Artist Statement: The Way We Were
Of all the topics we spoke of in our class, perhaps none struck me more than the relationship we as people have with the earth. The relationship begs the question: what do we giveand what do we take? We take nutrients from the soil and nourishment from the sea, rarely giving back anything in return. If we do, we give only at the smallest community level. We suffocate the land with miles of cement and the sea with so much trash that it has formed islands bigger than countries. The very shoes we walk in bleed plastic and other toxins into the soil, destroying the plant life that is desperately trying to survive. And yet, nature still bestows upon us breathtaking flowers, beautiful shorelines, and shade from under the trees we take for granted. In this unbalanced and abusive relationship, we continue to takeand the earth continues to give. I began to meditate on my favorite childhood story, The Giving Treeby Shel Silverstein, and how it relates to our relationship with the earth and the current issues of climate change and the pollution we as a society are inflicting on the world.
My Midterm project attempted to illuminate the story we tell ourselves of the world – of the plastic we chose to use and its bio-friendly alternative, of the books we read made of the trees we take for granted, of the human hands that will continue to play an active role in shaping the history of the earth. In continuation of this project, I wished to carry on with this idea of the story.Taking inspiration from The Giving Tree, I began to craft my own short story. Instead of a loving tree, I chose the sea in honor of our many discussions concerning the deep blue expanse. Through narration, I endeavored to answer: If the sea could speak, what would she say?
The Way We Wereseeks, as the title suggests, to encourage reflection on how we interact with the natural world. Each illustration that accompanies the text endeavors to present the macrocosm of historical coastal change. Each page presents a change in oceanic history, from the disappearance of vegetation to the appearance of trash and off-shore oil platforms. In the story individual human figures are seen coming to the shoreline, selfishly asking the ocean to bestow on them wealth or give solutions to their problems. The ocean selflessly gives all that it has, and the humans continue to greedily take until there is nothing left for the sea to give. The final page illustrates the ocean as a scene of utter deterioration – trash litters the shoreline, plastic bags float in the wind, black smoke protrudes from the drilling platform. The once blissful relationship shared between the humans and the shoreline in the first pages of The Way We Werehad evolved into something toxic and unsustainable. The work attempts to illustrate, through both sketches and narration, the dominate and destructive influence of human desire on the natural world.
