CU Boulder's NEST (Nature, Environment, Science and Technology) Studio for the Arts and the Mountain Research Station (MRS) have launched the NEST-MRS Arts and Sciences Residency, a new program bringing eco-oriented artists into one of CU Boulder’s long-standing sites for environmental research and learning. From June 5 to 21, six artists in residency spent time at the MRS, attending the summer seminar series and shadowing scientists conducting field research in the Front Range.

The partnership marks the first time NEST and MRS have worked together to bring artists to the research station, where collaboration centers on sustainability, water ecology and a landscape in visible transformation. The result is a residency that treats interdisciplinarity as daily practice: artists observing scientists at work, researchers seeing familiar questions through new creative lenses, and both groups considering how environmental change can be witnessed, documented and shared.

For Scott Taylor, director of MRS, the timing for this new endeavor felt natural. “It has always been a goal of mine to support art-science initiatives at the MRS,” he said, adding that he is “always looking for ways to collaborate with folks on campus—the more interdisciplinary connections between the MRS and campus, the better.”

For Joanne Marras Tate, assistant director of NEST Studio for the Arts, the collaboration builds on years of interest. She sees the station as “an inspirational place for arts and science,” where those who enter and stay can deeply engage with the landscape, learn from one another and connect.

Witnessing a landscape in transformation

At MRS, artists encountered a seasonal threshold as researchers continue to document change in alpine ecosystems. Taylor described the field station itself as a landscape in constant transformation, where the shift from dormancy to growth unfolds alongside the scientific work of tracking change.

The residency is not only about translating these scientific findings into art; it's also about creating the conditions for artists and scientists to notice differently, understand the landscape through a new lens and ask questions across disciplines.

For Erika Torii-Karch, a double major in art and integrated design engineering, that kind of attention begins with what might otherwise be missed: “Appreciate the mundane, and you’ll find beauty everywhere you look.”

That perspective surfaces across the cohort. Annaleise Kealiher, who is pursuing a master’s in creative technology and design, frames sustainability as a matter of attention, noting, “The biggest threat to sustainability is apathy.” 

Together, those approaches push the residency beyond observation alone toward larger questions of how people understand and respond to environmental change.

NEST-MRS residents and researchers observe the landscape. (Credit: Scott Taylor)

Creative practices grounded in research

Those questions take shape in many forms across the artists’ projects. The flora and fauna Kealiher is studying will be depicted in a ceramic tea ceremony that explores how organisms adapt in shifting conditions.

Josephine Graczyk, an environmental design and music double major, is crafting a paper installation that explores sustainability, prompting reflection on the fragile relationship between natural and built environments.

Similarly, Lucy Derrick, who is pursuing a master’s of the environment, is utilizing material to make invisible environmental conditions tangible. Her project uses smoke-exposed wool, cotton and nylon filters to photograph landscapes, drawing air quality and its public health implications into view.

Nadia Alhassani, an ecology and environmental biology doctoral student, is filming a documentary that widens the lens, following the transition from winter to summer through snowmelt and changing mountain phenology.

Torii-Karch brings the focus back to environmental minutiae. Her large paintings center commonly overlooked alpine details, like lichen and bark, encouraging viewers to value their everyday environment.

Ayesha Rawal, who is pursuing a master’s in creative technology and design, is building an immersive landscape of her own. Her installation uses felted and sewn sculptures of native plants and wildlife to show how human presence can reshape the environment.

Art as environmental communication

Together, the projects point to art’s role in making environmental research more accessible, especially when scientific work can feel hidden behind specialized language or data. Alhassani sees that accessibility as essential, saying, “Nature is for everyone, and we should all be able to understand how our planet behaves.”

That sentiment resonates throughout the cohort, as Derrick and Rawal describe art as a way to “make invisible threats visible” and “inspire curiosity, joy and wonder about the world around us.” Across perspectives and media, the artists treat creative practice as a way to lower barriers, invite curiosity and connect audiences to environmental change in immediate ways.

That emphasis on communication aligns with Marras Tate’s goals for the residency. She hopes the artists and scientists “learn new ways to tell their stories—and to tell new stories as they engage with one another.” The arts and sciences, she noted, are not separate pursuits but mutually reinforcing ways of understanding and sharing the world.

(Credit: Erin Espelie)

(Credit: Scott Taylor)

(Credit: Erin Espelie)

A foundation for what comes next

As a newly established program, the NEST-MRS Arts and Science Residency offers a clear model for interdisciplinary exchange at CU Boulder. Graczyk sees the exchange as an invitation to “slow down and engage thoughtfully.”

For Taylor, its success lies in real connections among artists and scientists, and in broader recognition of MRS as a “place of interdisciplinary work, an open community of scientists, scholars and artists.” 

At a field station where environmental change is studied in real time, the residency offers another way to witness transformation and to share what is at stake. It also creates a foundation for future relationships among colleges, departments and disciplines, offering what Marras Tate described as “a table with seats for the arts and science” where future collaboration can continue to grow.