POLITICS OF SNOW II Diane Burko APRIL TO MAY 2011 “Politics of Snow II” is a series of sweeping views of majestic glaciers and mountains by Philadelphia artist Diane Burko. Her mission is to wake us out of reverie in order to bear witness to the impact of global warming on our natural world. Using archival photographs of glaciers as starting points, Burko combines these images in diptychs and triptychs and other multiple configurations, with contemporary views of the same landscape 10, 50 or 100 years later. Painting on canvas, she crops the images and adjusts the palette to convey the dramatic and accelerating effects of climate change over time. Diane Burko has received numerous awards including two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, two individual artists grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a Lila Acheson Wallace Foundation Residency Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Residency Fellowship, and the Bessie Berman $50,000 Grant. She was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Women’s Caucus for the Arts. Her works are in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, De Cordova Museum, James A. Michener Art Museum, Reading Public Museum, and The Art Institute of Chicago. She is represented by the Locks Gallery in Philadelphia. Lecture: “Politics of Snow” Michael Oppenheimer, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs, Department of Geosciences and Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University.
#1/#2 Main Rongbuk Glacier, after Mallory, 1921, and after David Breashears, 2007, oil on canvas, 48 x 74 inches
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