Oriana Poindexter's "The Blue Forest" Opens at Catalina Museum for Art & History

Key facts

• The Catalina Museum for Art & History presents "The Blue Forest: An Immersive Installation by Marine Scientist and Artist Oriana Poindexter" from November 8, 2025, to October 11, 2026.
• The installation comprises eight hand-printed cyanotype silk panels, each approximately 54 by 130 inches, created during a residency on Catalina Island in April 2025.
• Poindexter collected the seaweed specimens while freediving around Catalina Island; the panels show life-size images of giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera), elk kelp (Pelagophycus porra), and other native species.
• A school of about 700 cyanotype-printed sardines, titled "Sardine Spiral," is installed in a spiraling formation on the gallery walls.
• The exhibition includes an underwater soundscape built from Poindexter's own ocean recordings, a first for her work.
• Poindexter earned an M.A.S. in Marine Biodiversity & Conservation from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and a B.A. in Visual Arts from Princeton University.
• Her work has been published by Smithsonian Magazine, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, and exhibited at Laguna Art Museum, Oceanside Museum of Art, and Center for Fine Art Photography.
• During a 2025 residency at OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center, Poindexter began incorporating digital negatives and preserved specimens, including plankton images from the OSU Plankton Ecology Lab's ISIIS device, into her practice.