From the Field · Stories in practice

Story by Erin Parish

“Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded forever,” Moby Dick, Herman Melville

Scott Bluedorn, born in Southampton, New York, in 1986 and now living and working between Sag Harbor and Bridgehampton, belongs to a lineage of Eastern Long Island artists for whom place is not merely a backdrop but a structuring force. Educated at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Bluedorn then returned to the East End. The artist also earned a residency at Miami’s influential Fountainhead, an artist residency program, among many others, and has exhibited at the Parrish Art Museum in Watermill, NY.

Bluedorn’s work is not only distinguished by his vast technical range, spanning painting, drawing, printmaking, installation, collage, assemblage, photography, illustration, design, and even GIFs, but also the way these forms coalesce around a single, persistent worldview he describes as a “maritime cosmology.” This vision is shaped by salt air, maritime labor, ecological precarity, the cry of seagulls as the day’s soundtrack, and the long memory of the sea.

Scott Bluedorn. Moby Dick of the Deep. 2012. cyanotype print, edition of 12, 22 by 30 inches

Story by Erin Parish

“I don't know what Color Field painting means. I think it was probably invented by some critic, which is okay, but I don't think the phrase means anything. Color Field painting? I mean, what is color? Painting has to do with a lot of things. Color is among the things it has to do with. It has to do with surface. It has to do with shape; it has to do with feelings which are more difficult to get at.” Jules Olitski

The paintings of Andrew Arocho (born 1994, Bronx, NY) sit comfortably within the long arc of Abstract Expressionism, occupying the fertile middle ground between color field painting and action painting that emerged after Pollock and Rothko redefined the stakes of abstraction in the 1940s. This is a position many postwar and contemporary painters have circled, yet few manage to inhabit without the burden of history. This is the work of a young artist who has an old soul and who understands that abstraction remains an arena within to paint, not a style.

Jackson Pollock | LONG STORY SHORT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HksS8F4yx_8

Story by Maximiliano Martin

Where Trees Breathe Forward

Passion and love for life, and for what we do, is a gift we carry throughout our entire lives. Unfortunately, not all of us get to open that gift or enjoy the benefits of sharing it with the world. Some might say that those who do are turning it over or gifting it back to the source that connects us all. Luckily for us, that has been the case for Kathleen King, who not only opened her gift and tapped into it but also embraced it fully. She accepted it as her own and quickly recognized its blessing, organically and naturally, like breathing.

As Kathleen King walked me through her experience purchasing her land, I realized we had more in common than I expected. After closing on the property, she was devastated to learn that nine of the property’s cedar trees, the ones she cherished most, would need to be cut down to make space for her new sanctuary. These trees were the very reason she chose this land. They had been there long before her, and if she had anything to say about it, they would remain long after. In early conversations with her landscape design firm, she learned there might still be a way to protect the cedars she loved. It would require care, commitment, and trust. She was willing to try.

About eight years ago, I had the opportunity to purchase over a quarter of an acre in Jarabacoa, in the mountainous region of the Dominican Republic. My partner at the time and I chose the land specifically because of one tree. Standing proudly in the center was an old avocado tree, one of the largest I had ever seen. Majestic and resilient, it had survived freezing seasons and countless hurricanes. It did not bear fruit, since it was too cold at that altitude for that, but that did not matter to me. I imagined hanging a big swing from its massive branches, picturing my partner and me growing old together and returning every season to sit beneath it. Unfortunately, after a series of decisions made without my involvement, the tree had been completely removed by the time I visited the property again.

Story by Erin Parish

“When cultures intersect, gods mutate,” Sterling Rook, 2025

Sterling Rook (b. 1984, Miami) makes artwork that is informed by both the culture and the ecology of South Florida and its persistent development. He is a graduate of Florida International University’s MFA program and a resident at the Bakehouse Art Complex. Whether through his neighborhood-mapping mural Bass Famous Tabernacle or his sculptural use of palm fronds, Rook returns to the intersection of the seemingly disparate cultures of his heritage: South American and Caucasian via the British Isles. His work is particularly significant to Miami yet plumbs history for the universal language of pattern.

Artists inhabit their own intellectual worlds, rich oceans of self-crafted information, influence, and priorities. The materials they choose, the histories they trace, and the influences that shape their vision form a tapestry of origins. For Rook, art becomes a means of contemplating the double helix of his identity: the entwined DNA of his Peruvian and British heritage. His work emerges from that genetic duality, translating inherited traditions of handicraft and pattern into contemporary reflections on place, ecology, and ancestry.

Rook’s Peruvian grandmother, a ‘reweaver’ who restored fabrics, and his grandfather, a tailor, reflect this tradition. On his British side, his ancestors were rope makers, and their occupational surname, Stringer, highlights this craft. Across these lineages, a common theme emerges: the transformation of flexible fibers into resilient forms. Both rope and tapestry depend on countless small actions, the intertwining of individual strands into a cohesive, flexible, yet durable material while following a pattern.

Story by Laura Marsh

Art, care, and community as coordinates of renewal

Hettler.Tüllmann Studio explores how design can build community by reimagining everyday materials. After learning about Helping Hands, an arts and crafts program organized by the Miami-Dade Public Library System’s Country Walk Branch, where volunteers crochet ground mats from recycled plastic to support people experiencing homelessness, the two artists were deeply moved by the project’s purpose. Seeing how a humble act of making could embody care and sustainability, they invited Helping Hands to collaborate on a new creative endeavor.

At the heart of Helping Hands is a practice of compassion and renewal. Everyday shopping bags from neighborhood stores are cut into strips and spun into a soft, durable yarn called plarn. Participants gather at the library to crochet this transformed material into ground mats that provide comfort and dignity to those in need. Each mat becomes proof that small, shared gestures can bridge isolation and turn what was once disposable into something of enduring use and meaning.

The colors of these plastic bags, often bright blues, reds, greens, grays, whites, and translucent tones, are more than incidental. Many grocery bags are tinted using inexpensive synthetic dyes derived from petroleum-based pigments. While the colors serve marketing and brand recognition, they also reveal the unseen chemical afterlife of our consumer habits. Darker hues often require more pigment and can release greater amounts of microplastic and toxic compounds as they degrade, while lighter or natural tones tend to carry less environmental impact. In the hands of Helping Hands participants, these colors are given new life and purpose, no longer coded by commerce but redefined as expressions of care and community.

Story by Laura Marsh

As a steward of butterflies hailing from Hialeah and Santo Domingo, Franky Cruz "moved into the paradise of curiosity"

Throughout his work, first as an artist in residence in Everglades (AIRIE) in 2015, and again in 2024 where he worked with Houston Cypress from the Love the Everglades Movement. Reflecting on his return to South Florida after completing a residency at the Home Base Project in Berlin in 2015, Cruz recalls a thirst to learn about its history and the natural environment so easily ignored, so profound that he ventured barefoot into the Everglades with friends to fully immerse himself in its untamed beauty. This is the type of self-led advocacy and reflection that we admire at green religion, since true environmental change starts with us and becomes eco-contagious.

With local grassroots at the heart of his advocacy, Cruz gave a lecture with NaMa Native Landscapes in their Flora of Miami Garden Center on the role of pollinator plants and butterflies as winged collaborators in his work. Akin workshops include the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), the Center for Subtropical Affairs, and the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Miami. His admiration for the natural world runs deep, beginning with a childhood triumph as Best Bug Collector in 5th grade at Jose Marti Middle School (now Jose Marti MAST 6-12 Academy). Cruz's artistic practice unfolds in distinct studio cycles: it starts with the cultivation of garden habitats, passes through metamorphosis, and culminates in the transformation of butterfly secretions onto paintings and for large-scale public sculptures and installations. Giving nature credit to nature for its labors promotes a shared green understanding that we can find harmony through our common needs to build resiliency together.