Saturday, January 12, 2019

Zaria Forman: Climate Artist & Activist

This weekend, from the Midwest to the East Coast, snow is coming, temperatures are dropping, and iciness is on the horizon. Typical winter in most of these parts for mid-January. Makes us all shiver at the thought of that "arctic chill," as the meteorologists often describe it.

But what about life in the true arctic? Where that "chill" really is and where glaciers and icebergs truly live?

Climate artist and activist Zaria Forman knows a little bit about that, as she features such extreme locations as Greenland, Antarctica, and Arctic Canada as well as places like the Maldives, Hawaii and more in her pastel drawings.

I learned about Zaria Forman from a former colleague of mine--as she was a former student of his. He was detailing her environmental advocacy in a Facebook post of his. Upon looking into her website, I found that she's both a talented artist and a passionate champion who shares her knowledge, experience, and expertise about climate change through her work. From her website's "About" page, these are some striking accomplishments:
  • She's flown with NASA on Several "Operation IceBridge" missions.
  • She's been featured on many news shows and multiple publications (including the Smithsonian Magazine, Nation Geographic, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times and links to many more on her press page).
  • She's spoken at Amazon, Google, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
  • She was a National Geographic artist-in-residence aboard their ship "Explorer" to Antarctica.
Below is her TEDTalk, where you clearly see her passion, love of our planet, concern, but also her optimism for the future.

As she states (and I paraphrase): to love nature, you need to know nature, and it is then that you will protect nature. May we all do the same! One way to do this is to be sure to check out her "Reduce Your Carbon Footprint" page while checking out more of her art on her website.






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Photos from https://www.artstar.com/collections/zaria-forman and https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/01/zaria-forman-pastel-icebergs/Video from https://www.ted.com/talks/zaria_forman_drawings_that_show_the_beauty_and_fragility_of_earth?language=en#t-416899

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