Mentee

Being outdoors, learning from nature—and humans who live and work with her—and sharing knowledge. Creating art for a better home for all life on Earth. These are places and practices I enjoy.

Natalie Field introduced me to Creature Conserve’s mentorship programme. It focusses on interdisciplinary communication between native communities, artists, and researchers. Attending online workshops was a requirement to apply as a mentee. The weekend meetings, in late summer 2025, convinced me I should apply with a proposal:

Walk (through) the Woods
Learning about beings who call the woods in Trondheim, Norway home
1) Dual language pop-up book
2) Scale up to gallery exhibit (outdoors?)
3) Adapt to theatrical presentation (something completely new for me)

My first draft page includes English, Norwegian, and Southern Sámi names for different forest beings. The Sámi names come from the online dictionary Nedtedigibaakoeh, discussed at a seminar I attended in February 2025: Seminar on Sámi research and teaching at NTNU (Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet | Norwegian University of Science and Technology).

This draft page flips open several times to reveal beings who live in forests near fjords. I ripped paper and painted with watercolour, which is also how I created a potential book cover last year. Click on the below images to enlarge them.

My practice builds on Braiding Sweetgrass, The Mushroom at the End of the World, The Enchanted Life, Is a River Alive and other books combining storytelling through both traditional and scientific knowledge. These have a wealth of scientific papers, additional books, and traditional knowledge-holders to research.

Isabelle Stenger, Eduardo Kohn, and Thomas Berry top my reading list. Hans Ragnar Mattissen and Joar Nango, Sámi visual artists, top my art research: to learn about their storytelling and ability to visualise belonging and space.

from Isabelle Stengers book, In Catastrophic Times: Resisting the Coming Barbarism: Learning to compose will need many names, not a global one, the voices of many peoples, knowledges, and earthly practices.