WAKE THE GREAT SALT LAKE
“Here Today / Gone Tomorrow"
Through an intricate combination of photography and digital collage, my work explores environmental issues of the Anthropocene, an age of human impact on the natural world. From declining air quality and drought, to the ongoing collapse of the Great Salt Lake ecosystem, we are quickly approaching a crucial tipping point in our state. With my Wake the Great Salt Lake public art project, I have envisioned these hypothetical futures through an elaborate, photorealistic art installation that questions the world we are now creating.
What will Salt Lake City look like in the future? This existential question is the jumping off point for my project, “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow”. Will we have clean air, abundant water, and a thriving ecosystem surrounding the Great Salt Lake? Or will it go dry, leading to an almost science-fiction inspired dystopia of widespread aridification and toxic dust storms. My work explores this modern conflict between the natural world and the man made world, creating pieces that portray this strange and unpredictable future we are quickly approaching.
The images in this project were all created using my own photography, sourcing images from my photo archives of the Great Salt Lake, as well as traveling to many locations like Antelope Island to capture new imagery of the landscapes and details of plants and animals. Then to create my work I use a complex process of digital imaging, piecing together dozens of layers of my photographs to look realistic and seamless, creating a hyper-real, illustrative quality. Much of my work references older forms of beauty in art making such as sublime landscape paintings, animal studies, and naturalist illustration.
Conceptually, my artwork is about juxtaposition and satire, playing off familiar mediums and creating a disruption to get the viewer’s attention. With this project, I have created two opposing pieces offering different visions of what the Great Salt Lake could look like in the near future. I wanted to present two possible directions: one in which the lake is thriving, and one in which it has vanished. My project is primarily a visual thought experiment, envisioning this modern conflict between the manmade world and the natural world, and showing the consequences of taking versus leaving for nature.
In response to this immense environmental issue of the Great Salt Lake’s decline, I want my artwork to make a statement. The final presentation of the project is an artistic intervention into a highly-visible public space. For this I created a dual billboard installation that engages with a viewer's daily life on the street level. My goal with this project is to curate an experience that carries a message of conservation and stewardship of the Great Salt Lake. I want viewers to experience the billboards as a powerful means of communication, but also provide tools to engage with the issue, inspiring hope and action.
Wake the Great Salt Lake - a temporary public art project to educate and inspire residents and visitors about preventing the decline of the Great Salt Lake, supported by the Salt Lake City Arts Council, Salt Lake City Mayor’s Office, and Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Public Art Challenge. Without action, its collapse would have major ecological and economic impacts on the city, state, and region.
