Alum Laura Purdy Curates 'California Continued' Exhibit, Documentary at Autry Museum

HOLLYWOOD SOAPBOX -- Purdy joined the Autry in 2011 and has created multimedia elements for 13 exhibitions. The interactive media productions she created for “Floral Journey: Native North American Beadwork” earned her a 2014 Silver Media MUSE award for video, film and computer animation. She has worked in multimedia production and cinema for a number of years and earned academic degrees from Indiana University and San Francisco State University. “There are a couple of things we want to accomplish with our project ‘Tending the Wild,’” Purdy Says. “First, we want people living in and visiting California today, to learn about how traditional ecological knowledge from indigenous communities from across California had sustained the environment for millennia and is still relevant today. It was very important for this story to be a contemporary story in collaboration with native communities about issues that impact all Californians and how TEK in partnerships could help inform how we tend our environment and even our planet.”