Neary Lagoon Through a Different Lens

Where is the invisible smog of microplastics in and around the mini-watershed of Neary Lagoon? How is this complex area of extractive legacies, essential infrastructure, working-class labor, biodiversity, and human recreation in play with sea level rise and petro-plastics pollution? What does this landscape tell us about ourselves and possible paths through climate change adaptation?

In this walking workshop, discuss the histories of Neary Lagoon. Practice citizen science using DIY filters to search water, sand, and earth for un-seen petro-plastics. Play with portable digital microscopes and macro lenses for mobile phones to document what we find.

Joy Schendledecker is an artist and community organizer living in Santa Cruz, CA. She works in a variety of media including fibers, sculpture, collage, printmaking, photography, and social practice. She has a longstanding preoccupation with bodies and gender, matter-out-of-place, attraction/repulsion, labor, and materiality. Her current work focuses on petrochemicals, plastics, marine debris, and housing/houselessness through the multiple lenses of discard studies, environmental justice, and toxic post/humanness in the era of the Anthropocene/ Chthulucene/Capitalocene. Joy attended Maryland Institute College of Art and University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She lived in London for 10 years before moving to Santa Cruz with her partner and children in 2015.

Part of the Refocusing Ecology Workshop Series, sponsored by the City Arts Recovery Design (CARD) Program of City of Santa Cruz.