no_innocent_landscape brings together the work of two artists who attend closely to these altered terrains, focusing on the forests of Southern Indiana—a region shaped by extraction, regrowth, and uneven care. Featuring works by painter Meg Lagodzki and multidisciplinary artist Maxwell Fertik this exhibition invites meditation on the complex transformations within the forest ecosystem, asking us, in Robert Frost’s words “what to make of a diminished thing.”

Through their work, Lagodzki and Fertik raise the question of intervention—how far should we go in managing these spaces, and what are the ethical and ecological consequences of such decisions? As forests transition under human influence, we witness not only a physical transformation, but a moral reckoning with our past and present choices.

To recognize that no landscape is innocent is to understand that we are already part of it—observers and participants, witnesses and agents. What might it mean to live differently, and more attentively, within the worlds we have made?

 Meg Lagodzki

In Storm Damage: An Inventory, Meg Lagodzki documents the aftermath of violent storms in Southern Indiana, rendering fractured trunks and fallen limbs with stark precision. These paintings are not just records of damage—they are meditations on rupture, both ecological and emotional. Each image becomes part of a larger reckoning: How do we witness and account for environmental loss, especially when it accelerates beyond our grasp?

Through 30 paintings, Lagodzki compiles an inventory that invites not detachment but attention—a visual archive shaped by grief, memory, and care. In a time of shifting climates and disrupted natural cycles, her work insists that we see these broken forms not as isolated events, but as part of a larger pattern of transformation.

 Maxwell Fertik

Maxwell Fertik’s material studies made from the biochar of non-native species—knotweed, mulberry—transform threat into inquiry. Working with plant matter, he uses biochar, a process that carbonizes organic material, to reimagine what these plants might become. His sculptural forms—some of which might be seen as altars, some as totemic symbols—emerge from controlled burns and charred remains, offering a series of dark musings on forest transformation through prescribed burns and natural fires. These works ask: What can emerge from disturbance? What futures might take root in the ash of ecological disruption?