A Celebration of New Site-Specific Artworks at the MacLeish Field Station with Arts Afield

Saturday, October 17, 2026 1:30-4:30 p.m.

Location:
Ada and Archibald MacLeish Field Station
For:
Open to the Public
Cost:
Free

Join Arts Afield to celebrate new art installations by Rita Leduc and Gina Siepel at the Smith College Ada and Archibald MacLeish Field Station at 80 Poplar Hill Road, in West Whately, MA.

Visitors are welcome to tour the grounds at any time. A guided tour will begin from the parking lot at 1:30 p.m. At approximately 3:30 p.m., we will return and gather at the Bechtel Environmental Classroom for a reception and discussion between Gina, Rita, and artist and writer Andrew S. Yang. The event is free and open to the public, and you are welcome to join us for all or part of the day’s events.

Come prepared to spend a few hours outdoors, whatever the weather, walking over the uneven surfaces of the forest and along dirt trails. Bathrooms and water are available at the Bechtel Environmental Classroom, a quarter-mile walk from the main parking lot or ~70 yards from the handicapped parking spot. Handicapped parking abuts a boardwalk to the classroom building where the reception will take place.

Contact Joanne Benkley (jbenkley@smith.edu) with accessibility questions and for parking and other information.

About the Artists

Gina Siepel

Gina Siepel is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and woodworker. Their sculptural, participatory, and time-based works arise from engagements in the forests, waterways, and cities of the northeastern U.S. Their practice employs a queer perspective on ecology, site-specificity, and history, and integrates conceptual concerns with a focus on wood as a natural and a cultural material. Gina’s work has been shown in museums and galleries nationally, and they teach at RISD and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. They are a MacLeish Field Station Artist-in-Residence and a research affiliate in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at Smith College, and they live and work in western Massachusetts.

Rita Leduc

Rita Leduc is an interdisciplinary artist who works in creative relationship with ecosystems. Collaborations include inquiries with Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, The Vassar Arboretum, MacLeish Field Station, the University of San Diego, and Rutgers Coastal Campus. Through these relationships, topics such as “how the light gets out,” edge-running along watersheds, collective consciousness, sparkle, and “cause and affection” inform additional work on human and societal scales. Leduc has shared her practice widely—via exhibitions, publications, presentations, and courses—at locations such as Grizedale Forest (UK), Museum of the White Mountains (NH), and the Nature of Cities Festival (Berlin). She is founder and director of GROUNDWORK and teaches environmental art at Rutgers University.

Directions to MacLeish Field Station

80 Poplar Hill Road
Whately, Massachusetts

Note: If you put MacLeish’s address into a navigation system, do not follow a route that takes you to I-91. You will eventually get to MacLeish but it is a much longer route.

Take Route 9 West.

Go straight, through two stop lights. The first is at the intersection in front of Cooley Dickinson Hospital; the second is in Florence at the Chestnut Street intersection.

At the third stop light in the center of Florence (the Pizza Factory is on your right, office building on your left), turn right onto N. Maple Street.

Continue straight through the light at the intersection of N. Maple Street and Bridge Road. You will pass recreational fields on your right (Arcanum Field). The road will change names to N. Farms Road. Follow the road until you come to a stop sign.

At the stop sign, turn right onto Mountain Street. Follow the road, passing the reservoir on your right. After you pass the reservoir, the road will become very curvy. Take your first left onto Webber Road. If you miss it, proceed to your very next left, Strippe Road, shortly thereafter. It will bring you to Webber.

Follow Webber Road. Pass Conway Road on your right, and take the very next right, uphill, onto Poplar Hill Road.

Please proceed slowly and carefully along this road. Once you get to the top of the hill, please be respectful of our near neighbors and slow down (15 mph). The Field Station is at the very end of the road. Parking areas are marked.

Hosted by Arts Afield, a program in the Center for the Environment, Ecological Design, and Sustainability (CEEDS) at Smith College.