Visitors to the current art installation “Boreal Echoes” may see some similarities between it and a previous shows from the In a Time of Change initiative. The collaborative has been in existence for over a decade and fosters partnerships between artists, practitioners of the humanities, and scientists to facilitate new ways of thinking about environments and ecosystems. This time around however the emphasis on the show was on fostering relationships between the artists.
"In this project we really emphasized collaboration between artists in the cohort and so that ranged from everything from just bouncing ideas off each other to inform their own work to actually pairing up into teams to create pieces together," said Mary Beth Leigh, a biology professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and director of In a Time of Change.
The deeper exploration of concepts among the artists themselves in “Boreal Echoes” was partly born of a desire to increase human interaction in a post-Pandemic world.
"During Boreal Forest Stories, that project was developed during COVID and we had to meet almost exclusively by Zoom. People really missed the opportunity to work in person together and spark ideas off each other in that way that you can sometimes only do when you’re in the room together, sometimes creating together," Leigh said.
Jennifer Moss has been involved with the In a Time of Change initiative as a visual artist for 10 years and “Boreal Echoes” is her fifth project with the program.
"It’s about getting together with others and coming up with ideas and rolling around in new spaces, trying new things that are unfamiliar and sometimes uncomfortable."
In the run up to “Boreal Echoes,” artists engaged in collaborative in-person exercises that Leigh refers to as “think-pair-create” activities. These exercises involved artists coming together to do things like pair up to paint watercolors or use nontraditional mediums to such as cardboard to make fantastical insects.
While the insects aren’t part of the “Boreal Echoes” exhibit, that exercise served as fodder for Moss and another In a Time of Change artist, Marianne Stolz, a woodworker and sculptor from Fairbanks’s Folk School, to create a cardboard kinetic sculpture called “Boreal Whispers” for the current exhibit.
"I feel like my investment in the process and the projects have grown deeper over time and more involved both as an artist and designer," Moss said.
The installation is large and about 15 feet in circumference.
"It’s ephemeral. It’s not meant to last. It’s made out of cardboard and pieces of the boreal forest put together and there’s lots of paint and other suggestive elements such as mirrored surfaces. It was created to kind of homage the resiliency and complexity of the forest ecosystem," Moss said.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s website says the boreal forest is the largest forested biome on Earth and occupies 27 per cent of the land mass on the planet.
"The sustainability of that system going into the future is always something that is something that’s always changing and mutable. And so the piece itself in its ephemerality tries to echo that changing nature of the environment," Moss said.
Boreal Echoes runs until September 27 at the Bear Gallery.