Fran Bieller wanted to be an astronaut as a child. Now, artists, curators and educators have drawn a series of glacier depictions based on NASA satellite images. “Glacier portraitDescribed with striking details in colored pencils on paper. It features glaciers around the Earth. Two works in this series will be on display at “” since April 23rd.The voice of water“April 24th “Our fragile moments,” at the Hudson Guild Gallery in New York City.
Part of Hudson Guild The two exhibitions, an “Art in Rysonse” initiative, bring together over 90 artworks by 38 artists. They invite artists to look to their environment for vulnerability, resilience and hope, and to their audiences to reflect on climate change.
Julie ReeseLecturer and art historian teaching at Columbia University Sustainability Management MS The programme points to a growing interest among artists and young people in exploring how to adapt to climate change. They imagined what that new world would look like, not “like a scary dystopia,” Reiss told GlacierHub.
The painting wasn’t something that Beallel wanted to do as an artist as a young artist. However, after becoming the new mother of the two, the painting became the only way to return to her practice. When she rediscovered the notebooks filled with daily self-portraits at the age of 20, she decided to continue them again at age 40, then 50, and 60.self“Grows up in dialogue with her new series.Glacier portrait,” provides a timely interpretation of what the self means in a melting world.
I sat with Bieler and talked about her artistic choices, her reflections on the interconnectedness of man and nature, and the deeper meaning these works hold for her.
This conversation is edited, condensed and condensed.
Why did you decide to represent the glacier in your work as an artist?
In 2004, when my kids were 6 and 8, we cruised in a small boat in the inner corridors of Alaska. I have always loved nature and glaciers ideas, but I have never seen them or actually experienced them firsthand. Next to them was spectacular. It’s hard to explain how vast they are and how small you feel in your little boat. Close to the ship, they were monumental and magical. At that moment, I fell in love with the glacier. And the idea that they are melting away and disappearing is beyond tragedy.
The glacier you draw ranges from Argentina to Antarctica. How do you choose which glacier to include in your series?
They were all amazing so it hardly matters where they were. I was looking for a visually impressive image. Also, there are not many places with glaciers. They are all located in the polar regions of Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, Antarctica and Patagonia. It was very aesthetically driven.
Tell us more about the aesthetic choices you made.
We flew around the Alaska coastline and looked down at the terminal. They are like creatures that move over time. When they move, they drag the earth together with them, which creates a pattern. From the plane they resemble a long journey. Like giants using giant tractors to cultivate the Earth. In my dream, I took a picture of the Moraine, but a few years later I discovered that there was nothing. Moraine was decorated in my memory, but I had no pictures of working. So my husband suggested that I use open source NASA aerial satellite imagery.
For framing, most of the time I print the entire satellite image and play around with it to get the composition I wanted. Otherwise, I looked at the satellite image and drew the section I wanted. It takes about a week to choose the material, color and satellite composition. I work on them for a few hours at a time, for a week. I work very slowly and want to create layers of colour. So it may start pale and I build it with more saturated colors when I reach the top layer.
What happens to the production of glacial portraits?
Recently I read “.Knitting sweet glassIt resonated with Robin Wall Kimmerer and what she wrote. She explains in Potawatomi that wood, rock, wind, things are verbs rather than nouns. They are alive. They are all part of our family. Glaciers become more than chunks of ice. In memory of them, I wanted to respect them, apologize to them and share it with people.
My drawings tend to be more realistic, and sometimes a little more surreal. But what I find very interesting about drawing glaciers from this aerial perspective is that they look abstract, although not actually so. They are realistic renderings of that particular location at that particular moment. For me, this is a ratio of the overwhelming and abstract concepts of climate change and planetary loss. But when you really take a little time to see them, they are intimate. It attracts people and makes them feel more connected.
In “Water’s Voice,” photographer Camille Seaman approaches a photograph of the iceberg as an individual portrait. When I read it, I was like, “Yes, I feel the same way!” She goes on to say that the iceberg photos “resemble a photo of my ancestors’ families.” What she’s talking about is because the ice and water on these glaciers are so old, so it’s like depicting a very old man with so many personalities. For me, the idea of ​​conveying them as portraits of ancestors was really intense.
“Portrait of a Glacier” appears to be interacting with the self-portrait “Self” from your ongoing drawing series. What kind of story are you trying to talk about in a different way in “Portrait of a Glacier”?
I think everything we do is like a self-portrait. No matter how similar the two artists are, if they use their own authentic style, they are always a little different. The style is fingerprints. It shows our vision and how we see the world. In that sense, artwork is always a self-portrait. Because they reflect the way artists identify with the subject.
If glaciers are somehow self-portraits, what does that mean they disappear?
The glacier is melting. And as they disappear, so does our environment, and ultimately our ability to survive. The glaciers don’t reflect us, we’re probably their self-portraits. We are expressions, manifestations of the living parts of the earth, as the earth first came and created us.
