Tuesday, March 28, 2017

The Arctic Bride

Michele Banks, The Arctic Bride, Mixed Media, 2017 


With Arctic sea ice at its lowest-ever recorded levels, and the administration poised to roll back environmental protections, spring of 2017 seemed like a good time for a wedding. For my seventh appearance at Artomatic, I decided to show this piece, The Arctic Bride, instead of my usual paintings. This mixed-media piece (yes, that's a real wedding dress that I bought on eBay) considers the marriage of Ice and Carbon. I first had the idea for this piece when I was working with Jessica Beels and Ellyn Weiss on Voyage of Discovery, our climate-inspired show at the AAAS in 2014. Looking at pictures ice and snow in the Arctic, I was reminded of the thick, glossy, pristine white draping of a wedding dress, and all the concepts of purity tied up in that image. 

For that show, we ended up making a larger, much more abstract piece called Waning Albedo.

Waning Albedo, Jessica Beels, Michele Banks and Ellyn Weiss, Mixed Media, 2014


I decided to revisit the idea in this piece. I'll leave it for others to tease out the layers of meaning here, but I think we can all agree that this marriage will be dangerous and damaging for the beautiful bride. 

Artomatic, which features the work of 600+ artists, runs through May 6 at 1800 South Bell Street in Arlington. 

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