Global Warming is Real encaustic art exhibit

Lost to the Sea, 24" x 24, " encaustic on panel

My first piece of political statement art ever was just accepted into the international competition "Global Warming is Real," and is on view at the Museum of Encaustic Art outside of Santa Fe, NM, now through October 20, 2024. The painting depicts the loss of the iconic fishing shacks at Fisherman’s Point near Willard Beach in South Portland, Maine during the January 2024 storm surge.

Here's my artist statement that describes the inspiration for this piece:

"The Gulf of Maine, 36,000 square miles of water stretching from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia, is warming faster than 99% of the world’s oceans. Three times as fast, according to one study. Water temperatures in the Gulf matter because it is home to rare whales, the Atlantic puffin, core fish stocks such as cod and haddock, and the $1.5 billion U.S. lobster industry.

In January of 2024, a storm surge at high tide destroyed two iconic fishing shacks that had stood on Fisherman’s Point in South Portland, Maine since the late 1800s. Originally built to store fishing gear, they had come to serve as the setting for countless marriage proposals and milestone celebrations. They were also a frequent subject for photographers and painters. Widely shared videos showing the buildings being toppled and swallowed by the angry seas created a surge of nostalgia.

 My painting captures one of the shacks as it is being swept away. I embedded navigational charts of Casco Bay into the walls and piers to symbolize the structure being claimed by the waters.   

Although many have pushed to rebuild the shacks, I feel Fisherman’s Point should remain empty, serving as a stark reminder that things cannot go back to the way they were before global warming. Unless drastic policy changes are made, more and more of our coast, and our way of life, will be lost to the sea."

Detail shot showing embedded navigational maps of Casco Bay

There was a strict word limit for the artist statement, so I didn’t have the chance to add some more personal thoughts on global warming and its impact on the fishing industry. I grew up in the fishing port of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Once the whaling capital of the world, the city has been the nation’s leading fishing port, in terms of gross revenues, for over 20 years. (Dutch Harbor, Alaska, tops it in commercial fishing volume.) Scallops are the biggest catch, by far. Growing up, I had several friends whose dads worked on scallop draggers and were out to sea for one or two weeks at a time, in boats with hulls so rusted out that I was terrified to step foot in them when they were tied up at the dock. It’s grueling, and risky, work. My Dad had a full-time job as an electrical lineman, but also had a commercial fishing license, and was on his boat nearly every minute of his spare time.

I grew up fishing on Buzzards Bay alongside my Dad, mostly on pre-sunrise trips out of Padanaram harbor in our 18 foot Grady-White. We were on the water at least an hour before dawn, fueled by Thermoses full of not very good coffee. (Folgers instant roast, laced with Coffee mate creamer and tons of sugar.) We’d go after anything that would take our bait: haddock, flounder, striped bass, and the most fun fish of all to land – bluefish. The real cash came from striped bass, though, and that’s how I made all of my spending money. Somewhere (I hope!) in the endless boxes of Kodachrome slides that my Dad shot, there’s a photo of me as a scrawny little kid, holding up my personal record 38-pound striper. The only picture I could lay my hands on was me in my 20s, heading home after a morning fishing.

A much younger me at the helm in Buzzards Bay, after a morning fishing. 

Our boat was honestly a little small for a lot of the areas we were fishing in, and there were many times when we took on water over the bow. We were also lost in the fog on more than one occasion, and my Dad would haul out his paper navigation maps and try to figure out where the hell we were. Just looking at nautical charts brings on a flood of memories, some more terrifying than others. (Being lost in the fog in a tiny boat in the middle of a major shipping channel is not for the faint of heart.) Embedding nautical charts into this painting felt simultaneously cathartic and soothing. My Dad passed away in the late 1990s, and I haven’t picked up a fishing rod since. But I will always feel a connection to commercial fishermen and their way of life.  

Global warming will surely adversely affect New Bedford’s fishing industry, but the city has adapted before. (Clawing its way back from tough times seems to be its specialty.) And the city is already playing a key role in the burgeoning offshore wind industry. New Bedford is a hot spot for the construction, assembly, and shipping of offshore wind turbines. Construction of the Vineyard Wind project, the first large-scale offshore wind farm in the nation to actually begin producing power, was run entirely through the New Bedford Marine Terminal. Like the port of New Bedford, we are all going to have to adapt to the reality of global warming.   

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Back to the global warming exhibit. There are over thirty pieces in this show, all with beeswax as their primary medium. There’s a great variety of interpretations of the theme, and very creative use of materials and techniques. Some pieces are sculptural, others incorporate a wide variety of materials including ash, sand, twine, a turtle shell, a wasp nest, snake skin, and dried cactus. The show reveals both the versatility of this medium that I’m so crazy about and an amazing diversity of artistic imaginations. You can view all the works in the show and the accompanying artists’ statements here: https://eainm.com/2024-global-warming-is-real-exhibit/

Thanks for reading!!