I am an interdisciplinary ecological historian and visual artist whose work fuses storytelling, visual art, and environmental history to grapple with climate change in the north. My work draws on my decades of environmental history research in the Lake Superior watershed, combined with visual explorations of the changing north from my studio on Keweenaw Bay across from the South Entry Lighthouse. You can view my art resume here.
Paintings in my Lake Superior series "Tipping Points: Lake Superior in a Time of Climate Change" are intended to become illustrations in a work of visual nonfiction (similar to a graphic history or graphic novel) that explores how we can create hope, resiliency, and recovery in the world’s largest freshwater lake—which is also one of the fastest warming lakes in the world. (These won't be like comic strips, much as I love those formats for graphic novels). Instead, they will be illustrated narratives that combine paintings, text, and storytelling. Some of my favorite models include Lauren Redniss's extraordinary work, particularly in Radioactive, and Timothy Snyder's graphic collaboration with Nora Krug in On Tyranny.
As I explored in my two books about Lake Superior’s environmental history (Sustaining Lake Superior 2017, and Climate Ghosts 2021), Lake Superior is warming at a terrifying rate. Water levels are becoming more variable, ice is melting, and migratory wildlife such as lake sturgeon and woodland caribou are struggling. But these are places that remain extraordinarily beautiful even as they undergo massive transformation.
Paintings in this series explore the contradictions of such beauty in a time of climate change. I use a palette of blues and paint realistic images of conventional landscape beauty, integrated with text that attempts to shatter the viewer's initial sense of calm .Storms, melting ice, retreating snow, flooded coasts: they are all surprisingly lovely, even though the changes they represent are terrifying.
I work in both acrylic and oil, painting on canvas or paper, and then layering my paintings together (usually digitally) to create a sense of historic and scientific complexity. The images below are mostly the first layers, although a few are digital double exposures of two different paintings.
The paintings with tags on them are part of a series that explores tipping points of today, viewed from a future museum visitor's perspective. For more on this project, please go to this storymap.
The graphic novel that these paintings will illustrate takes readers on an imaginative journey into the world we will bequeath to future generations. How will future residents of the Lake Superior look back at traces from our snowy world? What can we do now to protect our communities, both human and more-than-human? How can we embrace fearlessly the melting world, even as we work to protect it?
Click on thumbnail images in the galleries below to see the full painting or sketch and (in some cases) a brief description.
Paintings in my Lake Superior series "Tipping Points: Lake Superior in a Time of Climate Change" are intended to become illustrations in a work of visual nonfiction (similar to a graphic history or graphic novel) that explores how we can create hope, resiliency, and recovery in the world’s largest freshwater lake—which is also one of the fastest warming lakes in the world. (These won't be like comic strips, much as I love those formats for graphic novels). Instead, they will be illustrated narratives that combine paintings, text, and storytelling. Some of my favorite models include Lauren Redniss's extraordinary work, particularly in Radioactive, and Timothy Snyder's graphic collaboration with Nora Krug in On Tyranny.
As I explored in my two books about Lake Superior’s environmental history (Sustaining Lake Superior 2017, and Climate Ghosts 2021), Lake Superior is warming at a terrifying rate. Water levels are becoming more variable, ice is melting, and migratory wildlife such as lake sturgeon and woodland caribou are struggling. But these are places that remain extraordinarily beautiful even as they undergo massive transformation.
Paintings in this series explore the contradictions of such beauty in a time of climate change. I use a palette of blues and paint realistic images of conventional landscape beauty, integrated with text that attempts to shatter the viewer's initial sense of calm .Storms, melting ice, retreating snow, flooded coasts: they are all surprisingly lovely, even though the changes they represent are terrifying.
I work in both acrylic and oil, painting on canvas or paper, and then layering my paintings together (usually digitally) to create a sense of historic and scientific complexity. The images below are mostly the first layers, although a few are digital double exposures of two different paintings.
The paintings with tags on them are part of a series that explores tipping points of today, viewed from a future museum visitor's perspective. For more on this project, please go to this storymap.
The graphic novel that these paintings will illustrate takes readers on an imaginative journey into the world we will bequeath to future generations. How will future residents of the Lake Superior look back at traces from our snowy world? What can we do now to protect our communities, both human and more-than-human? How can we embrace fearlessly the melting world, even as we work to protect it?
Click on thumbnail images in the galleries below to see the full painting or sketch and (in some cases) a brief description.
Caribou and Reindeer Migrations
Reindeer and caribou have been central to human life across the global north for millennia. They are crucial partners in the fight against Arctic climate change, because their browsing can keep shrubs at bay, thus increasing albedo and cooling local climates. But across the Arctic, reindeer and caribou populations are crashing. They have retreated from roughly half their 19th century range, and their populations have dropped by 56% in the past decade. Translocating herds to viable habitats may become critical as warming reduces the utility of current range. Yet how do we move reindeer—and other threatened migratory species—in a rapidly changing world with complex geopolitical boundaries? In another visual history project underway, I explore the colonial and post-colonial histories of reindeer/caribou translocations.
Feather by Feather: Birds of the Great Lakes
People have viewed birds as sentinels of change for millennia. What do birds now tell us about restoration and recovery in the Great Lakes, and about the continuing challenges we face with our more-than-human kin? You can click on thumbnails below to see larger images, or scroll through the StoryMap.
Vanya
