As part of Cornell’s Colloquium on Environmental and Sustainability Science, Marion Wilson, an artist from Philadelphia, will lead students in an art activity to explore and map biodiversity in Minns Garden, in front of Plant Sciences, on Friday September 29, 12:20-1:10pm. Activities continue throughout the afternoon to generate an artistic record of biodiversity that will be exhibited around the garden during the day.

Marion Wilson has built collaborative partnerships with botanists, homeless people, students and neighbors- accessing individual expertise and working non-hierarchically. Her own studio work uses artifacts of the photography industry in sculpture, painting and printed photographs; specifically researching and classifying endangered landscapes and useful and stress tolerant botanies. Wilson recently drove MossLab (a renovated RV as a mobile art and botany viewing lab) 1600 miles  from Syracuse, NY to Miami as a special project for PULSE ART Fair 2015., collecting moss species and experiences of first encounters along the way.

Wilson has exhibited with New Museum of Contemporary Art, NYC; Frederieke Taylor, NYC, Herbert Johnson Museum at Cornell University, Kasia Kay Art Projects, New Orleans; Dorsky Gallery, NYC; Shroeder Romero Gallery, Exit Art, Cheryl Pelavin Fine Arts and Sculpture Center, NYC; in addition to Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY; SPACES, Cleveland Ohio; and SCOPE Miami/Art Basel, Miami, Florida. Wilson has been awarded funded residencies at Millay Colony for the Arts (Nancy Graves Award); International Studio Program (NYSCA and Elizabeth Foundation), Sculpture Space in Utica, NY and most recently McColl Center for Art and Innovation in Charlotte, North Carolina. Wilson is currently a lead artist for Mural Arts, Restored Spaces working in North Philly with William Cramp Elementary School.

Wilson holds a BA from Wesleyan University; an M.A. from Columbia University and an M.F.A. from University of Cincinnati.