Listening to Rivers: Artist Talk with Basia Irland & Bosque Planting Day @ Rio Grande Nature Center

18Oct2025

From 10:00 am until 1:00 pm

At Rio Grande Nature Center State Park - Education Building

Please join us for this special event co-hosted with our partners at the ABQ Museum for an illustrated talk from Irland about her projects including, “A Gathering of Waters,” which fosters dialogue and connects communities along the entire length of rivers, including our Río Grande; portable waterway “Repository” archives; “Waterborne Disease Scrolls,” based on research with epidemiologists; and hand-carved ephemeral “Ice Book” sculptures embedded with native seed texts that are floated down streams to aid riparian restoration, most recently created for SITE Santa Fe and the Santa Fe river.

The talk will begin promptly at 10AM. We will follow the artist talk with a stewardship project, under guidance of Rio Grande Nature Center staff, planting native riparian species to help promote the health and biodiversity of the surrounding habitat.

Fulbright Scholar Basia Irland is an artist, author, and activist who creates international large-scale water projects, featured in her books “Water Library” and “Reading the River: The Ecological Activist Art of Basia Irland.” A monograph, Basia Irland, Repositories: Portable Sculptures for Waterway Journeys, was published in 2023. “What Rivers Know: Listening to the Voices of Global Waterways,” Texas A & M University Press, 2025, focuses on 25 global rivers written in the first person from the perspective of the water. Irland is professor emerita, Department of Art, University of New Mexico, where she founded the Art and Ecology Program. Irland had a large museum retrospective in the Netherlands, 2016. Her work is in prominent collections, and her projects have been featured in over seventy international publications. You can learn more about the artist and her work at: basiairland.com

"Basia Irland is perhaps the most significant living example of social art in the sense that she seeks to connect people to the land and to each other in a shared respect for what sustains life: water." -Sabino Frassà, Italian curator, artistic director of CRAMUM

No RSVP is required for the artist talk, but space is limited for the outdoor stewardship project, so please RSVP using the form below to reserve your place and fulfill registration/waiver requirements for the outdoor component.

10/18/25 Listening to Rivers: Bosque Stewardship Project

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10/18/25 Listening to Rivers: Bosque Stewardship Project

Step 1 of 3

*** The following section must be completed if you are a minor (under age 18). Your parent or legal guardian must sign this Agreement below on your behalf.***

* The following section must be completed if you are a minor (under age 18). Your parent or legal guardian must sign this Agreement below on your behalf.*