Seracs

This 12 panel project took two summers to complete, working from July 2023 though to mid September, and then in the summer of 2024, slowly creating each panel one at a time. Good weather (low wind, blue skies, less smoke, ideally not too hot) dictates the workflow. Printing out many paper negatives and preparing them, then reclaiming the materials used with them for reuse. The photos are stitched together of the icefall on the Athabasca Glacier to create an enveloping, panoramic view; I finished sewing and finishing everything up finally in 2025 for this project. Each panel is habotai silk, 4ft by 8.5 ft, with imagery tiled to create a larger image across all of the panels.

Here, I want to give viewers a glimpse into what it feels like to walk within glacial landscapes. There is a feeling of the sublime anytime one is within that type of remote alpine landscape, an experience unlike any other. Hints in the form of moraines and scraped bare rock carries traces of each forward and backward motion of the glacier toe. Glaciers and their landscapes are awe inspiring, and yet to walk there one also carries an echo of grief. Without glaciers, our world would look very different, and that is something that is becoming ever closer with each hot summer and snowless winter. This ice will pass, and leave only remnants behind. Blue is the colour of ice; of longing, of loss, of memory locked away within glacial ice cores, and of light. Blue light travels farther along dense compacted bands of time, the blue of deep time and thousands of years in an inch.

The series of glacial ice seracs from the Athabasca Glacier are meant to prompt thought on what may yet be gone, especially without concentrated action. The seracs hold ice only hundreds of years old, showcasing old and newly fallen snow together, merging imagery across disparate places and times. These are then made with large paper negatives capturing the light from a summer day.

 

 

January 20, 2025

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