Ecological Connection Wall
Overview
The Ecological Connection Wall serves as a canvas for KU School of Social Welfare community members to express their connections with nature.
Located on the third floor of Green Hall on the KU Lawrence campus, the installation is part of the "Greening the Green" Initiative, a project by KU social work faculty and research staff.
Social work students, staff and faculty are encouraged to share photos and descriptions of their experiences with nature, which are framed and displayed on the wall.
To learn more about The Ecological Connection Wall, email cejc@ku.edu.
Current Artist: Ed Scanlon
A collection of photos and a poem by Ed Scanlon is one of the latest exhibitions on The Ecological Connection Wall.
Scanlon is the DSW program director and an associate professor in the School of Social Welfare.
A poem from Scanlon, from March 2022
Chez Edward's Home For Squirrels
My yard is winning no awards
For looking like an English garden
The lawn no carpet of deep green
The flower beds have been forgotten
My lawn's a place for wildlife
To come and eat and sift
From dawn till night
They come in shifts
To find the seed
Thrown left and right
My little peanut gifts
Brown patches grow where pigeons make
My lawn into their chairs
And cardinals find nuts to break
While visiting in mated pairs
Their bright red feathers give me hope
And my lawn a brighter flair
Small divots sit
Where squirrels have lit
And given wrens a scare
They scurry fast, dig holes to hide
My little shelled surprises
They pay me back
These acrobats
Their entrances my prizes
My furry clowns hang upside down
And grab some nuts and flee
They seem to think I’ll want them back
So, they eat where I can’t see
Bowls I've left for little possum
Are strewn across the stairs
Birdseed is flung from feeders hung
God knows who ate from there.
The neighbors’ looks of scorn are fair
(I guess)
If order is your thing
But my friends of the ground and air
Are what make my heart sing
My yard won't be on any tour
You’re likely to attend
But if you like to spy on squirrels?
Come by and take mine in.
Current Artist: Joe Bush
A collection of photos by Joe Bush is one of the latest exhibitions on The Ecological Connection Wall.
Bush is a professional writing consultant in the School of Social Welfare.
About Bush's work
Our time shared with Canola the Lizard was brief, but I like to think we all had our lives altered for the better. It was the late summer of 2024, right between the end of the summer term and the arrival of students for the fall, and I’d just returned to campus after taking my lunch break at my house. As I walked out of the parking lot, I saw a few people huddled in the garden by the front door around a patch of white cardstock with a little lizard stuck in a futile struggle for freedom.
I asked what was going on. Hazel informed me that a student had come to her door holding a glue trap they had found in the stairwell and asked her if she could free the lizard stuck within. It was in bad shape. Both of its legs on its right side and its head were stuck, leaving the tail and other legs to flail in impotence. She had then taken it outside, opened up the trap, and had only just begun trying to help free the lizard using water and a Checkers Xtra card when I entered the scene.
I asked if there were any supplies that I could track down to help. It was suggested that I retrieve plastic cutlery for better dexterity and something oily, like lotion, to help break down the barrier between the glue and the lizard. I raced up to the third-floor kitchen and found some plastic spoons. The lotion was harder to come by. There weren’t many people in Twente on that day, and those whom I asked had none.
I went back out there to offer my plastic spoons and my bad news about the lotion. Joonmo, who had gone out to aid with the lizard as well, suggested that cooking oil would probably be ideal. In that moment, a flash of a memory from minutes prior leapt to the front of my mind: The bottle of canola oil I’d seen in my cabinet during my lunch break. It took less than five minutes for me to dash home, grab the bottle, and come back.
The oil did the trick. Gradually, one body part at a time, we freed the lizard from the glue trap’s adhesive grasp. There was no final celebratory moment of freedom to be shared with the lizard, as he scampered off into the bushes immediately after his legs were out of the glue, and the very oil we’d applied to free him rendered him too slippery for us to catch again. Though we wanted to take a photo with him at the very least, we were proud to see him finally liberated. I commemorated the event by sketching a picture of our lizard friend, whom Hazel had named “Canola”, after the oil that had freed him.
Italian Wall Lizards, which is what I assume Canola was given how common they are in Northeast Kansas, typically live for between five to eight years. It’s very possible that Canola still romps up and down Mount Oread and around the KU campus today. I imagine he’s much more cautious around glue traps now.
Current Artist: Vanessa Sanburn
A collection of photos by Vanessa Sanburn is the first exhibition on The Ecological Connection Wall.
Sanburn is an associate director of practicum education in the School of Social Welfare.
About Vanessa's work
"My well-being is closely tied to my connection to the natural world. My family's vacations are mostly planned around visiting the beautiful natural places you can see in these photos - featuring lots of nature in the Pacific Northwest, including Crater Lake, North Cascades, and Olympic National Parks, the New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia, and Arches National Park in Utah."
"Besides this, there are a couple photos from my backyard. Growing flowers and vegetables and sharing my backyard with bees and other pollinators provides this sense of connection to my Dad, who was an avid organic gardener, while also reminding me that the restorative power of nature is all around us if we work to preserve and cultivate green spaces."
