Reflection

Reflection

To Make Meaning Out of Ocean Pollution is to acknowledge a prominent issue again and again, because a public must be informed, before it can be reformed. My charcoal and chalk pastel work therefore addresses oil spills. I chose this issue because I live in North Dakota. Geographically, you can’t get much farther from the ocean, but recently, crude oil has become a big export of our state. Thus my conscience turned to the environmental side effects of such an industry. My drawing depicts a girl holding a pelican, with piping in the background and a colorful border. The girl (humanity) is holding a pelican (sea life) because as a human, she has significant control over nature. Her confused expression asks the viewer, “Why are we doing this? Why are we knowingly harming the planet?” Meanwhile, the pelican silently screams in outrage, bordering on life or death. The black-and-white aesthetics of the piece pay tribute to oil itself (which is black) and interestingly enough, so does the polychromatic border. Oil, in the right light, produces bands of color, or “rainbows,” across its surface. This is called thin-film interference. Ergo the title of the piece, Rainbows, Debunked, implies that oil doesn’t just produce a “pot of gold.” Mishandled, oil can devastate a shoreline, choke a coral reef, wipe out an entire ecosystem. Essentially, we hold the pelican in our hands. Let’s protect it, no?