By Jenny Zeller
CONNECT 2026 transformed the shores of Lake Nevin into a vibrant space for art, music, science, and nature. As thousands of visitors made their way around the lake, they encountered glowing sculptures, immersive art installations, spontaneous dance performances, and moments of discovery around every bend. At the heart of the evening were the artists who brought these experiences to life, inviting us to see Bernheim, and our relationship with the natural world, in new and exciting ways.
Music provided the rhythm of the night, with Villa Mure, Brooks Ritter, Second Story Man, Mama Said String Band, Roadie, and Angel 004 each bringing their own sound and energy to CONNECT. From bluegrass and roots-inspired rock to indie, electronic, and experimental sounds, the music shifted with the landscape, and each performance became part of the larger experience of the night. Shout out to Angel 004 for the beautifully creative stage design!
This year’s artists took inspiration from the landscape in wildly different directions, creating experiences that ranged from immersive and interactive to playful, unexpected, and thought-provoking. Each brought something distinct to the night, using the forest, lake, darkness, and even the audience itself as part of the experience.
Meet the artists who helped make this year’s CONNECT an unforgettable night at Bernheim!
Ambo Dance Theatre – Bloom
Bloom was a site-specific dance performance unfolding across 4 rotating sites around Lake Nevin by Ambo Dance Theatre. Dancers, costumed in recycled flowers, greenery, and fairy lights, perform twice at each location (once by day and again after dusk). Through structured improvisation, the dancers responded to each other, the environment, and music, transforming into luminous extensions of the land. The movement score explored growth, decay, and rebirth, revealing how beauty and hope continue to emerge amidst disruption.
Leah Bomar – GlitterBomb Creation Station
Leah Bomar’s GlitterBomb Creation Station invited visitors into a playful, sensory-rich world of creativity and imagination. Guests posed with whimsical props in Nature’s Photobooth, experimented with art journaling and creative prompts using natural materials and colorful trinkets, and contributed their words to a collaborative community poem.
Dawn Bunch – Sacred Space
Dawn Bunch transformed fabric and reclaimed materials into Sacred Space, a nature-inspired installation celebrating color, pattern, texture, and light. Installed on a floating platform on Lake Nevin, its semi-transparent forms shifted with the surrounding landscape, taking on a new presence as daylight faded and illumination brought the work to life after dark.
Chenoa Works – Transmission
Chenoa Works’ Transmission explored the hidden networks of communication found within mycelium. Suspended forms featuring black-and-white, mycelium-inspired imagery created a visible network by day, while projection mapping activated the installation after dark, sending moving imagery across its surfaces and transforming the work into a dynamic, interconnected system.
Janet Dake – Collaborative Community Mural
Artist and educator Janet Dake turned painting into a collective experience with a community mural inspired by Kentucky’s natural world. Beginning with a loose framework created by the artist, visitors of all ages picked up brushes and added their own colors, marks, and interpretations, building the finished work together throughout the evening.
Linda Erzinger – Container
Linda Erzinger’s Container transformed reclaimed shipping straps collected during the COVID lockdown into illuminated woven forms reflecting repetition, chaos, unraveling, and the passage of time. Arranged in a continuous circle reminiscent of an ouroboros, the work took on another dimension after dark through colorful illumination.
Field Guide for Dreamers – Doorways
Field Guide for Dreamers created a portal into another world with Doorways, an immersive experience combining fog, projected nature imagery, ambient sound, music, and cooling mist. Visitors were invited to approach the threshold, peer into the shifting landscape beyond, and imagine where the doorway might lead.
Elizabeth Haigh – Warp and Web
Elizabeth Haigh magnified one of nature’s most intricate constructions with Warp and Web, a series of larger-than-life spiderwebs inspired by the weaving patterns of different spider species. Bright threads caught the eye during the day before fluorescing under blacklight after dark, revealing shimmering webs woven throughout the forest.
Haigh and Harvey – Clatterwall
Elizabeth Haigh and John Harvey reimagined the familiar picket fence as a playful musical instrument with Clatterwall. Constructed from wood of varying shapes, lengths, textures, and tones, the installation invited visitors to pick up a stick and drag, tap, and strike their way along the fence, discovering its unexpected rhythms and sounds.
Thaniel Ion Lee and Elle W Hendrickson – The Bird, The Tree, The Infinity
Thaniel Ion Lee and Elle W. Hendrickson blurred the boundaries between the real and recorded landscape in The Bird, The Tree, The Infinity. Using blue- and green-screen techniques, the artists filmed Bernheim’s landscape while gradually erasing and replacing elements within it, then projected the resulting film back onto the place where it was created; layering image, sound, memory, and the living environment.
Benjamin Maddox – Arroyo -The Visionary
Benjamin Maddox drew upon the ancient language of petroglyphs in Arroyo – The Visionary, a work created from cold-rolled steel and fused glass. Inspired by the ways humans have long used symbols to mark meaningful places, preserve stories, and communicate across generations, the work invited reflection on memory, identity, ancestry, and our own connections to place.
Chad Nanna – Time is an Illusion
Chad Nanna transformed the familiar form of a grandfather clock into an interactive exploration of time, curiosity, and play. Rather than simply telling time, Time is an Illusion invited visitors to press illuminated buttons and discover unexpected combinations of light and movement—with no instructions, no correct sequence, and plenty of room for imagination.
Scarpetta x Chaos Carnivale: Creatures of the Night
Scarpetta and Chaos Carnivale joined sound, movement, light, and imagery in Creatures of the Night, a performance inspired by Bernheim after dark. Scarpetta created place-based improvisational music while dancers and flow artists from Chaos Carnivale moved through the environment with glowing props, accompanied by projected nature imagery and blacklight-activated elements.
Kris Thompson – CLARITY
Floating on Lake Nevin, Kris Thompson’s CLARITY transformed the symbolic form of a white lotus into a monumental sculpture celebrating peace. Measuring approximately 10 feet wide, the luminous flower appeared to emerge from the water, creating a striking moment of beauty and reflection within the CONNECT landscape.
Marty Wourms – Sylvia in the Silvery Forest
A beloved tradition, Sylvia has appeared at every CONNECT to date, evolving each year with new elements that celebrate sustainability and the beauty of Bernheim. Surrounded by reflective metal flowers that blur the line between the natural and human-made, Sylvia in the Silvery Forest serves as a playful protector of the forest and a reminder of our shared responsibility to care for the planet through everyday actions like reducing waste, recycling, and leaving no trace.
The experience was also shaped by the creativity and dedication of the Arts in Nature team and our incredible volunteers, who dreamed up and built creative experiences that truly inspired wonder and awe. Night Dancers featured larger-than-life Luna, Polyphemus, Io, Cecropia, and Rosy Maple moths. Dandy Lights (pictured near top), glowing puff balls creations, brought a playful and illuminating presence to an otherwise dark corner of the Lake Nevin Loop.
Through the efforts and hard work of each artist, CONNECT continues to be an illuminating experience for thousands of people from all walks of life. Each creation invites visitors to see Bernheim in a different light, while maintaining the core values of conservation and sustainability. From immersive installations to the music and movement of art, CONNECT brings a level of energy and discovery that is unique to our region of Kentucky. Visitors from near and far annually come to be inspired, dazzled, and create new memories with family, friends, and the forest.
