From the Field

This fall, the Vero Beach Museum of Art’s weekly after-school teen program ARTLAB collaborated with the Indian River Land Trust to further raise awareness of the environmental state of the Indian River Lagoon. ARTLAB are a group of teens from local secondary schools and Indian River State College who assist VBMA’s education department with the development and implementation of projects that involve applying Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) skills within a creative Visual Arts environment.

The ARTLAB collaboration with the Indian River Land Trust united the Land Trust’s mission of conservation with the VBMA exhibition Simply Beautiful: Photographs from National Geographic. Students viewed the exhibition and received information and resources from the Land Trust about conserving and protecting valuable natural environments, such as the Indian River Lagoon. The ARTLAB-ers then photographed local natural environments, including some protected as part of the Indian River Land Trust. These photographs are now on view in the museum in a display curated and created by the ARTLAB students. “I learned to construct an exhibit from scratch,” one student said.

This final display is pictured below and is on view at the Vero Beach Museum of Art through January 5, 2015.

At the semester’s end, photos from the display will be sent to Tallahassee with student letters to legislators expressing concerns about lagoon deterioration.

The ARTLAB display on view at the Vero Beach Museum of Art

Top Image: An ARTLAB student captures a work from the exhibition Simply Beautiful: Photographs from National Geographic.

Images courtesy of the Vero Beach Museum of Art.