LAND is a place-based but not place-bound platform for research, cultivation, care, and conservation founded by artists Oscar Rene Cornejo and Jen de los Reyes. Drawing on histories of artists' engagement with land-based practices, LAND brings together environmental regeneration, ecological stewardship, and community building as artistic practice — an approach grounded in living systems and the knowledge required to tend them. Rooted in the philosophy of convivencia (shared living and kinship), LAND is not defined by a single site; it is a practice that can take root wherever there is land, community, and the will to tend both.
LAND is currently situated on 4.2 acres adjacent to Cayuga Lake on the urban fringe of Ithaca, New York — a landscape of old growth pines, black walnut stands, tall grass meadows, and a pond home to diverse wildlife. At this site, the practice takes form through outdoor art and ecology studios, a Miyawaki forest of local species, and community-driven agriculture anchored in food sovereignty.
LAND hosts artists, ecologists, environmental activists, and community members who use creative work to address the climate crisis — through artist interventions, talks, classes, plantings, food production, and ecological education that cultivates empathy and care for diverse ecosystems. These are forms of social architecture: structures for building relationships between people, their environment, and contemporary art practice. The approach centers on long-term, sustained relationship with land, drawing on micro-ecosystem thinking, site-responsive agriculture, and the established knowledge of those already in relationship with a place.
In spring 2025, faculty, students, and community members planted LAND's first Miyawaki forest — 330 local trees and shrubs representing 23 species — with plantings that can be responsibly harvested to create sustainable artmaking materials. Students in the Cornell course LAND: Art, Ecology, and Environmental Activism now tend the forest and are helping plan a food forest that will provide produce for donation to local food pantries. LAND's foundational work has been supported by a 2025 Creative Capital Award and a seed grant from the Cornell Mui Ho Center for Cities.
Read more about LAND's first growing season in Cornell AAP's Groundwork: Cultivation Rooted in Art and Action.
Watch co-founder Jen de los Reyes discuss this work in Visions of Sustainability: Advocacy Work, a panel hosted by the MIT List Visual Arts Center.