Creating Our Climate: Displacement
I’m glad to be part of the ‘Creating Our Climate’ series on the wonderful and informative youth climate activism blog It’s Getting Hot in Here. Check out the site, there’s some great work going on. The following is my post (achieved with the help and patience of Juliana – thanks for tolerating a technologically incompetent artist!):
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My work has always inhabited the environmental realm. Due to the natural world’s ever-changing constitution, how necessary natural systems are to a healthy planet and the lives living on it, and the continued degradation of those systems due to human intervention, I have found it impossible to focus my attention on anything else for both innate and acquired reasons. Lately I’ve recognized the underlying theme within my work of the continued displacement of both animals and humans to fuel the economic machine.
"The Bison's Bread and Bitter Root" four-color woodblock print. Dealing with the symbiotic evolution of North American bison and native flora, the loss of that relationship once cattle, in huge numbers with extreme impacts on soils and wildlife, were moved in, and the recent movement of reseeding the plains
"The Bison's Bread and Bitter Root" detail
"Boundaries I: Fences" Woodblock Print process - carved block
The Create Our Climate Series gave me a great excuse to get started on new work concerning oil/gas/coal development and extraction and it’s implications on those that were living, dying, feeding, mating, creating, and loving on that land before it became valuable for energy “needs.” The following are the beginning prep work for that new series, to be multicolored woodblock prints:
Charcoal, Ink, Gouache preparatory drawing for a new series of woodblock prints
"Fuel For Us" ink painting - preparatory work for new series of woodblock prints
It’s Getting Hot In Here: Create Our Climate is a month-long series to feature the creative work of the youth climate movement. Through poetry, prose, visual and performance art, we aim to use these different media to communicate the passion, struggle and imperative of our work tackling climate and energy issues. Please join youth leaders for posts on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays throughout April.
