Tacoma Chapter
Our solution to climate change? Democracy.
2D Visual Arts
Zoe Keller, Octopodes, and Medusozoa, 2022, from the Biodiversity series of digital illustrations made in collaboration with the Pangeaseed Foundation, a global ocean conservation nonprofit that blends science, education, and art. Keller uses graphite, digital media and other forms to illustrate at-risk species and vanishing ecosystems. Her work, "which draws upon months of academic research, collaborations with the scientific community, and on-the-ground experiences, aims to inspire reverence for the natural world and action to defend what we have left."
Octopodes exemplifies her style with its amazingly meticulous scientific detail paired with plenty of aesthetic interest--note the clever composition using the Giant Pacific's matriarchal embrace of the others, who echo her graceful curls and curves. The rich black backgrounds of both illustrations set off the harmonious, subtle (and scientifically precise) colors.
She writes eloquently of Medusozoa: "Jellyfish, otherworldly and dreamlike, are reminders of the incredible forms life takes in our oceans. Earth’s waters have been host to jellyfish for at least 500 million years, and today there are nearly 4,000 identified species of jellies. While so many marine creatures stand to be lost during the sixth mass extinction, certain adaptable jellyfish species are flourishing in polluted, oxygen-deprived, and warming waters, with less fear of predation and supplies of zooplankton made more plentiful by overfishing. Jellyfish ‘blooms’ or ‘outbreaks’ are symptoms of an ocean desperately out of balance, beautiful and haunting reminders that so much needs to be done to preserve the biodiversity of all ocean life."
Mitch Epstein, "Old Growth" photography series, 2017-24. Patriarch Grove, Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, 2021 (left), and Coastal Redwood (Boy Scout Tree) Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park, 2022 (right). Since 2017 Epstein has traveled the country to photograph its oldest known trees. Some are relict species--relics from an earlier period when they thrived. Epstein's photos are a crucial record of these phenomenally resilient and ancient trees (some over 4,000 years!), still capturing carbon although up to 96% of their habitat is threatened by humans and the climate crisis.
Epstein previously documented human-centric environmental issues in Property Rights (the Standing Rock protests) and American Power (impact of industrial sites) with hand-held cameras. Here he uses a heavy large-format camera necessitating a tripod and long exposures but providing incredibly detailed negatives. Often capturing their majestic subjects in cool "cloud-bright" pre-dawn light, they are suffused with reverence. He says, “I was out on trails several miles a day with gear on my back and it gave me a greater respect for what the frontier photographers did in the 19th century. I made three trips to the ancient bristlecone pine forest in the White Mountains of California. It's impossible to describe the utter enchantment and other-worldliness of this landscape with trees that have lived for thousands of years.”
Andy Warhol, Endangered Species portfolio, silkscreen prints, 1983. Orangutan, Grevy's Zebra, Bighorn Ram, and Black Rhinoceros. The idea for the portfolio derives from conversations art dealers Ronald and Frayda Feldman had with Warhol about ecological issues, including beach erosion. (Warhol owned 15 acres of beachfront property on Long Island, now the The Andy Warhol Preserve, a gift to The Nature Conservancy from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.) Warhol's interest in animals was life-long, and 10 years after the Endangered Species Act was passed, he made this artistic statement, "leveraging his own renown and the recognizability of his work to draw public attention to the cause." He referred to them as portraits, and as "animals in make-up." The underlying images, based on photos, are realistic, but the colors and accent lines overlaying them are jarringly unnatural. Playing with the starkly contrasting hues of commercial advertising was part of his ironic Pop Art style. Sadly, over half of the 10 animals he depicted are now extinct or still at risk.
Jasmine Novack, Echoes from the Kelp Forest, oil on canvas, 2024. This Seattle-based underwater photographer and painter describes her process: "I keep my camera filming for as long as I'm underwater so I don't miss anything. The conditions underwater are so unpredictable, and the light changes constantly. Then, I scan through my footage frame by frame as I search for an image that resonates with me and edit it. As light passes through water, it filters the reds out the deeper you go, so editing those reds back in really helps to bring images to life."
These large-scale paintings are impressive with their handsome design, rich color, and sense of movement, almost like the rocking of waves. The weighty yet graceful masses of this giant seaweed sway in it. Kelp forest benefits are so numerous--sequestering carbon, reducing ocean acidification, protecting shorelines, providing habitat and food for a great variety of plants and animals. Novack says, "I'm incredibly moved by cold-water creatures and the kelp forests here in the Pacific Northwest. They're a vital part of our environment, but because the water is so cold and murky, it is difficult to grasp just how magnificent they are. So, I'm compelled to capture that beauty and share it through my art..."
Mark Fiore, New Normal, on the megafires in CA, and All-New Reversa, "back to the future of emissions." Fiore is a satirical cartoonist based in the Bay area, who won the Pulitzer prize for political cartooning in 2010. His sharp wit, eye-catching design, and clear message is impressive, as is the sheer size of his output and subject matter. He has begun to specialize in animated political cartoons, "Flash cartoons," with written commentary, seen on his website, markfiore.com.
Karen Hackenberg, Orca Pod, 2016, (three bottles of Laughing Whale water), Incoming, 2024, (here comes today's delivery of plastic trash!), Theory of Evolution, 2023, (looming humanoid/reptilian creature made of plastic liter bottles--our future? or twilight of the gods?). "Working traditionally with oil and gouache, she lovingly and meticulously crafts images of beach trash arranged and titled with a light-hearted yet subversive approach to the serious issue of ocean degradation." The artist lives in Port Townsend and finds all her subjects as she cleans up the local beach. The monumental size of objects, backed by grand ocean/sunset panoramas, hints at the scale of the problem. She says, "In a way humor helps people engage, draws them in, but I also like to paint things beautifully, so I use the beauty even of the trash...we are a culture that doesn't value anything...but I'm not giving up."
40 of her paintings, some quite large, were in the Tacoma Art Museum exhibit Sea Change: The art of Karen Hackenberg. "Inspired by the artist’s vibrant expressions of environmental concern, TAM is using the mounting of Sea Change as the impetus to reconsider sustainability in its own practices. Programming for Sea Change is motivated by Hackenberg’s work and community partners using art as a conduit for climate action."
Olalekan Jeyifous, Frankencityscapes series, 2021, and Proto-farm communities of Upstate New York series, 2024 photo-montages. It's fun to get lost in the many colorful and mysterious details of these post-climate apocalypse scenes, first of urban dystopia and then scenes of what if we get it right? "Olalekan imagines a fugitive network of farming societies...these works build upon a vision of resilience and resistance that reference the tradition of maroon communities, recast through the lens of an Afrofuturist, ecological, and solar-punk-meets-salvage-punk world brimming with Black joy." (Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, p.393 of What If We Get It Right? discussed in BOOK section.)
Maria Medina-Schechter, Fantastic Fungi,2022, "botanical painting" using blueberries, mica and Spanish saffron on mycelium. The artist began "growing" her pieces after a car accident left her severely impaired. She learned of the healing power of mycelium through the film 'Fantastic Fungi' and the writings of Merlin Sheldrake, and it is now her medium--its natural growth process dictating much of the design. She forages for her materials and refers to Hildegard of Bingen for medieval palette "recipes."
Her "goal is to bring awareness to the delicacy of our planet and its natural wonders. Through the use of healthier materials for a healthier world, we battle a term coined by Jane Goodall: Eco-Grief. This is my way of inspiring future generations of stewards working on the behalf of the natural world. When we begin to Green our lives we heal ourselves and the Earth."
Northwest Artists Against Extinction (part of the Save our Wild Salmon Coalition), Honor: People and Salmon exhibit at the University of Puget Sound, 2023, "an exhibit of works by artist-advocates who create art to evoke support for restoring salmon and orcas, their lands and waters, and the many communities that honor and cherish these emblematic species." "Restoring the habitat of those that give back to the nourishment of all living things/and living things to come is crucially important for the well-being of this special place we ALL call home." (Sarah Koten)
A selection of the artwork, seen below:
Sue Coccia, Granny Orca Spirit, and Sockeye, 2020 pen & ink acrylics
Sarah Koten, Salish Sea Salmon, and Stained Glass Salmon, 2023, acrylic on canvas
Amy Gulick, Art Imitates Life, and Natural Wealth, 2015-16, photographs
Eileen Klatt, A Litany of Salmon-Extinct:Malheur River Spring Chinook, 2006 watercolor on paper
Hannah Rothstein, National Parks 2050 poster series of 2017(top), and Goodstock: Putting Climate Solutions Center Stage poster series of 2023(bottom). Rothstein "took classic Art Deco promotional posters for America's national parks and updated them to imagine how man-made global climate change will affect them by the year 2050. It's a gut punch to see these instantly recognizable illustrations of nature transformed this way." Be sure to read the fine print on them, wryly funny!
The eye-catching Woodstock style in the Goodstock: Putting Climate Solutions Center Stage is clever, too. "It applies the aesthetic of vintage rock posters to each of the featured solutions, thus lending each initiative the same sexiness and cachet as the 1960s’ most influential music."
"When you describe the science behind climate change with words and numbers, people's eyes tend to glaze over," she says. "By making it visual, you can grab immediate attention. "I'm trying to make art that helps."
Tapas Das, Suffocated Life and Returning Life, 2021. This painter from Kolkata takes inspiration from a historical Indian style, the exquisite detailed realism of Mughul miniatures, for his animal figures. Juxtaposing their delicate silhouettes with cruder depictions of plastic trash emphasizes its horror and menace. An avid nature lover, Das says, "We as a society have to be more conscious when using plastic. If we don't take the necessary measures to control plastic pollution then soon mother nature will give up and this beautiful world will meet its nemesis."
Drew Collins, Lion's Mane Jellyfish, and Harbor Seal Pup, 2019, photographs in We are Puget Sound (see discussion in Books). These stunning images come from a photographer who started in the field late in life! He loves diving in the Salish Sea, discovering marine life and capturing it with underwater photograpy. That and his volunteer work at the Seattle Aquarium inspired him to create his nonprofit organization, Made in Puget Sound.org, which educates people about Puget Sound and the issues its faces, such as toxins, pollutants and ocean acidification, and provides opportunities to get involved. "A thousand people move to the Puget Sound area every week, and it’s adding more stress to wildlife and ecosystems. We all need to work to keep it clean and healthy, so this wildlife on land and water will be around for our kids and grandkids.”
Heather Wallis Murphy, Terminus: Deception Glacier, 2022, watercolor, pen and ink. Part of the National Park Service Terminus Glacier Memorial Project, an "artistic elegy" to the disappearing glaciers in the Olympic Mountains. Murphy is a PNW notecard artist, watercolorist, and nature writer who retired in 2005 from the U.S. Forest Service as a wildlife biologist.
"The future of glaciers melting in the Olympic National Park is an abstract concept to me. To help tell the magnitude of change I chose geometric shapes for this painting. The whitish trapezoids and squares delineate glacier ice of the current day. It is edged by 2015’s glacial ice of baby blue. The lighter purple is glacial ice of 2010. The light pink shows glacial ice of 1960. The pink color flows downstream to the glacier end in 1909 (scientist’s estimate 1982).
"As the Deception Glacier melts, many species of plants and animals will suffer. The glaciated alpine zone has Ice Worms (Mesenchytraeus solifugus), they NEED ice’s insulation to survive hot summers and cold winters. The Gray-crowned Rosy-finch feeds on Ice Worms which emerge at sundown. Plants endemic to the Olympic Mountain alpine include Cotton’s Milkvetch and Piper’s Olympic Bellflower. They have nowhere further up to go. The Olympic Marmot is also native only to these mountains. The marmot will not find cooling homes for summer’s heat.
Whitebark Pine is in distress across its range from the warming of high elevations."
Gideon Mendel, Muhammad Chattel Korai,Singh Province,Pakistan, and Winner Odums,Otuaba,Nigeria, photography, 2022. This S. African photographer has focused on the human effects of climate change for years. He says, "the emotional connection, the relationship with people, is very important. I think what I offer them is a deep witnessing. A terrible thing has happened to them, and I offer them a chance to show the world what’s happened to them. It’s not the moment when people are fleeing—I’m not the photographer from the newspaper. The water can linger for days, for months, and so I’m there when people are coming back. It feels like it’s a new chapter in climate-change impacts, like it’s ramping up.”
Bill McKibben, writing in the New Yorker recently on an exhibit including these photos, feels that "Mendel is a Robert Capa, a Margaret Bourke-White, a Mathew Brady of this new war. We’re still early enough in this battle that, if we act decisively, we can limit the number of people who will have to bear this kind of trauma. Meanwhile, we have majestic documentation of our folly."
Claire Sianna Seaman, Blue to Deep Blue,Terminus:Blue Glacier, 2022, (Part of the National Park Service Terminus Glacier Memorial Project, an "artistic elegy" to the disappearing glaciers in the Olympic Mountains).
"The disappearance of a glacier does not only denote the absence of stark white in the distant peaks; it means the transformation of entire watersheds. The Blue Glacier feeds into the Hoh River via Glacier Creek. Without a steady supply of cold water from Blue Glacier, the water level of the Hoh River will decrease as its temperature increases. These new environmental conditions will affect the thirteen species of salmon the Hoh supports, the most diverse salmonid population to be found in a single river in the continental U.S."
"Blue to Deep Blue documents the Blue Glacier as it was in 1899 in the darkest blue, 2008 in light blue, and 2018 in white. Given the rate of decline, the Blue Glacier, the largest and most visited in Olympic National Park, may be gone within my lifetime. I hope this artwork will serve to help us remember our glaciers, and that we may live in a way that does their memory justice."
Below, Imagining Climate Resilience in the Pacific Northwest, 2021,(in collaboration with the Climate Impacts Group, Univ.WA.) "This artwork is an attempt to go beyond the feelings of helplessness: to imagine a future in which we've acted to limit climate change and adapt to the changes we cannot avoid, leaving our region more equitable, sustainable and just."
Oskar Pernefeldt, International Flag of Earth, 2015. This graphic design is to "remind the people of Earth that we share this planet, no matter of national boundaries; that we should take care of each other and the planet we live on. Centered in the flag, seven rings form a flower – a symbol of life on Earth. The rings are linked to each other, which represents how everything on our planet, directly or indirectly, are linked. The blue field represents water which is essential for life – also as the oceans cover most of our planet's surface. The flower's outer rings form a circle which could be seen as a symbol of Earth as a planet and the blue surface could represent the universe."
Check out flagsforgood.com to buy and fly your own!
(Thanks to Linda Cohan for this suggestion)
Taina Litwak, News Stream VI--Reflections, and Gingko I--Forest Pond, 2022, acrylic and collaged newspaper on canvas. The artist has had a long career as a scientific illustrator. Artist's statement: "In this painting, I use deciduous forests, and their annual leaf fall, to document issues of the climate change and environmental damage we are causing. Each cut and painted leaf is a flash of content, a voice demanding our attention, only to drift away and be replaced by the next days’ urgent headlines, an unending stream. The stone below, slow to change, is juxtaposed against the transparent fluidity of the water and evanescent character of the leaves/bites of information."
Part of the Art x Climate Exhibit of the Fifth National Climate Assessment.
Jane Goldman, Patty Melt, and Teetering on the Edge, two of her Global Warming Series watercolor monotypes, 2018-23. Artist statement: "Dark humor sets the tone, inspired by silent film comedians, especially the great Buster Keaton. In this context the silent comedians represent all of us, experiencing global crises in slow motion. Like them, we watch the planet beset with catastrophe in ever faster motion. Some pieces in the series personalize the consequences of our behavior. Patty Melt depicts Keaton, burger in hand, amidst glacial melt, due in part to global beef consumption. And in some works, such as Teetering on the Edge, our Everyman is depicted in a situation right before catastrophe occurs, implying that there’s still time to alter the outcome. As an 'apocaloptimist,' I hope the future proves less grim."
Part of the Art x Climate Exhibit of the Fifth National Climate Assessment.
Spencer Frazer, Stream of Consciousness, 2020, oil on canvas. Statement by this well-known PNW self-taught artist: "My painting depicts the results of human impact on nature and has us question what is and will be. The work bridges the literal and the imaginative, informed by Northwest Indigenous art, as well as that of other traditions. One of the underlying principles of the work is to create pieces where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Often in the background I use written language for viewers to decipher and interpret. I am fascinated by how the mind searches to recognize the familiar." Part of the Art x Climate Exhibit of the Fifth National Climate Assessment.
Alyse Dietel, Fragility, 2023, watercolor, pen, acrylic and gouache. Statement by this self-taught San Diego graphic artist: “Fragility expresses the delicateness of our natural world and ecosystems. The vintage Heisey teacup, historically owned by the wealthy, represents how people have affected the environment for generations and continue to do so. Two of the whales are humpbacks, which in some cases are still endangered. The third whale is a North Atlantic right whale, critically endangered and expected to become functionally extinct in just a few decades. Above the whales float several icebergs, which are spilling over the edge of the cup bit by bit. The earth is losing approximately 1.2 trillion tons of ice per year due to climate change." Part of the Art x Climate Exhibit of the Fifth National Climate Assessment.
Katelyn Garcia, The Dust We Will Breathe, 2022, inkjet print. Statement by this Utah artist and teacher, who also creates meditative videos in natural settings: "The Dust We Will Breathe is a photograph of the drying lakebed of the Great Salt Lake, a graveyard of once underwater mounds made of microbial organisms. Human consumption is mostly to blame for the lake reaching historic lows, which is compounded by climate change and the west’s current megadrought. If no drastic changes in consumption are made, the lake will be gone in 5 years. Every day that more lakebed is exposed, we will breathe in more of its toxic dust." Part of the Art x Climate Exhibit of the Fifth National Climate Assessment.
Es Devlin, Hand Map: Redraw the Edges of Yourself, 2023, poster for the Back to Earth project at the Serpentine Gallery in London. "I was inspired by the environmental activist Joanna Macy and other writers who speak to the continuity of the biosphere and the self. In other words, if you saw other species and the rest of the world as a continuation of yourself, you wouldn’t harm it. I was constantly drawing endangered insects, fish, plants. I put my hand on paper, drew around it, took photos of some of the drawings, and plunked them around the outline. When I did that, I felt that continuity between myself and the species I was drawing — between my knuckle and the edge of a bird wing, the veins on my hand and on a leaf."
Paul Nicklen, Ice Waterfalls off Nordaustlandet, Norway, photograph, 2014. A Canadian from Baffin Island, Nicklen remembers taking this iconic global warming shot, with temperatures hovering above an amazing 70 degrees and more than a dozen waterfalls pouring off the face of the ice cliff. "It was the most poetic, beautiful scene I’d ever seen, but it was also haunting and scary.” "The picture came to symbolize the realities of climate change. It appeared multiple times in National Geographic, was used by Al Gore in his climate talks, and graced the cover of Pearl Jam’s 2020 album “Gigaton,” the title of which refers to the unit used to calculate ice mass."
Nicklen compares photographing climate change to photographing conflict. “We’re out there on the front lines of the war being waged against our planet. It’s emotionally draining, exhausting,” he says. But “photography is one of the most effective and powerful tools we have to tell complex stories, like the story of climate change,” says Cristina Mittermeier, his wife, whose photo of an emaciated polar bear went viral on social media and shook the world in 2017.
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Sandra M. Sawatsky, The Age of Uncertainty, 2021, 12 hand-embroidered linen panels illustrating and satirizing "human activities shaping us and our future." Her first epic embroidery piece, The Black Gold Tapestry, a 67-metre-long embroidered history, beginning with the age of dinosaurs, of humans’ discovery of, development of, and ultimately utter dependence on fossil fuels," was inspired by the 11th-century Bayeux Tapestry. This recent work dealing with the many stressors of life today takes inspiration from medieval illuminated manuscripts with their embellished borders and "drolleries" in the margins. "What I tried to do is fairly answer questions on how we got where we are today, and somehow that combined with the embroidery made it possible to open up discussion. With the current project, The Age of Uncertainty picks up the thread and considers the many unforeseen repercussions of a world changed by oil, gas and coal.”
Mary Tiegreen, using Bing AI, Climate Disasters Inspired by the Great Masters, 2023. One of the things I love about updating the Artivism page is that I never know what I'm going to discover! These parodies are so clever, I really got a chuckle, especially as an art history major. But they go beyond entertainment; click each image to get information on their particular climate issue and artist. This is just a sampling! Tiegreen is the art director for a very useful website, climatechangeresources.org.
William Blake, The Invisible Problem (Greenhouse Gases)
Claude Monet, The Willow Weeps (Water Pollution)
Georges Seurat, H2OMG! (Precipitation)
Van Gogh, Hell is Empty and all the Devils are Here (Extreme Weather)
Katsushika Hokusai, The Ocean Once Protected Us,
(Sea Level Rise)
Henri Rousseau, In Search of Sanctuary, (Habitat Disruption)
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Beehive Design Collective graphic artists, The True Cost of Coal, large format (60" X 30") foldout poster, 2010. "Beehive allied with Appalachian grassroots organizers fighting mountaintop removal coal mining, a highly destructive practice that blasts ancient mountains to fuel the ever-growing global demand for electricity, wreaking havoc on coalfield communities, folks downwind and downstream of coal-burning power plants, and all of us faced with catastrophic climate change." The closed poster "depicts an intact mountain landscape, bursting with biodiversity, clean water, and interconnectedness. When the poster is pulled apart, a very different landscape is revealed – one of exploitation and extraction, of toxic contamination and privatization of resources." (See details here: on left, pre-coal, on the right, post-coal). Note the "bio-regionally accurate plant and animal species of both ecological and cultural significance to Appalachia, where the most biodiverse temperate forests in the world are found."
Linda Gass, Severely Burned: Impact of the Rim Fire on the Tuolumne River Watershed, and Detail, 2014, machine quilting and hand stitching on silk, 54" X 70". The Rim Fire, over 400 square miles, was the largest ever in the Sierras at the time. "Water quality (for the San Francisco region) will be affected by ash, fire retardant and soil erosion for years to come. Some of the severely burned areas may never recover to forests, changing the watershed forever." The blue thread represents the river and its tributaries, the ashy gray thread represents topographical lines for areas "reduced to nothing but ash." Her stated approach is "evoking the chaos of climate change through the use of comforting materials." The large scale, accurate detail, and somber color palette denote its seriousness.
Fabrice Monteiro, The Prophecy, 2014, photography project in collaboration with costume designer Doulcy, uses storytelling, fashion photography, and photojournalism to raise awareness about environmental devastation. "I wanted to create a tale that would combine animism and ecology to better speak to hearts. The Prophecy is a tale of hope and empowerment. Earth has sent her spirits to tell humans that they have the power to reverse what they have done to the planet.”
Hurt, exhausted and startled by the attitude of the humans and their lack of respect for the earth, Gaïa summoned the great spirits of nature, her children and allies, the Djinns:
My dear children, hear my call, the evil grows on our beloved planet earth. I built a world where life would be prosperous, where each would be free to breathe, to eat and admire what nature has to offer. Nevertheless, I am dying. Every day more numerous and more insatiable, the humans make excessive use of my wealth without thinking of the consequences. It has been many years since they remain deaf to my calls but you, my faithful Djinns, can reach them. Leave, reveal your existence to the humans and alert them of the danger that they incur...
Nine beautiful and terrifying composite figures, inspired by West African masqueraders, emerge out of oil slicks, garbage dumps and desiccated landscapes in Senegal, with costumes created out of found objects from each of the locations.
Rebecca Lee Kunz, Story Paintings: A Mythological Narrative Told by the Creatures of the Anthropocene, 2022, monoprints overlaid with watercolor and graphite drawing on paper. The series "draws inspiration from the Cherokee creation myth and seeks lessons about survival and the future. If we can just remember to go to that creative place, we can come up with brilliant and innovative solutions to problems such as climate change.” Coyote Skin::Dusty Paws recalls hearing coyotes in the distance while on an evening run, like "messages that sounded like ancient code being spoken in Coyote. Messages about how to move forward in balance, how to guide my children through this strange time, and how to simply survive. I was reminded that we have been through this before, but that we must listen and learn from our past. Not only did our human survival depend on it, but the Earth did as well.”
From Cinders includes ascending ravens, the Cherokee symbol for "good luck after disaster."
Terry Evans, The South Pasture February to May 2022, and Burr Oak with Roots 2020, composite photo images. The elegant beauty of her works, their subtle colors and crisp interwoven textures, comes from deep knowledge of beloved prairie sites gained through loving observation over decades. The artist comments: "Of the entire biomass of the prairie, only 15 percent is visible above ground; the other 85 percent lies below the surface. I was awed by this fact as I observed the tremendous diversity and complexity of grasses and forbs visible at my feet...Earlier on the prairie, the plains Indians had respectfully learned as much as possible about a plant in order to deserve to call it by name and to use it for food, medicinal, or ritualistic purposes... Prairie expressed metaphors for human community about living with diversity and deep roots and a sense of place."
Dan Piraro, editorial cartoonist (Bizarro), author, performer, and vegan activist. Look at the insight and courage of these messages as far back as 2003 (weatherman) and 2007 (evolution)! Well ahead of his time, and a great example of the effectiveness of combating climate change through humor.
Scott Laserow, "Help Reverse Climate Change Before It's Too Late," 2010, and "Plastic Fish," 2011, posters.
Most of Laserow's award-winning work, combining masterful design with a powerful message, has been pro-bono in support of humanitarian causes worldwide. A human silhouette, made up (and here in the process of being unmade) of wildlife, reveals our existential connection with other species. Of Plastic Fish, an exhibition judge writes, "my appreciation of beauty was smacked in the face with a realization of horror. It is exquisite in all senses of the word--visually, of course, and strategically." The caption states "2/3 of the world's fish suffer from plastic ingestion."
Madjeen Isaac, In the Palm of Our Hands, 2020. Oil on canvas. Isaac's lively magical realist works blend Haitian and Brooklyn flavors, with concerns for environmental justice and community activism. "Immigrants are no longer as connected to the Earth as they once were,” she said. “In thinking about environmental justice, I like to think about what are ways in which we can lean into our ancestral practices of agriculture over here. What if we had more autonomy with the spaces that we occupy? And how can we transform these lawns and our rooftops and grow our own foods to live off of?”
Lib Ferreira, Lawn Cemetery Queanbeyan NSW, photograph, 2020. "Bushfires were ravaging the South Coast of NSW. Canberra and Queanbeyan remained a safe distance away, however, we were blanketed with smoke. These images were taken at the Queanbeyan Lawn Cemetery. The kangaroos crowded around the graves, as it was the only place you could still find green grass during the drought." (Such a surreal sight, comical at first until the circumstances are known.) Ferreira is a participant in Women Photographers Australia, which "aims to combine activism and photography by utilising a growing network of female and non-binary photographers to advocate with their photography."
Joyce Yamada, Shadow-nine Forest, 1991, and Rainforest Green Stream, 2003, acrylic on canvas.
"My interest in ecology and the environment began in earnest in the early 1990s after pivotal trips to the temperate rainforests of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. Flying over Oregon on the approach to Seattle, and then driving from there to the rainforests revealed how utterly rapaciously we are destroying our forests. I was struck by the geometric patterns of logging – huge rectangles of forest had been cut out of still intact forest growing on steep hillsides. Shado-nine forest closely mirrored the actual landscape of forests that were deracinated, literally cut off from their roots, floating in a human-induced wasteland. Green Stream came directly from a visit to the Hoh National Forest. A beautiful, complex stream meandered through old growth forest, the entire scene a beautiful green, the air clean and enlivening. This painting was a straightforward celebration of a specific place."
Barbara Bogacka, Blue Dragon Cave, photograph, 2020. Melting Icelandic glacial caves. "I want to show what is so fragile, unique, and valuable, and what we must try to save. The flickering light and the structure and color of ice make the caves alive and mysterious. The caves I visited in 2018 and in 2019 on the edges of Breiðamerkurjökull do not exist anymore. They disappeared together with the retreating glacier. The creation of caves and under-glacial tunnels is a dynamic process and new ones form while the old ones change or disappear. Blue Dragon Cave and Sapphire Cave have rather small chances of surviving the summer in their current forms. I could see the meltdown occurring rapidly over my three annual visits to the same area."
Aida Muluneh, Knowing the Way to Tomorrow and Star Shine, Moon Glow, 2018. Staged photographs commissioned by Water Aid. In these extremely striking images set in the desert of Dallol, Afar, Ethiopia, Ethiopian photographer Aida Muluneh highlights the issue of water shortage and lack of access to clean water for millions of people around the world, with a particularly devastating impact on rural women and girls. Muluneh incorporates traditional elements from her culture like clothing and body paint "to raise awareness and advocate for changes in regions with water scarcity." The vivid reds, blues, and yellows reference Ethiopian church wall paintings.
Anonymous (?) Our Planet Has Two Lungs One is Green the Other is Blue, digital image, 2021? I've seen this a lot on Twitter, etc., but cannot find out who the artist is. Help, anyone? In any case, I find it to be extremely effective in conveying its message--that healthy oceans and green spaces are as essential to us as our own vital organs .
Nyaba Leon Ouedraogo, In the Hell of Copper, 2011, photograph.
An African documentary photographer from Burkina Faso, he produces gripping photographs of the "suffering endured by people faced with the social and environmental consequences of our consumerist way of life." "Taken in Ghana, one of the main dumping grounds for e-waste from Europe and the United States, where young Ghaneans poison themselves as they search for precious metals from amongst the thousands of computers piled up in rubbish dumps."
Kristi McCluer, Beacon Rock Golf Course with Eagle Creek Wildfire, 2017, photograph.
This dramatic image went viral after the amateur photographer posted it. While skydiving, she saw the Oregon wildfire and its proximity (a mile across the Columbia River) to a golf course in North Bonneville WA. Sept. 4 she took this picture of golfers carrying on calmly with a raging inferno right behind them. "In the pantheon of visual metaphors for America today, tweeted writer and producer David Simon, (The Wire), this is the money shot."
John Gerrard, Flare (Oceania), 2021. A simulation created for COP26, shown as a large-scale LED wall. "The work responds to a statement from Tongan artist + activist Uili Lousi, whose ancestral ocean is heating due to climate change." Irish new media artist Gerrard is known for Western Flag, a video work made in 2017, in which the site of the world’s first major oil find in Texas is marked by a "banner of constantly billowing black smoke." Here he was inspired to create a "flag from flames, set against a real-time seascape based on photographs taken by Lousi."
Forest, 2019-20, multimedia, with drawings by Katie Holten and poem by Forrest Gander was published in Emergence Magazine. Her delightful and delicate "tree alphabets" and graphic black and white palette bridge the gap between nature and culture in a whimsical way. Click the image and watch the forest grow!
