Success Stories

1965-2005

Artists for the Environment

Summer artist-in-residence grants have been given to over 50 artists to increase public awareness of America’s natural beauty at the Delaware Water Gap, Bear Mountain Palisades Interstate Park, Acadia National Park, the high plains of Colorado, Big Bend in Texas, the Cape Cod National Seashore and the Florida Everglades. Their artiworks are as diverse as the living landscapes which inspired them. As we face the rapid disappearance of irreplaceable natural resources it is good to be reminded that artists can make their “harvest of beauty” without diminishing the setting in any way.

A third-generation native, Joel B. McEachern’s First Light Photography project began in the Great Everglades and continues today in the cypress groves of the state’s northern reaches.

He states: “Florida is the light of dreams. Somewhere along the way, Florida became greater than the sum of its parts; its intersections and malls fading into a sparkling of islands set in a vast sweetwater sea. There, I became a keeper of the light.” http://www.latchkey.net/artists/joel_b_mceachern/000330.html

Joel McEachern was awarded the 2004 Founder’s Award by America the Beautiful Fund. Exhibition credits include the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (Pittsburgh), Boca Raton Museum of Art (Boca Raton, FL), University of Miami’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, National Park Service (Atlanta, Georgia), Jay Hawkins Gallery (NYC), Everglades National Park and the Museum of the Horse (New Mexico).