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Part 5 of the Near Dwellers series
Near Dwellers as Roadkill Lou Florence February 15 – May 31, 2025 Open: Fridays 5-8pm, Saturdays 11am-3pm and by appointment. CLOSING RECEPTION Saturday, May 31, 2025 3-6p RELATED PROGRAMMING Participatory, observational walks, along Route 41. February 23, 2025 March 15, 2025 April 19, 2025 May 17, 2025 For more info see DOR section below. Register via Eventbrite or email [email protected]g ZOOM PANEL WITH THE ARTIST Autumn 2025 Date and time to be announced. Please email us with any enquiries, for purchasing information, and to visit by appointment, including virtual visits. |
A relatively unacknowledged but widespread crisis of human-animal encounters is that of roadkill: almost daily anyone who drives, or walks our roads and streets will see the flattened, squished, dismembered bodies of our fellow critters. By some accounts, the number of animals killed on highways each day in the United States alone exceeds 1,000,000.[1] As Jane Desmond asks, “How can something so ubiquitous be so absent from public discourse? What are the numerous rhetorical strategies and ideologies necessary to render invisible this enormous amount of animal carnage? What might it take to move these roadkilled bodies from the status of ‘unmourned’ to ‘mourned’?”[2]
The work of Lou Florence puts us on a path to engaging with these questions. Each work in this series of 19 paintings, although explicit in its referent, is sensitively rendered, inviting us to gaze more steadfastly at the ruined bodies of individual animals. The images fix our attention on what is publicly deemed out of sight and indeed, out of mind: fur, skin, or feathers, entrails, and limbs are surrounded by a field of a subtle candy colour that turns this grizzly subject into a memorial of sorts, beckoning us to not only reflect upon but also quietly mourn the reality of the harms that are visited on the multitude of creatures with whom we live. Scholarship in Animal Studies and adjacent fields repeatedly points out the fact that in the expansion of industrialization and global capitalism the other-than-human being is always an object, always denied its own subjectivity. In the case of the roadkilled being, it is clear then that there is a double objectification: first in the invisibility of the living individual, but again in the invisibilizing of the dead. Through the work of Lou Florence, Near Dwellers as Roadkill attempts to open up space for examining the aesthetics and politics of these fatal encounters. [1] Desmond, Jane C., Displaying Death and Animating Life: Human-Animal Relations in Art, Science, and Everyday Life. University of Chicago Press. 2016. P. 143 [2] ibid., page 141. Image (above): detail, Lou Florence, 'Vulture', gouache on paper, 18" x 24". Lou Florence is an artist living in a small town in southeastern Pennsylvania where she explores things and encounters wonders. They are curious about everything and amazed at all things. Through the work they enjoy troubling the meeting points of (apparent) opposites and incongruities and often find instead surprising places of connections and expansions.
Lou Florence, Thus we depart.It started in early spring when days were still chill and it seemed too soon to see them: toads…not hopping but flattened. Smashed by a passing car — a convergent moment when a driver, choosing the alleyway in the early morning dark, and a newly emergent toad from my neighbor’s backyard pond meet. The driver never felt the soft body splay under the wheel. I, walking to and fro to work, noticed the toad…nothing more. There it lay. For days. Then another day, another toad freshly squashed. I took out my phone, not knowing exactly why, and took a picture. As Spring grew fuller and warmer there appeared the snakes. Two within weeks — also dead along the same alley which, as was now apparent, saw enough traffic to stop the living business of a growing number of small beings. I took photos of the snakes — both offering their pearlescent bellies to the sky. I contemplated painting. Then, by coincidence (as the world seems to provide) someone sent me a photo of a roadkilled bluejay — it’s body so precisely flattened and intact it looked like a print. I knew then I would start painting these and the many other roadkilled beings I soon encountered. Suddenly it seemed every highway, every street, every alley, every gutter, had remains of animals killed by cars. Friends sent more photos. When driving (yes, I recognize the irony) I now stopped when I saw some obscure blur of fur or feather on the road. It felt like a duty, an obligation I had silently accepted — my humble (pathetic) attempt to acknowledge, apologize, alert, point to, call out what was all around us. Death. No, not death (death is inevitable, part of everyone’s living contract…I have no beef with death) — it was the happenstance killing of singular beings overlaid with the seeming unspoken consensus to ignore, thus rendering invisible and therefore granting an oblique absolution. |
Reading ListA selection of these books and articles are available for reading at Street Road throughout the Near Dwellers project as well as at Bothkinds in Vancouver, Autumn 2025, in conjunction with Near Dwellers as Friends, and Near Dwellers as Indwellers.
Displaying Death and Animating Life: Human-Animal Relations in Art, Science, and Everyday Life. Ch. 7: Requiem for Roadkill: Death, Denial, and Mourning on American Roads. Jane Desmond, University of Chicago Press, 2016 How do you protect wildlife from sprawl? A fast-growing Utah exurb gets serious about migration corridors, Ben Goldfarb, High Country News, August 1, 2024 New Law to Make Roads Safer for Wildlife Crossing, California Law, NBC: Bay Area, 2022 Bipartisan Infrastructure Package Provides Critical Funding to Reduce Wildlife-Vehicle Collisions Center for Large Landscape Conservation, Wildlands Network, Endangered Species Coalition, International Fund for Animal Welfare, Humane Society Legislative Fund, ARC Solutions. Center for Large Landscape Conservation, 2021 Something Rotten: A Fresh Look at Roadkill, Heather Montgomery, Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2018 The toll of the automobile: Wildlife and roads in Sweden. (Doctoral Thesis), Andreas Seiler, Uppsala, 2003 Reflections on Roadkill Between Mobility Studies and Animal Studies: Altermobilities, Matthew Calarco, Springer, 2023 Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of the Planet, Ben Goldfarb, W.W. Norton & Co., 2023 A Road Runs Through It: Reviving Wild Places, Part Two: essays regarding roadkill, Thomas Reed Petersen, Bower House, 2006 Apologia, Barry Lopez, University of Georgia Press, 1998 Wildlife-Vehicle Collision Reduction Study: Report to Congress, Performed by Western Transportation Institute, Montana State University. Authored by M.P. Huijser, P. McGowen, J. Fuller, A. Hardy, A. Kociolek, A.P. Clevenger, D. Smith and R. Ament. Federal Highway Administration, August 2008 Dead on the Road (DOR): a series of walksWe extend our journey into the phenomenon of roadkill on foot as we look to our near environs — the busy, deadly Route 41 next to Street Road Artists Space. As we walk, we will honor any encountered Near Dwellers who have succumbed to the force of wheel and road with acknowledgment, witness, and documentation.
We welcome you to join us on 2 mile walks beginning at Street Road Artists Space. All walks will begin at 3pm, rain or shine. Due to the fact that we are walking along a heavily trafficked roadway, in person participation will be limited and preregistration is required. Registration for in-person walks: via Eventbrite or email [email protected]g Walks will take place on the following dates: February 23, 2025 - in conjunction with the Terminalia Festival March 15, 2025 April 19, 2025 May 17, 2025 Not local? We invite you to walk a section of roadway of your choosing to document any DOR’s you may encounter. Send contributions such as photos, written description, drawings or observations etc. to [email protected]. These and materials collected/created by participants at Street Road will be added to this page throughout the course of the exhibition. A documentary in progress of the walks series
Documentation of the walks as they occur is ongoing and is on view in the exhibition and here: watch our documentary-in-progress for a look at these public events, and for our holding of space for our other-than-human near dwellers:
Exhibition guide
Near Dwellers as Roadkill
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Part 1
Near Dwellers and the Sharing of Breath Sarah Le Quang Sang with Spirit of Saigon August 4 – September 30, 2023 Part 2 Near Dwellers as Legal Beings Fawn Daphne Plessner Susanna Kamon October 13 – December 30, 2023 Part 3 Near Dwellers as Creative Collaborators Julie Andreyev Ruth K. Burke February 2 – April 13, 2024 |
Part 4
Near Dwellers as Urbanites Jesse Garbe Doug La Fortune May 3, 2024 – extended to January 31, 2025 Part 5 Near Dwellers as Roadkill Lou Florence Februay 15 – May 31, 2025 Part 6 Near Dwellers as Friends At Bothkinds Project Space Vancouver, British Columbia October 1 - December 31, 2025 Part 7 Near Dwellers as Indwellers At Bothkinds Project Space Vancouver, British Columbia October 1 - December 31, 2025 |