Gathering to the Gulf


a Coastal Streams watershed community


Gathering to the Gulf was created as part of the Wide Horizons program, bringing together art, science, and action for 8th grade students on the Gulf Coast. Led by the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs, MS, Wide Horizons is a partnership between the museum, Pascagoula River Audobon Center and University of Southern Mississippi Marine Education Center which blends marine science, environmental history, geography, and multimedia self-expression in order to deepen understanding about the environmental and societal importance of the Gulf of Mexico, its landscapes, and its wildlife. A core component of Wide Horizons are the Climate Action Projects which pair artists with groups of 8th grade students in multi-day collaborative art engagements including immersive field experiences and the creation of a public facing art work to share with the community expressing their relationship to the Gulf of Mexico. 

johnson facilitated conversations via Zoom on four occasions with 8th grade students from St. Martin Middle School as they collaborated on their goals, focus, and preferred medium and audience for the artwork they would create together. Having decided on clay and their immediate friends, neighbors, and friends of neighbors as the audience they could have the greatest impact on, the group then “immersed” themselves in the Pascagoula River wetlands at the Audobon Center just a town over from their home. 

Building off the Audobon Center curriculum, johnson led field trips of the wetlands discussing local features and the impacts of climate change on the immediate watershed and neighborhoods. johnson and the students then developed a week-long art engagement held at the Walter Anderson Museum studios. johnson and the students developed press molds to create a series of watershed sculptures to gift to their community in an interactive presentation at the museum including story sharing, watershed education, a gifting ceremony, and an interactive Uno-derived card game to win additional sculptures!

Wide Horizons is inspired by the art, writings, and philosophies of Walter Inglis Anderson (1903-1965), an almost mythological figure in the Southern artist pantheon, Anderson was a believer in the paradigm-shifting potentials of experiential education and exploration. The museum uses Anderson’s legacy as a blueprint for connecting ecological and societal cause-and-effect with the agency of the individual to direct civic and environmental action. 




daniel@significantdevelopments.us — Jackson, Mississippi