Visualizing the Range of Glaciers
This page served as a landing spot for sharing bits of my undergraduate environmental science honors thesis and related printmaking work. The North Cascades in Washington, the place I know as home, hold many glaciers that have complex ties to both ecological and human communities. Climate change is rewriting the state of these glaciers and the relationships that they can sustain. Although these connections are usually described by science, art is an expansive form of communicating a shifting landscape and its inhabitants. My project strove to explore a remarkable place in flux with various ways of knowing - scientific, personal, artistic, anecdotal. Enjoy these snippets, or download my entire thesis “Visualizing the Range of Glaciers: Science, Art and Narrative if you care to.
Exhibition: Visualizing the Range of Glaciers
Well, I’ve done it. I plotted, printed and pasted together a solo exhibition with four original Scrolls and four enlarged “elements” of my prints mounted on foam board. The show was created with funding and support from the Colby ES department. My pieces hung in the Diamond Building at Colby College in Waterville, Maine from April 23-May 14th, 2021. Diamond houses environmental science, government, economics, anthropology and other departments, so a variety of people brushed by these prints. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, they were only viewable by Colby students, faculty and staff.
I’ll let these images speak for themselves. Many thanks to my friend Torsten Brinkema for photographing the exhibition.
Visualizing the Range of Glaciers, thesis exhibition at Colby College. 2021.
Photograph by Torsten Brinkema
Portal, 2021 and its happy creator. This prints was enlarged from its original 8x10 inches to 40x50 inches.
Wolverines
Gulo-gulo on the move
The concept:
Only 30-40 wolverines (Gulo gulo) populate the North Cascades. These are incredible animals (Mustelidae) that can travel great distances through the mountains. They are a snow-obligate species, meaning that they rely on snowpack for a portion of their lifecycle. For wolverines, it is their denning season, from February through May, that is their most vulnerable time. Diminishing spring snowpack due to climate change and human disturbance from vehicles or backcountry recreation threaten the wolverines at this time of year. This print shows one family of wolverines reacting to human disturbance and melt, and setting out to find new habitat.
Learn more from the Cascades Wolverine Project.
The print:
I began with a reduction cut - building layered, snowy habitat for the wolverine to tromp through. Then I sketched in the transient family of wolverines - first sleeping soundly, then becoming wary of human presence, and finally moving the den. I sliced apart these prints and surrounded them with other characters impacting the narrative - the trees and rock that generate habitat and the room for a den, the human footprint, chaotic assemblages of environment-people. I also incorporated woodcuts of the wolverine family. After pasting the major pieces together, I wove fragments of texture and color throughout the scene for something to keep it cohesive and lead the eye.
Mountain Evidence
This material isn’t yet sure if it wants to be a collage or a book. Layers of evidence accumulate: climate change is affecting the North Cascades. Glaciers shrink into repose, moraines emerge. The textures of Skagit gneiss and ancient ice glint in the sun. Four people traverse the range, dwarved by peaks and valleys. They find whitebark pine standing barren, no cones, no needles. Wolverine haunts the scene, quiet and rare. Scientists compile topographic maps, charting isoglacihypses and terminus retreat.
This haphazard hammer - magnet - plywood - paper configuration is a mounting wall of evidence. Mapping out the material is part of my process of understanding and connecting. Next I may add text or more swatches of color and texture. Or I will bind these prints into an interactive book. Let me know your thoughts or questions!
I highly encourage you to check out Anna McKee’s Evidence Wall for another approach on this theme!
