Heart@Our Forests
Artist-in-Residence
FRESH WINDS – INTERNATIONAL ART BIENNALE
14th. Dec. 2019 to 12.th. Jan. 2020
Suðurnesjabær, Iceland
My project titled “Heart @ Our Forests,” is a plea to the world, from the spirits of trees, to save and replant the vanishing forests. Deforestation is a global problem with devastating effects on the planet, on global warming, and a major contributor to species extinction. This project juxtaposes forest calamities in Iceland with my country of residence in the USA. Here, I visualize the threatened and fast disappearing wilderness of Louisiana Atchafalaya Basin bayou, the largest wetland forest in North America; and, I visually symbolize the vanished birch forest that once populated Iceland.
The installation speaks as the voice of the soul from the newly departed bayou trees, joined with the essence of the long-lost Icelandic birch trees at this “edge the world project.” This calamity amounts to some of the worst deforestations on the planet where just a few small clusters of trees survive along the coasts. The bayous are a disappearing wilderness threatening flora and fauna. Every 50 minutes, we are losing wilderness at the rate of a full football field. This coupled, with the global threat of environmental warming and deforestation, is an urgent catastrophe.
The exhibit shows these threatened ecosystems. In some images, I either imposed a heart, or a heart was naturally present. The heart is symbolic of love, the love of nature, for what we have and the love for what we lost, and the love for preserving what remains. If you look carefully, in my installation and in forest worldwide, nature is pleading to us.
