January 12 – March 9, 2025

Art in the Park: 5568 Via Marisol, Los Angeles, CA 90042

Opening Reception: January 12, 11am-2pm
lecture by wildlife biologist, environmental educator and environmental justice advocate, Miguel Ordeñana

Closing Reception: March 9th, 11-2pm
bat habitat journaling and sketching with Brian Young from Nature Nexus Institute 

Nineteen species of bats are known to reside in Los Angeles; they live in the crevices of freeway bridges and in the foliage of deciduous trees. Concerned naturalists and itchy residents alike (some species of bats eat mosquitos!) welcome their local bat population into human-made bat houses, while many others detest the presence of them in their attics and yards. Despite their proximity, most Los Angeles residents do not think of bats when they consider who lives in our city.

home is where the bat is, is an exhibition that employs a study-room environment to offer guests a space where they can think about bats, their dwellings, peculiarities, and future, specifically that of the bat population living in Hermon Park, where Art in the Park’s gallery is located. The study-room features both indoor and outdoor components, holds artworks that resemble and embody tools, methodologies, exercises, and other educational materials for “students” to learn from. Together, these items put forth a variety of bat-musings that facilitate a critical re-understanding of bats, their ecosystems, and their needs as a means of debunking harmful human perceptions and hopefully, in turn, rehabilitating the bat population and offering ways to relate to bats and their habitat. 

In conjunction with the exhibition, Bed & Breakfast has collaborated with the artists and other community members on an educational booklet for guests to take home. Additionally, galvez has worked with Art in the Park Director, Liz Goetz, to create flowers for bats, a garden of native flowers that will create an ideal environment for nighttime pollinators like moths (a food source for bats) and other pollinators like hummingbirds, bees, and beetles. The garden will live at Hermon Park, a public park where galvez has collected echolocation data of the Mexican free-tail bats who live in the area. 

————————————————————————————————————————————

gloria galvez is an artist, educator, organizer, and nature steward whose artistic practice zig-zags across drawing, video, sculpture, and communal experiences — while every so often interweaving into these forms and their making, community organizing and citizen science insights and frameworks. within this practice, her current focus invokes alternate and simultaneous realities that prompt rebellious and revealing questions about the current social-political conditions of things – both living and nonliving things – both human and non-human things.

Art in the Park provides community based arts and cultural programming, with an emphasis on the diverse contemporary and historical communities of Northeast Los Angeles. We foster community engagement and arts accessibility, creating opportunities by providing classes, workshops, exhibitions and performances conducted by both local and visiting artists. Art in the Park at Hermon Park in the Arroyo Seco is a Public/Private Partnership Arts Facility of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA.) Bed & Breakfast is Art in the Park’s current Artist-in Residence.

Miguel Ordeñana is an environmental educator and wildlife biologist. He works at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County as a Senior Manager in the Community Science office. As a community science senior manager, Miguel promotes and creates community science projects, and recruits and trains participants. Miguel utilizes his mammal research background by conducting urban mammal research in L.A. and leads NHMLAC’s Southern California Squirrel Survey and Backyard Bat Survey. Miguel serves as an advisor on a jaguar project in southwestern Nicaragua that he initiated in 2012 as well as a Board Member for the Friends of Griffith Park and National Wildlife Federation. Miguel is dedicated towards making science and access to nature more equitable with a goal of increasing the representation and retention of underrepresented communities within the environmental field. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Southern California, and a M.S. in Ecology from the University of California Davis.

Nature Nexus Institute (NNI) is founded on the belief that reciprocity between communities and nature is essential to the survival of both. They seek to provide equitable and intergenerational entry points to cultivating healthy community-nature relationships. To that end, they strive to be a nexus for science, culture, art, and research endeavors that result in a new generation of change-makers and storytellers.