{"id":100,"date":"2014-09-04T13:59:08","date_gmt":"2014-09-04T13:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcticincontext.com\/?p=100"},"modified":"2021-07-30T23:49:59","modified_gmt":"2021-07-30T23:49:59","slug":"diane-burko-visualizing-arctic-transitions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/2014\/09\/04\/diane-burko-visualizing-arctic-transitions\/","title":{"rendered":"Diane Burko: Visualizing Arctic Transitions"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Erica Dingman<\/strong><\/p>\n

Climate scientists and artists engaged in chronicling new phenomenon for the purpose of affecting change seem to have a natural affinity for one another\u2019s work. Yet rarely does one come across an artist as attune to the scientific community as Diane Burko. This is evidenced in her ongoing series of paintings exploring the depths of environmental change in the Polar Regions.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the scientific community has embraced her visual panoramas as an effective means of communicating scientific evidence to a broader public and potentially affecting policy change. Burko notes, \u201cScientists tell me that my images help to communicate what statistics and charts prove. They see paintings and photography as a way to reach the general public and educate them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lest we need reminding, the rate of Arctic warming is twice to four times<\/a> that of the rest of the world. Permafrost is melting, contributing to the inescapable emissions of carbon dioxide and methane. And once a year, beginning usually at the end of August, media is abundant with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration\u2019s (NOAA) annual reporting on the seasonal height of Arctic ice melt. ,First expressed by Sheila Watt-Cloutier in 2004, Arctic warming should be considered as the veritable \u2018canary in the coalmine.\u2019<\/p>\n

Communicating this reality, however, has been an uphill battle to the extent that entire conferences are devoted to preparing scientists to better communicate their findings to the public at large and user-friendly websites developed to cut through scientific jargon that few can comprehend. A simple Google search of \u201ccommunicating climate change conferences\u201d brings forth a plethora of results.<\/p>\n

Yet the arts can often communicate what words simply cannot. Indeed, Diane Burko\u2019s application of paint to canvas surpasses our traditional understanding of vocabulary, confronting the viewer with real data that elicits nothing less than a visceral reaction. Her large-scale paintings, inspired by her personal aerial photographs taken while in flight over Arctic landscapes and those of polar scientists, unites traditional landscape painting with technical data, compelling the viewer to scrutinize the realities of climate change.<\/p>\n

\"Diane<\/p>\n

\u201cColumbia Glacier Lines of Recession 1980-2205\u201d 2011<\/em><\/p>\n

As a self-proclaimed \u2018artist activist,\u2019 Burko became interested in the veracity of climate change in 2006. Coinciding with her increasing interest in how landscapes had changed, Al Gore\u2019s record-making documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, heightened Burko\u2019s desire to \u201cdo something to protest\u201d and alert people through the \u201clanguage of art.\u201d<\/p>\n

This self-described epiphany led her to contact the US Geological Society to further educate herself about the effects of climate change. She had traveled to Alaska in 1999 during her artistic exploration of volcanoes, but it was the dramatic changes to polar ice conditions that inspired her to document Arctic environmental change with the precision of an eagle-eyed investigator. As a terminal student, she read avidly about glaciologists like Ellen Mosley Thomson\u2014who devotes her life\u2019s work to studying the earth\u2019s complex climate history through the retrieval of ice cores from the ice sheets of the Antarctic and Greenland.<\/p>\n

But it was the \u201cphenomenon of the Petermann glacier\u2019s ice shelf breaking away in 2010 and [that it was equal to] 4 Manhattans,\u201d coinciding with plans to travel to the Arctic Circle that set off a deeper interest in the Arctic and specifically the dynamic changes occurring to the Greenland ice sheet. Indeed, the Petermann Glacier in northeast Greenland\u2014which connects the Greenland ice sheet with the Arctic Ocean\u2014was so dramatic that it compelled the U.S. Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming to hold hearings within days of the break up.<\/p>\n

When I asked Burko how she felt about the changing landscape she said: \u201cIt was like when you first realize that things can change that there\u2019s such a thing as mortality. It never occurred to me that a\u00a0 landscape\u00a0 could change in a few\u00a0 decades. After all, it takes millions of years for glaciers to form. How could they disappear in just over 150 years?\u201d She notes the frightening fact that, since industrialization, glaciers in Glacier National Park have reduced from 150 glaciers to fewer than 25 at present, alluding to her own sense of loss.<\/p>\n

In subsequent years, Burko balances her time between her downtown Philadelphia studio with travel to both Poles, and participating on panels with scientists on how art can communicate science. \u00a0 Her studio is an incubator for higher learning through visual riches, while her travel and association with the science community feeds her insightful imagination that produces an authoritative means of expressing Polar climate change\u2014large-canvassed depictions of undeniable glacial melt and, at times, the incorporation of time-lapse scientific recessional lines that lend a sense of urgency.<\/p>\n

In 2012 and 2013 she was invited by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) to participate on panels about art\u00a0 communicating\u00a0 science\u00a0 and\u00a0 in 2014 spoke to scientists at the venerable Geological\u00a0 Society\u00a0 of America. She was recently invited to become an affiliate of the science-based Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado,\u00a0 where she will participate in an interdisciplinary exchange on climate knowledge on October 27th.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"Diane<\/p>\n

Front cover of Diane Burko: Politics of Snow showing artist mark ups<\/em><\/p>\n

Dr. \u00c5sa Rennermalm, a physical scientist specializing in hydrology and glaciology, shares Burko\u2019s view that linking science with art can be a powerful means of communicating the complexity of environmental change. Burko\u2019s work \u201cfeels so big, so alive,” she says.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

Rennermalm works in the field documenting the changing Greenland ice sheet, and as a professor at Rutgers University, teaches the science of earth systems to many non-science major undergraduates. In her role as a professor she notes that it is \u201cimportant to teach the basics of scientific method\u201d but that art \u201cgives another dimension\u201d to understanding science.\u00a0 \u201cI measure things, I model things and summarize things in figures and tables and scientific papers and in conference presentations. Diane does it by making paintings or photography and, for most people, that makes it more accessible. It creates an interest and curiosity among people to learn more,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n

Indeed, when Rennermalm reached out to Burko in 2011, she and a colleague, Hal Salzman, were in the midst of planning a freshman course about Arctic change. Through their fortuitous meeting, Rutgers University\u2019s Zimmerli Museum organized the exhibit \u201cDiane Burko: Glacial Perspectives,\u201d which launched the University\u2019s Polar Perspectives on Art and Science series. Complimenting Burko\u2019s exhibit, the series was an interdisciplinary exploration into Arctic transitions engaging the university\u2019s student body and a broader public through the lens of film, sculpture and \u2018sonifications\u2019 that are soundtracks of field recordings interwoven with sound design.<\/p>\n

Burko\u2019s exhibit alongside the series gave students the opportunity to think broadly about Arctic environmental change. \u201cI found that for several students, art makes the ongoing changes in the Arctic climate system more real than what scientific graphs and figures communicate,\u201d said Rennermalm. \u201cArt invites people to reflect on these changes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, she invited students to view Burko\u2019s exhibit at Rutgers, and it was \u201capparent to me that they became more engaged in the material.\u201d She noted one student, who, after viewing Burko\u2019s exhibit, \u201crealized that the phenomena happening on earth were not just local but global.\u201d Rennermalm seeks to engage students, to think and ask questions. She aspires not to dictate what her students should think but to take what they have learned to \u201cformulate their own opinions.\u201d The impact of the series extended beyond the student body to engage a diverse audience in the issues that artists and scientists alike explore with intensity and invites everyone to think and ask questions.<\/p>\n

Diane Burko\u2019s undulating Arctic-scapes demand the viewer\u2019s attention, inviting audiences to emotionally engage with environmental change where scientific data alone may leave many perplexed. It presents an opportunity for conversation extending from the gallery floor, on to the classroom and into the familial kitchen raising public engagement. Burko and Rennermalm have the same vision: both are enlisting others to actively engage with the Arctic landscape, to witness the region as a location undergoing a state of immense transition. It\u2019s for the witness to decide.<\/p>\n

For further information visit Diane Burko\u2019s websites: www.dianeburko.com and www.dianeburkophotography.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

Erica Dingman\u00a0is an associate fellow of\u00a0World Policy Institute, researcher and writer whose work focuses on a broad spectrum of issues facing the Arctic in respect to climate change.<\/em><\/p>\n

[ Photo courtesy of\u00a0Diane Burko<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

This article first appeared on the World Policy Institute website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Erica Dingman Climate scientists and artists engaged in chronicling new phenomenon for the purpose of affecting change seem to have a natural affinity for one another\u2019s work. Yet rarely does one come across an artist as attune to the scientific community as Diane Burko. This is evidenced in her ongoing series of paintings exploring<\/p>\n

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