C Print on Aluminum 48"x48"
Artist Statement:
The core of my work centers around light, depth and connection both physically and metaphorically. I regard these concepts to be my media. I am constantly trying to heal people and systems that are sick or broken and this call for pieces on Climate Change seemed the perfect opportunity to connect with the spirit of the bear I had been harboring for ten years.
This piece, for me, began germinating when my Grandfather on his deathbed left me the polar bear rug. He had been a pilot in World War II and after the war had ended, began mapping the north of Canada. He had acquired the rug from a trading post. I had always thought it disrespectful to walk on such a majestic animal and vowed to help it's voice be heard.
As our world warms, Polar Bears as we know them will become extinct. As their habitat melts eco-migration is already affecting them. The world is warming as a direct result of greenhouse gasses that are negligently increasing from consumerism and gluttony. The excessive production and consumption of beef is a leading cause of this warming, methane emissions from cows are a major source of greenhouse gasses and are quadrupled from the antibiotics they are fed. Our demand for oil is still too large. We are pushing greenhouse gasses to a level that is tripping the go switch for many bio-geo-chemical and geo-physical feedbacks of global warming which are affecting the climate toward detrimental ends.
The world is a living breathing organism and some climate change is natural. What we continue to do to this planet it to make it sick. This piece is meant to help us visualize our global impact, to inspire us to stop being a plague on the earth and live symbiotically with nature, to not buy in to the consumer culture that has flourished on this plant with the egomaniacal behavior of most humans.
The image itself is created from photography of the bear digitally combined with images from Nasa and Google images, including lungs and heart that subtly show through the planet’s surface, and disgruntled cows floating in space. If you look at it long enough you may also see the sick face of mother earth.
The Sierra Club Exhibition at the Rebecca Gallery Toronto
July 2016
