In the End a Devastating Beauty

In the End, a Devastating Beauty Susan Hoffman Fishman & Leslie Sobel

In the End a Devastating Beauty

Susan Hoffman Fishman & Leslie Sobel Stand4 Gallery, Brooklyn, NY January - February 2024

Copyright 2024 by Susan Hoffman Fishman & Leslie Sobel

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A View from the Heavens Taking in the cosmic as well as terrestrial elements of a geocentered approach requires collective efforts to construct different social imaginaries, a task for which literature and the arts are eminently suited in so far as they focus on the analysis of cultural representations and interpretations of what it means to be human.

These breathtaking views also decenter our humanness.

They show us a world that is alive as one organism, where everything is connected, and how all actions have consequences. They present a view of our place within the natural systems, where nonhuman entities co-exist with humans. They also reveal the scars of destruction when one species steps away from this living, collaborative network.

Braidotti (2019, p.81) Posthuman Knowledge

For the exhibition, In the End a Devastating Beauty, environmental artists Susan Hoffman Fishman and Leslie Sobel hone in on the salient, visible scars of the landscape and environmental changes that have occurred to bodies of water. Working with scientists at Planet Labs in San Francisco, CA, a global satellite imaging company, they used satellite imagery, on-theground research, and their aesthetics to produce a collaborative body of work that speaks to the devastating beauty of our planet as well as the visual beauty of the devastation that is accelerating the transformation of our warming planet. In the End A Devastating Beauty is the product of a healthy ecosystem made up of the exchange of technology, scholarship, and vision between curious, caring professionals. A place without hierarchy, where one can fluidly change perspectives in the course of learning. We need these collaborative spaces to move forward and move beyond despair.

Mid-December, 2023.

The roses in my Brooklyn garden are still blooming and the pale, purple petunias in my backyard are a beautiful, but jarring sight set among the usual winter palette of browns and greys. I orient myself daily with the sky and my garden. They are a constant source of magic and beauty. I never feared this beauty before, but over the years, both the sky and my garden have also shown themselves to be portents of the precarity of a world in crisis. Raging fires in Canada created a preternatural hue in my sky view this summer, and for decades my garden’s warm growing season has been inching closer and closer to the Winter Solstice, a time when life in the garden should be at rest. From the vantage point of my garden, my view is limited.

However, technology allows us to soar into the heavens and gain a grander perspective, where satellites turn our gaze towards Earth. While this view is beautiful, it also reveals the fragility of our planet. We are faced with the damage caused by our industrial, extractive, anthropocentric existence. Our actions are so massive that they register from the far, outer reaches of our atmosphere as satellite images bring home views of sinkholes, massive fires, melting permafrost, and other scars of a warming world.

Sobel and Fishman chose to work together for inspiration and ways to visually and conceptually articulate their concerns about climate change. They continue to collaborate knowing that their voices together are stronger and more sound. This mindset is

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in keeping with the mission of Stand4 Gallery; to serve as a catalyst to create a socially and environmentally just and sustainable future, inclusive of community voices…

Their exhibition, In the End A Devastating Beauty highlights the sublime beauty of our planet and the damage we inflict and challenges us to reflect on what we are losing due to our actions and inactions. We look to the future and ask how we are changing the world, and how the world is changing us? We find ourselves at the threshold of a new becoming, one that will require a sloughing off of the human hierarchy to form a deeper understanding of our place within the natural systems where non-human entities co-exist with humans. We need love and respect for our world and all of its entities, to create and sustain an advanced, ethical movement toward a better future.

Jeannine Bardo Founder/ Artistic Director

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Left: Susan Hoffman Fishman, The Earth is Breaking Beautifully VII, acrylic, oil pigment, satellite images, cyanotype and mixed media on paper 51” x 51”, 2023 Right: The Earth is Breaking Beautifully: Siberian Taiga, acrylic, oil pigment, satellite images, cyanotype and mixed media on paper 51” x 51”, 2023

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Leslie Sobel, Maumee Bay Bloom, diptych, cold wax & oil on cradled panel, 12" x 24", ©2023

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Alternative Perspectives

On the other side of the globe, the impacts of climate change and human action have manifested as sinkholes dotting the Dead Sea. Receding shorelines from diversion of the water sources that feed it in Israel, Syria, and Jordan, combined with increasing temperatures and reduced rainfall to replenish the lake, are destroying the natural landscape as the salt dissolves and collapses. These effects are irreparable; a 3-million-year-old wonder, vanishing in the course of a human lifetime.

Viewing the Earth from space puts the world into perspective. You can see how strikingly beautiful every piece of it is in its own way, how distinct every forest and desert and coastline truly are. Nearly everywhere you look in a satellite image, you can also see the impact of life. Start with cities, then follow the roads out to the more rural areas. There, you see widespread agricultural activity and pastures for animals. Follow the roads long enough, and they eventually terminate and give way to the natural landscape. The changes in vegetation left behind as creatures migrate can be visible from space — from swarms of locusts, to herds of wildebeests, to tiny wombats. Even pods of whales and coral reefs can be spotted from space. The actions and patterns of life on Earth are clearly visible almost everywhere, every day.

Meanwhile in the Arctic, increasing temperatures have led to melting of permafrost, causing the ground to collapse and form what geologists call “thermokarst depressions” across the Siberian taiga.

In 2022, high summertime temperatures in Svalbard and Greenland led to record high levels of glacial melting, shattering previous records from 2018. The retreat of these glaciers not only affects fragile Arctic ecosystems, but the rapid release of massive amounts of cold meltwater influences entire ocean currents, impacting marine life and global weather patterns.

In the span of days, massive algal blooms can appear and disappear in bodies of water such as Lake Erie and Lake Okeechobee. While they are visually stunning in satellite images, sometimes covering huge swaths of these lakes, their cause is much more sinister: Pollution.

Runoff carrying elements like phosphorus, carbon, and nitrogen from chemical fertilizers and manure provides a prime food source for these algal blooms. These blooms in turn can have a host of toxic side effects to humans and wildlife. The effects are not contained to the lakes either; heavy rainfall can lead to spillover into the local water supply, in some cases causing multi-day shutdowns. With rising global temperatures, more unpredictable rainfall patterns, and increasing carbon levels in our atmosphere, the conditions for these algal blooms to thrive are only becoming more and more hospitable.

The impacts of climate change across our entire planet are captured in satellite imagery, and dutifully analyzed by teams of scientists. But humans are creatures driven by emotion, not data.

NASA Astronaut Frank Borman, one of the first humans to fly around the Moon on the Apollo 8 mission, once said upon viewing Earth floating in the darkness of space, “They should have sent poets and not astronauts, because we couldn’t capture the grandeur of what we had seen.” This is where

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artists play a critical role. They have the unique ability to translate data into emotion in a way that scientists often cannot—a way that can inspire broader action. As a scientist myself, getting the opportunity to work with artists like Leslie Sobel and Susan Hoffman Fishman has given me another perspective through which to view our planet, beyond the pixels of a satellite image. I met Leslie and Susan through the Artist in Residence Program at Planet Labs, where artists are brought onboard for three months to create pieces of work inspired by satellite imagery. Their views of the world immediately struck a chord with me—and I am sure their perspectives expressed in In the End a Devastating Beauty will speak to others as well.

Tanya Harrison Ph.D. Director of Science for Impact at Planet Labs during Fishman and Sobel's residency Co-Founder & CEO, Earth and Planetary Institute of Canada Fellow, Outer Space Institute

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Leslie Sobel, Isfjorden Used to Freeze Over, mixed media on Arches Oil, 30" x 51", ©2023

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Susan Hoffman Fishman, Siberian Scroll 4, satellite images, cyanotype and tea on paper, 8.5” x 44”, 2022

Susan Hoffman Fishman, Siberian Scroll, satellite images and cyanotype on paper, 7.5” x 29.5”, 2022

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Susan Hoffman Fishman, Dead Sea Scroll: Then, Now, satellite images, cyanotype, historical map and mixed media on paper, 11” x 33.5”, 2023

Leslie Sobel, Sailing Along Hornbreen, artist book on Rives BFK, cold wax and oil, collage and mixed media, 9.5" x 118", ©2023 -10-

Left: Leslie Sobel, Hornsund Black Sand Beach, cold wax and oil & mixed media on panel, 12" x 12", ©2023 Right: Leslie Sobel, Ice on Black Beach, mixed media & resin on panel, 12" x 12", ©2023

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Susan Hoffman Fishman, Desertification Triptych, 1 of 3, satellite images, cyanotype and mixed media on board, 12” x 12”, 2023 -12-

Susan Hoffman Fishman, Desertification Triptych, 2 of 3, satellite images, cyanotype and mixed media on board, 12” x 12”, 2023 -13-

Susan Hoffman Fishman, Desertification Triptych, 3 of 3, satellite images, cyanotype and mixed media on board, 12” x 12”, 2023 -14-

Left: Leslie Sobel, Island Bloom, satellite imaging and microscopic photography stencils of algae - cold wax and oil & mixed media on panel, 12" x 12", ©2022 Right: Leslie Sobel, Maumee Bay Beach, cold wax and oil panel, 12" x 12", ©2023

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Leslie Sobel, Microcystis by Hand, pastel, mixed media & resin on panel, 12" x 12", ©2023

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In the End a Devastating Beauty In the End A Devastating Beauty is the combined result of our joint, 2021 three-month artist residency at Planet Labs in San Francisco, CA. As a global satellite imaging company, Planet’s hundreds of Dove satellites photograph the entire world on a daily basis. Its data is utilized by scientists, businesses, governments, researchers and journalists. In establishing an artist residency, Planet scientists wanted to see what artists could do with their images. The exhibition includes work produced during and after our eye-opening experience.

traveling a collaborative, multi-media installation that links future apocalyptic flood predictions to the ancient flood narrative of Noah, the world’s first apocalyptic flood. Entitled, Flood 2.0, the work was installed in the spring of 2023 at Five Points Gallery in Torrington, CT and will be installed in the spring of 2024 at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art in New Haven, CT. What we gain from working together is more than the merging of two points of view and working styles – it’s a louder voice and a stronger narrative about climate change itself.

Inspired by Planet images, we developed work that emphasizes not only the devastation of the Dead Sea, Siberia, Lake Erie, Lake Okeechobee and the Arctic, but the ironic beauty of that devastation. The thousands of sinkholes around the Dead Sea are filled with water colored a spectacular cobalt blue, brilliant yellow ochre and luscious lime green by minerals in the ground and water; the landscape around the sinkholes in Siberia is stunning and eerily graphic; The green patterns of Harmful Algae Bloom in Lake Erie are similarly dazzling; and the Arctic landscape is dramatic and beautiful beyond words. Hence the title of our exhibition.

Susan Hoffman Fishman and Leslie Sobel January, 2024

Our collaborative work is a dialogue between images of devastation and beauty by two artists with different approaches to and interpretations of scientific data. The collaboration is not new. We began working together in 2019, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic on a traveling exhibition called Climate Conversations: All We Can Save, which was installed in galleries in Ann Arbor and West Bloomfield, Michigan and at the Nurture/ Nature Center in Easton, PA. We are currently -17-

Susan Hoffman Fishman, Then and Now, acrylic, oil pigment, satellite images, cyanotype and mixed media on board, 18” x 18,” 2023.

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Susan Hoffman Fishman, Desertification: An Artist’s Book, acrylic, satellite images, cyanotype, historical maps and mixed media on paper, 7.5” x 44”, 2023

Susan Hoffman Fishman, The Earth is Breaking Beautifully: An Artist’s Book #2, acrylic, satellite images, cyanotype, and mixed media on paper, 8” x 58”, 2023 -19-

Top and Bottom: Leslie Sobel, Toledo Transect artist book, satellite imaging, plotter prints, photomicrographic prints, mixed media on Rives BFK, 7.3" x77" ©2020

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Leslie Sobel, Templebreen Terminus, cold wax & oil on panel, 12" x 24", ©2023

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Left: Leslie Sobel, Wading Towards Templebreen, cold wax and oil & mixed media on panel, 12" x 12", ©2023 Right: Leslie Sobel, Hornsund Glacial Retreat, resin & mixed media on panel, 12" x 12", ©2023

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Bios Susan Hoffman Fishman is a mixed-media painter, environmental artist and arts writer whose work has been exhibited widely in museums and galleries throughout the United States. The recipient of multiple grants and artist residencies, she resides in West Hartford, CT. Since 2011, her practice has focused on water in the context of climate change, including rising seas, desertification, and the proliferation of sink holes around the world. From 2017 – 2022, Fishman wrote a monthly column called “Imagining Water” for the international blog, Artists and Climate Change, which highlights artists of all disciplines around the world who are working on global water issues and climate change. Her articles have also appeared in Image Journal, Ecoartspace and Art Spiel.

Leslie Sobel is a mixed-media and environmental artist.

Based in Michigan, her work reflects her connection to the natural world and her deep concern about climate change. With a background in science and art, she integrates wilderness, scientific field work in remote locations with photography, data and mixed media.

Sobel has exhibited widely in more than 30 solo exhibitions and 40 group shows. In addition to her art practice, she has curated exhibitions focused on climate and social justice issues and taught both artists and scientists. The artist residencies that have informed her work include: the University of Michigan’s Bio Station; the Arctic Circle’s exploratory residency aboard the Tall Ship Antigua; the Eclipse Ice Field; the Colorado Art Ranch; and the University of Hartford’s Interdisciplinary MFA residencies.

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Acknowledgements

The artists are very grateful to the following individuals and institutions that were instrumental in the development of this exhibition.

Jeannine Bardo Stand4 Gallery Tanya Harrison, PhD Christine Kitchens Planet Labs TheArcticCircle.org

Inside Cover : Susan Hoffman Fishman, Siberian Scroll 4, satellite images, cyanotype and tea on paper, 8.5” x 44”, 2022 Outside Cover: Leslie Sobel, Sailing Along Hornbreen, artist book on Rives BFK, cold wax and oil, collage and mixed media, 9.5" x 118", ©2023

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