INTERSECTING ECOLOGIES
INSTALLATION (First Floor): Parsonage Gallery, Searsport, Maine (USA) Intersecting Ecologies, a two-person exhibition by Paula Gerstenblatt and Jan Piribeck focuses on the intersection between personal, social, and environmental systems. Our work is situated in Sears Island, Maine, Long Island, Maine, and Greenland, where we worked as artists, researchers, and community practitioners. For the exhibition, we combined physical materials, digital media and found objects to create installations of 2D collages plus 3D and time-based elements, some of which were created individually and others collaboratively. Through juxtaposition, layering and blending we explored the principles of interdependence and the transience of all phenomena from a deep ecology perspective.
PARSONAGE GALLERY: The Parsonage is set in an historic estate overlooking Penobscot Bay. It exhibits dynamic work by a diverse slate of contemporary artists, and seeks to prompt enlivening conversations about creativity, spirituality, and ecology in Maine and far beyond.
CATALOGUE: Intersecting Ecologies
Intersecting Ecologies: Panel III - 108” W x 68” H
Intersecting Ecologies: Panel IV - 76” W x 68” H
Locating, Collecting, Firing - Mixed Media on Wood Panels - 36” x 36” each (2022)
The triptych Locating Collecting Firing represents the beginning of a joint effort to create meaning by juxtaposing and layering disparate imagery and techniques. Meaning-making is individual and influenced by social, cultural, and familial conditions. To preserve individual perspectives, we each created a panel on our own. Then, we worked together on the middle panel to move toward aesthetic convergence.
This piece languages complex relationships to past, present, and future phenomena. Additionally, it addresses personal, social, and environmental themes such as changing ecologies, land preservation, emotive landscapes, clean energy, the logistics of memory, and the tension between autonomy and connection.
It was shown in the Balance/Imbalance exhibit at the L.C. Bates Museum, Hinckley, ME, and featured in the Union of Maine Visual Artists Maine Arts Journal in the summer of 2023.
The panels and process behind them became a launching pad for the four panels below, which were created for the Intersecting Ecologies exhibition.
Intersecting Ecologies: Panels I, II, III, IV- Mixed Media on Fabric - (2025)
Intersecting Ecologies: Panel I - 108” W x 68” H
Intersecting Ecologies: Panel II - 76” W x 68” H
Intersecting Ecologies Installation (Second Floor) Parsonage Gallery
In the Meantime: Still Image - Multimedia Video and Text (2025)
Acknowledgements
We are honored to show our work in the context of the Parsonage Gallery mission and wish to thank Aaron Rosen for his vision and generosity of spirit. Additionally, we thank the Onion Foundation and the Maine North Atlantic Institute of the University of Southern Maine for their financial support of Intersecting Ecologies and extend our gratitude to the Friends of Sears Island for partnering with us on the project. We also wish to acknowledge the Industries Program at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham, Maine, Zero Station in Portland and Hedva Rokach and Itay Bahur for their aesthetic and technical support in producing work for and documenting the show.