Laboratory for the Future: Woven Waters; Protection, Resistance, Renewal

Arts/Crafts Community Events Discussion/Q&A Sustainable and Connected Arts, Culture & Fun Community Events The Arts
Saturday, Nov 1, 2025
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Propeller Gallery
3026 Airport Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90405
More info and RSVP

Join us for a powerful conversation between Diné (Navajo) artist and water protector Emma Robbins and City Yards artist in residence Debra Scacco. For seven years, Robbins served as Director of the Navajo Water Project at DigDeep Water. While there, she collaborated with communities to expand access to clean running water to the 1 in 3 Navajo families without it. Leading this work through the challenges of COVID-19, she became a national voice highlighting the crisis of water inequity faced by First Peoples across the U.S. This discussion will explore how culture, community, and joy are critical to the difficult work of systemic change and resistance.

Woven Waters; Protection, Resistance, Renewal is part of Debra Scacco's Laboratory for the Future exhibit and event series. Scacco is completing her tenure as artist in residence at City Yards with the city's Public Works divisions of Water and Resource Recovery & Recycling. Her Laboratory for the Future project is a multiyear undertaking where she researched, illuminated, and celebrated the often-unseen labor that sustains Santa Monica and the natural and created systems of the city and region. Laboratory for the Future is presented as part of Our City Yards and was made possible by the city's Percent for Art program and its Public Works Department and Recreation and Arts Department. More about the project here.

Emma Robbins (Diné) is an artist, activist, and community organizer dedicated to empowering Indigenous communities. She is the founder and Executive Director of The Chapter House, an Indigenous arts and community space, and CEO of Planet Women, supporting femme-led conservation and human rights initiatives. For seven years, she led the Navajo Water Project, expanding access to clean water for Navajo families. Emma’s artwork, exhibited nationally and internationally, addresses issues like broken treaties and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women crisis. She serves on the Arizona Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and is a senior Aspen Institute Fellow . https://www.emmarobbins.com

Interdisciplinary artist Debra Scacco investigates the ecological and cultural consequences of human activity. Fusing rigorous research with personal narrative, her work maps the histories of land, water, and the beings transformed by human intervention. She is the inaugural artist-in-residence at the City of Santa Monica Public Works (2023–25) and the first artist-in-residence at the Ellis Island Museum (2012). Scacco co-founded the Getty PST ART Climate Impact Program (2022–25) and founded the climate-focused residency Air Projects (2016–20). Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the City of Los Angeles, and the Durfee Foundation, featured in Art in America and the Los Angeles Times, and exhibited and collected internationally. https://www.debrascacco.com

Laboratory for the Future is a project of City Yards Artist in Residence Debra Scacco, and is made possible by the city of Santa Monica Recreation and Arts Department Cultural Affairs Division, Public Works Department, and the Percent for Art program. More about the project here.

Events:
The Laboratory for the Future exhibit is on view at the Airport Arts Center Propeller Gallery, 3026 Airport Ave, 10/11/25 - 1/4/26. Hours: Thursday - Sunday, 12-5pm.