit titled In Deep. We
find ourselves on shallow and porous topography. Perched
atop the edge of a rock ridge and tropical hardwood hammock,
due west are the pressures of a calculating urbanism, due
east a foreboding rising sea. Although the notion of being
‘in deep’ has many connotations, a layered connectivity is
usually at the underpinnings of a dependent and often
tenuous situation. If we imagine the Deering Estate as an
edge condition, one that oscillates between entities, it is in
constant negotiation. Exchanges, both natural and synthetic,

do not yield a singular moment of clarity or meaning, but
rather of movements that exert multiple moments and a
multitude of meanings. Therefore, in addition to the woven
and laced histories of Deering and similarly layered sites,
trajectories, vectors, fields and infrastructures are also the
forms that describe these networks. These places are spatial
as well as referential. So to broach the term eco, one needs
not to tread lightly, but rather immerse oneself in such
complexity.
Thus eco in this case shall not be relegated to merely the
natural landscape. We must also realize that the st