This post comes from the Artists and Climate Change Blog

“Art is about what has touched us in the world.” —Maurice Merleau-Ponty

I am passionate about using art to facilitate thinking about our place in the world, whether this be exploring our connection to the past, and /or to what is happening here and now. I draw from various interests – anthropology, history, oceanography, and various environmental issues. Earth’s story along with our changing climate are important and constant threads through my work. They help me connect to something beyond the self.

Our impact on the environment, and the subsequent changing climate, is one of the most pressing issues of our time. We are constantly surrounded by news and data – shocking headlines grab attention and large corporate organizations hold sway. We now have scientific evidence and knowledge on an unprecedented scale, information which tells us how our actions are directly affecting life on this planet. At times this can seem overwhelming, leading to feeling powerless, and desensitizing us to these important issues.

For me, the challenge we face is to stay empowered and engaged in the face of so much worrying information.

I try to channel my concerns into my art practice. I predominately work with the book form, creating unique artist books which celebrate the dynamic beauty of the natural world. I hope to inspire, and remind people of what we have, and what we stand to lose if we do not pay heed. I aim to make work which invites people to “step closer” rather than away, holding the belief that if we love something we are more likely to want to protect it. I see art as the beginnings of a conversation. A conversation that can occur on many levels – between the past, the present, and the future. Conversations provide space to reflect and the potential for something new to come into existence.

Ripples Held in a Slumber of Blue.

Collaborations between scientists and artists offer a myriad of ways to engage audiences, and have enormous potential to further raise awareness of environmental concerns. All change starts with a small action – we need not be powerless. While we may be unable to travel the world to witness what is occurring firsthand, the benefit of living in an era of information means freer access to scientific research, films and books – all important sources which facilitate dialogue, and transport us to the largely inaccessible extremes of our world.

Books, with their sequence of spaces, give scope for work to take you on a journey of discovery. It does not have to involve a linear narrative – various book structures offer diversions and alternative paths, where the viewer dictates the direction and pace. Holding a book and navigating its pages is an interactive experience between artist and viewer. The experience of holding a handmade book delights more than the mind. It can be an intimate, sensory experience – of touch and texture, providing reflection on a “moment of time.” There is not necessarily a beginning or an end, for it can be a cyclical process.

I use the book format in its widest sense, sometimes using traditional bindings alongside more sculptural pieces, where the book becomes an object in its own right. From early childhood books have always held a special place in my life; I have early memories of delving into the Encyclopaedia Britannica for homework projects, and visiting libraries after school. It is no surprise that books continue to feature in my art practice. I enjoy reading and often gain inspiration from the shared knowledge of others. The wealth of accessible science books now available to the general reader makes the complex more tangible, and allows entry into areas that often spark ideas for my work.

I am a frequent visitor to museums. The Great Gathering, a series of seven ammonite-shaped books, evolved from initially visiting the Sedgwick Museum of Science, Cambridge and then Colchester Natural History Museum.

Silent Spring Revisited, the Reports Of Seasoned Observers. (Detail)

The Great Gathering 

Responding to both the building and museum collection, this series of seven artist books tells the story of the universe spanning 650 million years. Fossil collections have been key to unlocking our understanding of evolution. Echoing the spiral shape of an ammonite, each book reflects a significant moment of this journey. From dark beginnings (black holes), the Big Bang, forming oceans, ancient sediment layers, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, to the twentieth century and the age of knowledge (recycled National Geographic Magazines), the work charts the inevitability of change. The seventh volume remains unfinished and is in the process of becoming; it represents an unknown future which is still unfolding. The installation was displayed at the Colchester Natural History Museum for three months in 2016 and is now in a private collection.

Ripples Held in a Slumber of Blue

I have a particular interest in the polar regions and in what is happening with the world’s glaciers. This fragile environment is rapidly changing. Having followed the work of James Balog and the Extreme Ice Survey, I produced a series of artist books about this disappearing world. A world which holds our ancient history; once dissolved it can never be replaced.

The Reports of Seasoned Observers – Silent Spring Revisited 

The year 2012 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. I spent a number of weeks at Southend Museum viewing their egg collections. Following discussions with the curators, I was made aware of the contentious issue surrounding the display of these old collections. Attitudes have changed in the past fifty years; it is now illegal to remove any egg from a nest. Conversely these collections have a vital role in helping scientists to compare, for example, the thickness of shells from the past and now. Shells now are often thinner than they use to be.

I created a series of “fossilized” eggs, vessels carrying Carson’s own words, reminding us of the continued relevance of her research and highlighting the worrying decline of bird and insect species today. The egg, often seen as a symbol of renewal, in this instance becomes a reminder of loss.

Lost Voices

Lost Voices is a series of artist books, which explore the complex relationship between humans and whales over the past two hundred years. Taking visual inspiration from the old whaling logbooks, I incorporated passages from Melville’s Moby Dick, as well as first-hand accounts to capture the “lost voices” from this period of history. The original whaling documents are of a great value to climate scientists, who are able to use the data regarding old weather patterns and compare them to now.

(Top image: The Great Gathering, Vol.V The Age Of Transition.)

Lost Voices.

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Chris Ruston has a Fine Art background, and worked as an art psychotherapist for many years. She particularly enjoys working with paper, inks and mark making. She regularly takes part in Artist Book Fairs and has been featured in several book art publications. She received the Artist Award at Turn the Page, Artist Book Fair, Norwich in 2015.

Artists and Climate Change:

Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

This post comes from the Artists and Climate Change Blog

I was in the Amazon jungle where, despite the heat and humidity, I was so excited I could barely contain myself. Insect repellent from a small bottle that had already saved me from Southeast Asian and Ugandan mosquitoes was the invisible shield that was preventing Amazonian ones from making a meal out of me. A dedicated umbrella-carrier, I had brought a bright yellow umbrella to the jungle, which amused the other artists in the expedition, but also gave them comfort when I shared my portable shade with them on the hot beaches of the Rio Negro, or when the rains poured incessantly in the Ducke Reserve.

In this ten-day residency, I would often be seen smelling things for my project. In An Olfactory Portrait of the Amazon Rainforest, I explore the scents of the Amazon, how these relate to people’s memories, and how the Amazon itself, like the ephemeral nature of smells, is vanishing because of destructive human practices. It was a joy to explore the Amazon through my nose.

One of the highlights of this experience was listening to talks by established scientists and artists, who helped us, resident artists, see the jungle through their different perspectives. It was illuminating to hear about research projects done in the Amazon, but disheartening to learn about the ways the jungle is being harmed through commercial exploitation. The Amazon struck me as a battlefield.

Hiking in the Amazon. Photo by Catherine Sarah Young.

Climate Change and Social Issues

For the past few years, I have focused on climate change and art through my series of interdisciplinary works in The Apocalypse Project. This has been a kind of jungle for me, but instead of poisonous insects and muddy trails, I wrestle with climate change deniers and people who do not believe that art has value. Over the years, I have felt that simply looking at the environmental consequences of climate change—extreme temperatures and weather events—wasn’t the whole story. Recently, issues of inequality, the ineffectiveness of science to affect policy, the lack of science education, our post-truth era, and the many things that divide humanity have haunted me and made me look anew at the role of science and art in society.

What is the good of science and art if we cannot relate to one another as human beings? This was my personal jungle to battle with: these networks of wicked problems that give me as an artist much to work with, but also makes me as a person very concerned about the future of mankind in general.

One day, I was in the woods with Gui, our intrepid photographer. Gui was taking photos of the distillation experiment that would help me extract smells out of some of the samples I had collected. As I stared at the scientific equipment that looked so out of place in the Amazon, something clicked in my head. Seeing science brought out of the ivory tower and into the wildness was haunting. This episode was more than just a residency documentation. It led to my next series of projects, “Experiments in Nature.”

Visiting an indigenous community. Photo by Catherine Sarah Young.

Experiments in Nature, Nature in Experiments

This series of investigations takes a critical look at the role of science in society. Science often has the reputation of being hidden in an ivory tower, and here I bring it out into the forest. Elements of nature are seen to be “helping” the experiment along, with the branches and logs supporting the equipment, temperatures helping to catalyze or stop the experiment, etc.

The questions I raise when I bring a controlled experiment in an uncontrolled natural environment are: Who is doing the experiment? Is it a successful or a futile experiment – I did manage to make the experiment work, but are the results even valid? Are these “performative” experiments in the same way that science, with its failure to affect policy, seems to sometimes be a performative discipline? Science almost becomes a theatrical space where people question the legitimacy of, for instance, climate data.

Jungle Experiments – Amazon (II), 2017. Still from video (1:39).

Science and the Public

After the residency, I was asked to give olfactory workshops at the Bosque da Ciência (Science Forest). It felt wonderful to share the value of our sense of smell and the wonder of experiments, and to further explore the themes I had worked with in the Amazon—nature, public participation, collaboration, etc.

As someone with both a science and an art background, I wish for these two disciplines to work together to change public perceptions on climate change (it’s real) and how we act on it (we can all do something). In the context of the Amazon, ongoing deforestation and resource extraction reduces the jungle’s ability to sequester carbon, and worsens the effects of climate change. Most of all, I want this project to reflect on the public’s seeming disenchantment with knowledge, and to call on all of us to rekindle our sense of wonder and intellectual curiosity. It was a humbling and awe-inspiring first visit to the Amazon, and with these new experiences and relationships, I’m looking forward to the next step.

Workshop at Bosque da da Ciência. Photo by Roumen Koynov, © LABVERDE.

Thank you to LABVERDE Artist Immersion Program in the Amazon for supporting the residency. Thank you to LABVERDE, INPA National Institute for Amazonian Research and Bosque da Ciência for supporting the workshop. Thank you to photographer Gui Gomes.

(Top image: The artist at work. Photo by Gui Gomes, © LABVERDE.)

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Catherine Sarah Young is an artist, designer, and writer originally from the Philippines whose work explores emerging technologies and alternative futures through interactive storytelling and sensory experiences. She creates works that investigate nature, our role in nature, and the tensions between nature and technology, exploring themes such as climate change and sustainability, science policy and citizen science, feminism and participatory art, among others. She has an international exhibition, residency, and fellowship profile and has collaborated with scientists, companies, chefs, artists, think tanks, and museums around the world. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

About Artists for Climate Change:

Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

This post comes from the Artists and Climate Change Blog

Wind-activated undulating walls and solar-activated etchings carved onto reclaimed redwood: the San Francisco-based artist Charles Sowers makes my heart sing!

Wave Wall from Charles Sowers on Vimeo.

I have always been inspired by artists working at the intersection of art and science. Sowers seems to do this seamlessly:  weaving his love of science, architecture, meteorology and technology into mesmerizing installations that stop us in our tracks, drawing us in seductively to better understand our natural surroundings. He helps us to slow down, to notice natural phenomena that otherwise would have gone unnoticed.

As he explains on his Vimeo homepage: “I frequently collaborate with scientists to create works based on lab experiments. Through these collaborations, I have discovered a strong correlation between my process and that of the scientific experimentalist. We both build apparatuses –scientists to probe the limits of their collective understanding and I to probe the boundaries of beauty, delight, and wonder.”

Of course, it is his renewable energy artworks that fascinate me the most.

Sowers’ most recent renewable energy installation – Solar Totems in the Glen Park Canyon Recreation Center commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission – uses a spherical glass lens (inspired by 19th-century meteorological instruments) to “write with sunshine.”  The glass sphere focuses the sun’s rays onto three southern-facing 12-foot-tall reclaimed redwood logs. As the sun moves across the sky, heat generated by the sphere’s magnified light burns a line from left to right across the log. Each line represents a distinct day with a unique weather pattern (sunny, partly cloudy, overcast, etc.)

Photo downloaded from http://blog.kwun.org/2017/08/solar-totems.html

Each day, the spherical lens is moved upward slightly by a solar-powered mechanism to create a new daily line. At the end of one year, the 365 solar etchings on the redwood log become a sculptural archive of the interaction of sun and weather patterns unique to this site. When the yearly record is complete, the heliograph mechanism is transferred to a second redwood log for the second year of etchings, and so on.

According to Sowers’ blog, at the end of three years “the three transformed logs turn the plaza [in front of the Glen Park Canyon Recreation Center] into a kind of civic solar and atmospheric observatory, artistically expanding our understanding of place and connecting us to our environment through that understanding.”

This is a profound statement, especially in the context of climate change. Let me highlight it below:

“… artistically expanding our understanding of place and connecting us to our environment through that understanding.”

This is what climate change artists do best: using metaphor to build awareness, a sense of connection and familiarity to overcome anxiety, fear and resistance. This, in my opinion, is the missing ingredient in the global climate change conversation. To help shift this conversation, we must find seductive ways — like Sowers — to draw our audiences’ attention beyond a collective sense of fear, apathy and hopelessness, to focus instead on the magical, wondrous world that sustains and inspires us. It must be protected, not only for ourselves, but for future generations.

Windswept is another renewable energy artwork by Sowers that I love: a wind-driven kinetic façade commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission for permanent installation at the Randal Museum. I admit to having watched this meditative video more than a dozen times:

Windswept consists of 612 freely rotating wind direction indicators mounted parallel to the wall creating an architectural scale instrument for observing the complex interaction between wind and the building. Wind gusts, rippling and swirling through the sculpture, visually reveal the complex and ever-changing ways that wind interacts directly with the built environment.

In his artist statement, Sowers explains “I seek to … reward extended observation. Sometimes this involves developing an apparatus to recreate and highlight some natural phenomenon observed in the world – the swirl of fog blowing over a hill, the formation of ice on a puddle, or flow of water and foam on the beach as a wave drains away. These things can fascinate yet often go unnoticed until pointed out. Other times I try to create instrumentation that allows us insight into normally invisible or unnoticed phenomena (emphasis added). The behavior of these interactions can be affectively or visually delightful and balance on the fascinating boundary between predictability and un-predictability.”

I am looking forward to photographing both Windswept and Solar Totems next month during a trip to California to speak about my renewable energy photography at Women in Cleantech and Sustainability’s annual TED-style event hosted by Google. I hope to update this post with new images of Sowers’ beautiful installations upon my return. Stay tuned!

(Top image: Windswept by Charles Sowers, 2011.)

Follow Joan on Twitter: @CleanNergyPhoto

About Artists for Climate Change:

Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog