Local non-profit Water Docs Film Festival asked me if I would share their #ARTivist challenge for science art about issues of water and climate change. I shared some existing work which fit their themes and I wanted to create new work for the final theme: "Water is Life: Interconnection."
At first I was a bit stumped. It's such a big topic. Water is central to all life on Earth. How can I represent that centrality, all life, the water cycle in one image? I think this is an instance where less is more. When I was in New Brunswick, I made a point to take a number of photos of lake water, as a reference for future art. I put this to work, creating a cyanotype with a negative of one of my photos and the theme itself as text, "WATER IS LIFE".
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| Water Is Life, cyanotype, 11" x 14" by Ele Willoughby, 2023 |
Then, as I was thinking about the inescapable this summer: the way so much of this country is and has been literally on fire, I began to conceive of this as one half of a diptych. All 13 provinces and territories have seen forest fires in this, the worst forest fire season we have ever experienced. So far 150,504 km squared, or as much as 4% of the forested area of Canada, a huge country with much greater proportion forested areas than most countries. This is an area larger than the entire country of Greece. This is about 5 times the average yearly area affected by forest fires and much of the continent has been bathed in smoke through the summer.
Climate change causes warmer and drier weather and has radically increased the risk of forest fire. We can expect extreme weather events with increased frequency and severity. Many regions have been left praying for rain.
I made this linocut to express the flip side of "water is life"; "No water no life." I used my lino block centered on the Arctic, including much of Canada, and painted it with flames, then printed the text on top.
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| No Water No Life, linocut, 11" x 14", by Ele Willoughby, 2023 |
So, as a diptych:
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| Water diptych, cyanotype and linocut by Ele Willoughby, 2023 |
