“When you draw something, you are forced to examine and re-examine it very closely,” said James Prosek, whose documentation of fish species has taken him from the base of California’s Mount Whitney to the headwaters of the Euphrates River in Turkey.
The work of these artists, not unlike science itself, takes root in the careful observation of the natural world. Earlier this month, she and several others participated in two panel events hosted by the Earth Institute and Mana Contemporary on how art and science can work together as a vehicle for climate action. “Climate change is one of the largest crises we face as a global society, and there wasn’t a question in my mind that it was what I needed to focus on.”įorman is part of a growing movement of artists using their work to address and convey the magnitude of the climate crisis. But in the Arctic, a then- record 552 billion tons of ice was melting - the equivalent of eight Olympic swimming pools draining into the ocean every second.įorman remembers speaking with the scientists over dinner about what they were seeing. In 2007, most media outlets in the United States weren’t covering climate change. The hotel they were staying at was bustling, not with tourists, but with government officials, newscasters, and scientists - all there to study the Greenland ice sheet. She was traveling with her family and, having never been to a polar region before, planned to use the landscape as inspiration for her work. It was on a trip to Greenland that artist Zaria Forman first grasped the urgency of the climate crisis. “I was looking for something more meaningful to imbue in my work, something that was more than just a pretty picture for somebody’s wall,” she said. Zaria Forman uses soft pastels to recreate undeveloped landscapes that are increasingly at risk due to climate change.
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