A Creativity Conference Brings Thinkers to The Church

The concept of assembling a group of very smart people representing a diverse range of professions and experiences to share ideas is certainly not new. But given the overall state of the planet these days — both from the physical and geopolitical sides of the coin — it’s probably not a bad time to check in with the innovative thinkers among us and have a series of conversations designed to enlighten, inspire and yes, perhaps, even give hope.

The Church in Sag Harbor will do just that on Saturday, April 1, when it presents its 2023 Creativity Conference, a full-day of lectures and socialization with a group of scientific, creative and inventive minds.

Co-curated by conservationist and animal rights activist Carl Safina along with The Church’s co-founder, artist April Gornik, and executive director Sheri Pasquarella, in addition to Safina, the day-long conference will feature actor and farmer Isabella Rossellini, The New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast, New York Times best-selling author Paul Greenberger, toy designer Cas Hollman and musician Paul Winter, all speaking about their personal and professional passions.

This is the second annual Creativity Conference at The Church. Last year’s conference was organized by Harvard-trained biologist and explorer Mark Moffett and his wife, Melissa Wells, an expert at managing health care systems who, when on expeditions with her husband, documents the work of scientific researchers through photography and film. Though Safina was in the audience at The Church last year, in 2022, he was a speaker at another Creativity Conference organized by Moffett and Wells in Sea Island, Georgia.

In selecting people to take part in this year’s Creativity Conference, Safina explained that he was looking for people who have something to do with conservation, but who come to the topic from a unique perspective with an innate sense of creativity.

“I didn’t want people to just do lectures on the state of the world or nature,” explained Safina. “I wanted to get people who were really quite different. That’s what made the Sea Island conference I was involved in a lot of fun. There was a diversity of approaches.”

Safina notes that his talk at the upcoming conference at The Church might focus on his own concepts of creativity with an explanation of how COVID-19 affected his personal creative endeavors. When asked to expound on how the pandemic did, indeed, affect that aspect of his life, Safina explained that in early 2020, his schedule was heavily booked with extensive travel and speaking engagements. Then in March, those commitments canceled, as they did for everyone else in the world.

Suddenly, Safina and his wife, Patricia Paladines, found themselves isolating at home on the East End and a new, much closer subject to focus on came into view.

“It coincided with releasing a little screech owl that we had found near death,” Safina said. “When we let her go, she decided to stay around our backyard. She got a wild mate. I was going nowhere and I watched her for four to six hours a day.”

Being the scientist that he is, Safina took copious notes about the feathered backyard tenant, and that bird-watching experience has become the basis of “Alfie and Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe,” his latest book that will be published this October.

These are the kinds of subjects that can easily find their way into a conference focused on creativity, and it’s the diversity of thoughts and experiences that make such events so enlightening. That was certainly the case for Safina at the conference he took part in last year at Sea Island.

“I think it was enormously enjoyable to meet and spend time with a number of people I never would have met before,” he said. “Whenever you can create an opportunity to expose yourself and share with other people a little bit of new horizons and perspectives, that’s always valuable.”

April Gornik recalled attending her first creativity conference several years ago with her husband, Eric Fischl, an artist and co-founder of The Church, and being incredibly impressed by the experience.

“Eric and I were at one that Mark and Melissa had curated, this is 10 or 12 years ago, and it really blew our minds,” said Gornik. “We had never been at a meeting of the artistic creative minds that way, with a roster so diverse, smart and stimulating. It made a big impact on both of us.”

Like Safina, Gornik and Fischl were invited to be speakers at the Sea Island conference, in their case in 2017. Inspired by the event, Gornik reached out to Moffett and Wells and asked them to curate the 2022 Creativity Conference for The Church.

“It was great,” said Gornik. “Carl was there — not speaking, but we’re fixing that this year.”

Though The Church is truly a center for the arts, Gornik finds that embracing other disciplines is key to expanding the mind on all levels.

“Even in our residency program, one thing we wanted to include is science because that’s creativity,” said Gornik. “The underlying hope is there will be more potential for connectedness.”

Though Gornik had initially asked Moffett and Wells to curate this year’s Creativity Conference, Moffett was unavailable because of a tight book deadline. So she turned instead to Safina to take on the curator’s job. She had good reason to envision him in the role. Last fall, Safina put together “A Lifelong Conversation with the Living World in Words and Birds and Music” a panel discussion at The Church where the urgency of life on Earth was expressed through various art forms. The participants included Safina, author, poet and wildlife biologist J. Drew Lanham, musician Paul Winter (who will also take part in the Creativity Conference) and musician and artist Laurie Anderson.

“They were so amazing,” Gornik said of the panelists. “It was full of surprises and the level of passion with which everyone spoke was very, very moving. There was something so ethereal and spiritual about it.

“My favorite artists touch mortality in some ways from both sides, not just death or not just joy,” she added. “People were blown away and it was practically unscripted.”

“It was totally unscripted,” corrected Safina. “People said later that it totally moved them. It was one of those things where it was a synergy, more than the sum of what everyone contributed.”

“Often one person does something then the next person does something else, so it’s one plus one,” he explained. “But the talks created an aura and tone and they and hit people. That happened through all four speakers and performances that we had in a way none of us predicted or really planned for.”

Part of the magic of sessions like this is, indeed, the serendipitous nature of them. For the upcoming conference, Safina has given the participants no limitations or parameters on what they should talk about. It’s entirely up to them. He notes that Isabella Rossellini, in particular, has expertise on any number of subjects she can share, from stories about her famous parents — director Roberto Rossellini and actress Ingrid Bergman — to her own 40-year stint as a model and spokesperson for Lancôme, to her appearance in numerous films including “Blue Velvet,” “Fearless,” and “Big Night.”

Or maybe she’ll talk about her passion for the natural environment. Rossellini, who lives in Bellport, is the founder of Mama Farm, an organic farm in Brookhaven where she raises endangered breeds of farm animals. She is also the writer, director and star of “Green Porno,” a series of short films on animal sexual behavior that originally aired on the Sundance Channel.

“I said explicitly that you can talk about anything you want,” said Safina. “It’s funny to have known Isabella as model and actress and then to see her with a bee suit on opening up hives and smoking the bees.”

The other guests invited by Safina include writer and journalist Paul Greenberg, who frequently writes about the ocean with a food perspective. He is the best-selling author of the James Beard Award-winner “Four Fish” as well as “American Catch.” He teaches at New York University’s Animal Studies Program and his most recent book is “The Climate Diet.”

“I know about him writing about seafood, he’s a fellow at my Safina Center,” said Safina, who also brought in Paul Winter for the conference. “Paul Winter is a really unique musician, he’s really a genius, because his music is not like anybody else’s. He was the first at the intersection of music and natural sounds, and was the first to play along with wild animals that were calling or singing.”

In 1980, Paul Winter and his group were invited to become artists-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, and, every year, have presented a Solstice concert there.

“I would always try to sneak to the front to seats that I couldn’t afford,” admitted Safina. “We’ve become good, bonded bothers in the last 12 years. Paul’s a wonderful guy and a soulful guy and a phenomenal musician and he also has had incredible staying power.”

When asked if the Creativity Conference is similar to a TED Talk, Gornik responded, “TED talks are a bit of shorthand for things to think about. They are highly scripted, given the formula. But one of the things that really moved me when I went to the Creativity Conference, a few speakers talked about failure and anxiety. There were people who let their hearts out on their sleeves. I hope this will be a kind of rich offering, but also one with a certain casualness and intimacy. I’m hoping it’s more flawed and more rich.

“I am really excited. This roster is fantastic and they’re so interesting. We have a toy maker and a scientist,” added Gornik, who invited cartoonist Roz Chast to participate in the conference. “Sherri invited Cas Hollman, a psychologist who studies play. I’m excited to hear her speak. Like the program itself, the curation is free flowing. I figure Carl is the genesis for this and deserves the curatorial title.”

“I like when people talk about what works and what doesn’t, striving to be authentic and real and soulful,” added Safina.

“To feel inspired is to feel a call to action. What form that takes doesn’t matter to me, whether they join a birdwatching club or start writing about what’s discussed,” said Gornik. “It’s feeling that impetus to enjoy or tap into some kind of creative act. That’s fine for me. We do these every year, it will be interesting to see how it plugs into the community.”

The Creativity Conference at The Church is Saturday, April 1, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tickets are $100 ($85 members), which includes all presentations, Q&As, breakfast and a wine and cheese reception with the panelists at the end of the day. The Church is at 48 Madison Street, Sag Harbor. Visit thechurchsagharbor.org for details.