Tacoma Chapter
Our solution to climate change? Democracy.
2D Visual Arts continued
Diane Burko,Toboggan Glacier, Alaska, 1909 & 2000, oil on canvas, from Politics of Snow exhibit of 2010. Burko incorporates scientific data (Landsat imagery, mapping data and U.S.G.S. repeat photography archives) with sensual and sublime visual motifs. By pairing her images of the glacier so that a contemporary view is combined with the same view from over 100 years ago, the effects of climate change are immediately apparent. In her long career, making art plus working with scientists have been symbiotic: “I want my work to accurately reflect the science and the urgency of climate change, and they want me to help them communicate their research to the public through my art. Through facts and images, I endeavor to make the invisible visual and visceral.”
Below-- Great Barrier Reef, acrylic, 2018, and Amazon26, mixed media, 2023. Her artwork's effect is "both sumptuous and frightening. While her work deals with climate catastrophe, rather than lingering in dystopia, it also celebrates the sublimity of the landscape."
Rohan Chakravarty, The Many Faces of Climate Change this Year and UAE at COP28, 2023. This "cartoonist, illustrator and wildlife buff" from Napur is the creator of the award-winning Green Humour comic strip series, the first Indian comic to be globally syndicated. "I'm drawn to verified environmental issues that should be making front-page news but sadly don't...art can be a visual medium for change."
Favianna Rodriguez, End Fossil Fuels (on left) and LMNOPI, When the Water Gets High...When the Floods Roll in...When the People Rise...and You Hear Us Sing...(on right), posters from the Art to End Fossil Fuels Project. These are two of the five designs. 10,000 poster kits were given away globally in support of public demonstrations including the March to End Fossil Fuels at the United Nations Climate Ambition Summit, New York City, September 20, 2023. A statement from Rodriguez: “The power of art is that it can help us heal our relationship to nature and help us as human beings understand that we can move away from an extractive relationship toward a regenerative one." LMNOPI is from Vermont, and created her design while clearing the July Vermont flash-flooding from her basement!
James Whitlow Delano, "Sinking Land and Rising Seas Threaten Manila Bay's Coastal Communities," documentary article and photographs, Inside Climate News, Nov.18,2022. "Sprawling mangrove forests once held vulnerable coastal soils in place, broke waves and buffered the shore from storms and provided habitats for thousands of species. But today, fewer than 1,236 acres of mangrove forests remain, leaving this low-lying coastline of Manila Bay one of the most vulnerable to typhoon storm surges and tides on the planet.​"
In 2015, Delano founded the EverydayClimateChange (ECC) Instagram feed, "where photographers from around the world document climate change on all 7 continents. ECC documents how climate change is not happening “over there” but is happening right here and right now." Based in Tokyo, this photographer achieves devastating reportage with stunning artistry.
Beth Ames Swartz, Broken World, "The Wind Scatters Tears Upon Dust" (Hart Crane), 2022, layers of poured acrylic on canvas. Part of an exhibit of artistic responses to the California wildfires. This 87-year old artist has enjoyed a long career painting primarily abstract works with occasional symbols from various spiritual traditions. With its fiery colors, a black sun/planet, smokey wisps, and background evoking embers/tree bark and texture, this seems to me to be a powerful and true impression of these powerful and disastrous events.
Edward Burkynsky, Oil Bunkering no. 2, Niger Delta, Nigeria, 2016. Award-winning Canadian photographer. "This aerial image shows the results of a process known as "bunkering", where poor communities siphon off oil from the pipelines of multinational corporations extracting their country's national resources. The regular spillages of crude oil and toxic by-products from their jerry-rigged micro-refineries pollute the delta waters and surrounding land, which is also logged and burned. It is a powerful image of ecological devastation that uses the seductive lushness of digital color photography to show the possibly irreversible damage that man has done to the environment." In 2018, with filmmakers Nicholas de Pencier and Jennifer Baichwal, he released the documentary ANTHROPOCENE: The Human Epoch.
Juan Travieso, Owls, (on left) and Extinction is Eternal,(on right) 2013, acrylic on canvas. This Cuban artist's style consists of realistic depictions of wildlife awkwardly trapped by hard, artificial human constructs suggesting the digital age. “As a part of nature, I am aware of the fact that we are trying so hard as a species to disconnect ourselves from what we are. I feel that it is my responsibility as an artist and as a citizen of the world to give voice to the powerless species on this earth. One of my goals is to paint all of the endangered birds in the world.”
Jill Pelto, Currents, (Time Magazine Cover special issue "One Last Chance" July 2020) watercolor, and Plotting Spruce History (in Scandinavia), 2021,watercolor. Pelto "incorporates scientific data into her watercolors, often in the field, and weaves visual narratives that reveal the benefits and costs of human impacts on this planet." She has conducted research on the changes in glacier depths with her glaciologist father Mauri Pelto in WA's North Cascades. Her work has been recognized in Smithsonian, PBS NewsHour, and National Geographic, and incorporated into school curricula. The Time cover image incorporates key global climate data indicators: CO2 emissions (1880-present), average global temperatures (1880-present), renewable energy consumption (1965-present), land ice volume (1960-present) and sea level rise (1880-present).
Elena Soterakis, Valvoline Beach, 2019, (Ecocide series), oil and collage on panel.
"Soterakis seduces the viewer by replicating the color palette and style of Romantic and American Impressionist painters—first rendering landscapes in oil paint, then harshly disrupting them with cut-and-collaged consumer waste. This dysfunctional marriage of oil and paper is a purposeful choice, as Soterakis’ work comments on the disastrous effects of the oil industry and poor waste management. “My art is a call to action against our throwaway society and extractive industries in an era of environmental neglect,” she explains in her artist statement.
Joan Sullivan, Wind Turbines in Quebec, 2011. Canadian renewable energy photographer and writer (contributor to Drawdown and to the Artists and Climate Change blog). Here, three workers standing in the top of the base tower await the arrival of the mid section of the turbine tower during construction of the Mont Louis wind farm in the Gaspesie region of Quebec, Canada. "Since 2009, Joan has found her artistic voice on the construction sites of utility-scale wind and solar projects. Her goal is to help others visualize what a post-carbon world will look like."
Lauren Boilini, As Above,So Below, blue ink on watercolor paper, commissioned for Tacoma Ocean Fest 2019. A Seattle artist and open-water swimmer, often in Puget Sound. “The water is remarkably clear, especially in winter, so I’ve been able to experience all kinds of wildlife in their natural habitat.” "This is her tribute to the world's oceans and inhabitants under urgent threat from pollution, overfishing, coastal development and global warming."
Elena Raceala, Where Are We Going #1, 2021. photograph.
This Romanian amateur photographer works as a nurse in Constanta. She calls this series "my new environmental project. Humanity, only a small part of nature. Strange weather, I was inspired by the mysterious and dramatic fog that came over these mountains and over us." It was a summer of apocalyptic floods and landslides in Europe. "You can't help but wonder-- where are we going...what will humanity do?"
Zaria Forman, Jakobshavn Glacier,Greenland, 2018, large-scale pastel on canvas.
Forman has spent the last two years traveling with NASA’s science missions over Antarctica and the Arctic to "track how ice is moving." The result is a collection "rendered in hyperrealistic detail, images that are an incredible yet poignant representation of the majesty of glaciers that are rapidly deteriorating...the heart of Forman’s work is an opportunity to communicate the alarming rate at which the polar regions are melting. By showing what we have to lose, she implores us to urgently act in ways that help combat climate change."
Dearclimate.net, Give me Luxury or Give me Breath, 2022
"Meet the climate; befriend the climate; become the climate." This website (collaborative work by Marina Zurkow, Una Chaudhuri, and Oliver Kellhammer) has many humorous and creative downloadable posters. Here's a favorite (would we first-worlders really rather die than give up our high standard of living? we act like it!):
NorTijan Firdaus, Climate Change is Real, 2020, collage.
This Malaysian artist forms a portrait of an innocent child through a collage of e-waste, the very objects that consume contemporary society. "The jarring composition creates a forceful reality for the viewer in that they become overtly aware of the wider role humanity plays in environmental destruction."​
zhc, Climate Crisis, 2016, photograph. zhc’s concerns for his homeland, Bangladesh, are shown in this striking image. "The contrast between the family of three adorned in ruby red against the dried and barren landscape emphasizes the degree of damage caused by changes in sea levels and rising temperatures. By capturing these desolate spaces, the photographer illustrates how such degradation to our planet has led to a large displacement of people throughout the nation."
Graeme Mackey, Four Waves, 2020, cartoon. The original double wave (covid, recession) version by this Canadian editorial cartoonist went viral across the globe at the beginning of the pandemic and inspired multiple knockoffs. Mackay's new four wave version recognizes the climate aspect of the multiple crises looming over humanity.
Sayo Watanabe, Don't Trash It, 2017. Climate change poster showing the planet dumped in an ubiquitous New York City trash can, "a reminder for humans to be more environmentally thoughtful in their daily lives." She is mainly a fashion designer who works to bring sustainability to her industry.
rokkinvisual, Global Warning, published by DeviantArt (an online art community) 2010. A poster in their CoolClimate Art Contest by this talented Indonesian graphic artist.
Celeste Byers, Justice First, 2018. Some of you may have gotten one of these free posters, as I did, at the Climate Justice Festival in August. It was commissioned for the Dogwood Alliance's "Justice First Tour" in 10 Southern states in 2018. I find this image so appealing as well as very effective in communicating our aspirations for humans and the planet. Byers is known for vivid tropical murals. I hope she will turn her talents to more eco-art themes in the future. Click the image for more details, and look her up at celestebyers.com.
Alexis Rockman, The Farm, 2000, The Bounty,1991, and Newtown Creek, 2014, oil on wood. He has treated environmental themes for decades and had a major retrospective at the Smithsonian in 2010. These works powerfully portray his deep concerns about fragile ecosystems and the threat of human civilization. Click on the images for more information.
The Tempestry Project, (2017-) a collaborative fiber arts project that was started in Anacortes by Emily McNeil and Marissa and Justin Connelly. "Temperature + tapestry," these knitted or crocheted strips record temperature data for every day of a year in a certain location, and cumulatively display global warming. Collaborators by the hundreds have joined worldwide. For each kit sold, donations are given to climate causes.
Alisa Singer, Transportation Biggest Emitter, part of Environmental Graphiti series (2014-) Beautiful bold colors and abstract treaments transform graphs and charts related to climate change. The data sources are posted next to the paintings for comparison. She says "Art makes the science more accessible, just as science makes the art more meaningful."
Jon Ching, Cache, 2020 oil on wood. His surreal wildlife paintings reflect his fascination with symbiosis. This eagle feathered with seaweed, holding a monarch butterfly in its beak, seems to glare and protect its piles and piles of food on a lifeless shore.To me, it evokes a theme of over-consumption. He says "my approach is to explore the beauty of nature to spark reverence and appreciation in hopes that it leads to concern and protection." He donates work to multiple nature conservation causes.
