Announcing The Tidal Shift Award Winners

The 6 recipients of the 1st Tidal Shift Award introduced authentic and considered-provoking artworks that engage with our local climate disaster and encourage motion. Through illustration, metalsmithing, sculpture, songs, aquaculture, and style, these artists proved that the long term is in superior fingers, but the time to act is now.

Hannah Slone’s “A Costume Manufactured From Waste”

This gown was built working with plastic transport/storage materials. I gathered them above a month’s interval of time from the shipments the keep I worked in experienced been given. I produced this costume in purchase to elevate awareness of how a lot waste we create and the quantities of plastic pollution we build. I interlaced the plastic collectively using grommets and sashes. The sashes are compromised of white useless-inventory cloth that I in a natural way dyed yellow with turmeric. I intended for the dress to be equipped to fall apart with one pull of a sash, littering the ground with plastic.

Benjamin Pochurek’s “Flora Lung”

Flora Lung explores the weather modify threats of deforestation and desertification, and the vital role of the specific to shield our environment. My sculpture is motivated by early diving gear, “Aqua Lung”. Just as human beings designed technological innovation to survive underwater, this futurist determine has been pressured to invent new technological innovation, Flora Lung to survive on land.

The solitary determine sits atop a lone pine tree stump among a huge expanse of dry land, devoid of vegetation. The figure takes advantage of oxygen from fully developed air vegetation to endure. I chose air crops owing to their resistance to harsh circumstances and their need for negligible drinking water. The figure’s posture and grip demonstrate that it is intent on safeguarding and nurturing several smaller sprouts in get to replenish Flora Lung.

Ellie Bouman’s “The Colorless Sea”

My piece was built to provide interest to the results of weather alter on coral reefs, and the importance of instruction on the issue. The message of this piece is that if drastic action is not taken immediately, most coral reefs will die off and healthier, vibrant corals will only be discovered in publications and images. The reserve also represents education, since persons are most possible to take motion towards climate improve if they are educated on the subject matter. The ultimate concept that my piece provides to the desk is the domino impact that the deaths of coral reefs will have on numerous species and ecosystems. As represented by the fish swimming in only the wholesome corals, if the reefs die off so will about 25% of all marine lifetime as there will be a lack of foods and nutrition.

Nicky Howard Rogers’ “Microcosms”

Microcosms is created up of a series of tiny worlds, or ecosystems, every single of which are diligently made to mirror unique environmental results of the recent local climate disaster inside Maine. As anyone who has lived in Maine their overall everyday living I have witnessed the results of world warming initially hand. Regardless of whether it be in the variety of droughts my relatives has knowledgeable although farming, enormous algae blooms that eliminate freshwater ecosystems, or diminished sea existence brought on by the acidification of oceans through Maine.

Carolina Bragg’s “If Bees Are Handful of”

A. R. Ammons is my favored environmental poet. His penned snapshots of the normal globe are forthright about the peril character is in, but also about its likely for regrowth. This composition for SSA choir is established to two of his functions about a single bee. In a single of these poems, “Release,” the bee travels homeward. In the other, “Oblivion’s Bloom,” the bee satisfies its dying on the arrival of the very first cold. Ammons’ writing resonates currently, as carbon emissions, loss of habitat, and the pesticide industry lead to the unparalleled destruction of honey bee colonies. I selected to reorder the poems so that Oblivion’s Bloom arrives to start with, following which the bee, probably representative of the total species, finds his way house. Melodically and thematically, this piece explores the strategy of residence: the bee’s property, and the property he shares with us.

Katherine Concannon’s “What We Remaining Behind”

I attended a 2019 Weather Walk that travelled Vermont to convey awareness to environmental justice. I noticed the litter that we encountered whilst traversing highway shoulders. Plastic baggage fluttered like prayer flags alongside mosaics of beer cans embedded in the dust. Nonetheless, daily life also flourished in this strip of borderlands in between technologies and wilderness. Released from tree go over, seedlings arrived at for the sun, and thousands of salamanders dashed the asphalt to breed in downhill vernal pools.

Introduced by the The Weather Initiative and Portland Museum of Artwork, Maine.