Voyage of Discovery: Art and the Arctic

Three local artists from the United States worked together on an art show, called Voyage of Discovery.

Artist Michele Banks does lovely work with the strange blues of Arctic ice. In the windows of the gallery hang “Micro/Macro,” a series of ink-on-mylar paintings about the transition between ice and water.

In a piece called “In the Balance,” a boat made of handmade paper over a steel frame, based on a native Alaskan fishing boat, is tossed by giant waves; this was inspired, says artist Jessica Beels, by hearing that people in Alaska have found they can’t predict the behavior of the weather and the water as well as they used to.

In mildly creepy, biological-looking wax sculptures, artist Ellyn Weiss imagines the kinds of organisms that might emerge as ice melts.

The largest work in the show is a 30-foot-long installation along a wall that the three women artsist worked on together. It’s called “Waning Albedo.” Albedo is the amount of light that is reflected back by a surface. Bright white ice and snow reflect a lot of light. One of the problems when ice melts in the Arctic is that it’s replaced by darker water, which absorbs more of the sun’s heat and warms faster.

Watch the video where the three artsist discuss how their art came about.

Voyage of Discovery: Art and the Arctic