For my session here today, I will be touching upon strands that are embedded in my project ELEGE|S|, and my piece Elegy For a Glacier. If you are interested in further entwining within these strands, please feel free to reach out to me following this overall session – I would love to connect with you and I am always interested in forming and fostering collaborations.

In August of 2023, several days after my return from the Icelandic highlands, I tested positive from Covid 19. With this bout of the virus, I grappled with the temporary loss of my sense of smell and taste. The experience was disorienting and terrifying, but as I sat with and marinated in the loss of scent-sation – I began to pay close attention to not only the emotions that arose from it, but how my human experience in the world was changed by the loss of these senses I had taken for granted. Though many thoughts and feelings arose during my first week in isolation, I began to narrow this experience down to several that presented as primary focal points: a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of my human biome in relation to both physical and mental health, how the loss of something dear to us affects us in both tangible and intangible ways, and acknowledging the elements and stages of grief that arise with a loss that directly contributes to our vitality – including the important reflections that hindsight offers when a loss occurs.

Still basking in the relationships I formed with more-than-human kin I encountered in Iceland, I began to correlate the grief that stemmed from my personal loss of senses with the global, independent and collective sense of loss surrounding ecosystems, landscapes and species. I began to imagine the subsequent changes in the landscape, especially the destruction of the glaciers I was beginning to know and admire, made manifest from the changing climate and our warming world. Placing myself in this imagined future, an overwhelming sense of grief emerged. Sitting with this uncomfortable feeling, I pushed myself deeper, thinking about the interwoven communities, culture, and the more-than-human kin connected with the glaciers that would be affected as they continued to melt into the sea. What would this world look like, feel like? What tangible and intangible effects would this have not only on local communities surrounding the glaciers, but our global one as well.

I sunk into this space of grief and vulnerability – feeling anger, frustration and despair. But as it often happens when we begin to deeply immerse ourselves in the feelings that spin out from loss, we enter into the realm of hindsight – and we begin to ponder the things we could have done to possibly alter the course of events that contributed to the loss of what we held dear. It was in that space that I began to realize the agency of ‘anticipatory grieving’ for things we have not yet lost completely and it’s ability to ignite sparks of hope that could light a path towards reconnecting intimately with the more-than-human world, and ultimately – reciprocity and stewardship with and for it.

As Marzia Varutti explains in her publication Claiming Ecological Greif: Why Are We Not Mourning For Ecological Destruction? quote “The paradox inherent in many kinds of losses is that we only become aware of the loss once it’s too late, when the loss makes itself manifest through the absence. The current eco-crisis impels us to now move beyond this paradox. We must mourn all losses and we must mourn also for what is about to be lost, for what we don’t know is lost, for the ecosystems we have never known existed or never cared to learn about”.

My ELEGE|S| project was born within this realm of anticipatory grief. As a female identifying artist, more often than not, I allow my feminine intuition, emotional landscape and my connection to planetary kin, guide the path of the work that I create. I channeled my grief into a visual and written elegy for the glaciers I encountered during my time in Iceland, invoking my memory of them, and the sadness that stirred within me at the thought of their demise. Elegy For A Glacier is my ode to these kin that help shape our climate, landscapes, cultures, communities, ecosystems, knowledge, economy, art and imagination.

As an ecoartist, citizen scientist and activist – I am often seeking ways to bridge the gap between science, art and emotion. I am passionate about protecting our planet and seeking out ways to weave the threads of the human experience, back into the greater tapestry of life. Though my initial concepts generally stem from emotion and direct experience, my projects are always deeply embedded in research, analytics and working towards humanizing data in a way that evokes emotional response and personal connection. As Beth Caruthers states in her work About Cultural Currency quote “Art must be both translator and messenger. Art and art practices facilitate a process of learning through the engaged sense, one that can bypass conditioned patterns of thinking, allowing other ways of knowing to come forward, at times subtly, at times overwhelmingly.”

‘ELEGE|S|’ continues to evolve and unfurl. Through my background research for this project, it has become apparent that there is a dire need for public awareness around the topics of species loneliness and personal and communal ecological grieving – as well as safe public spaces and collective mourning rituals for communities to come together to share in their grief for the current and potential future state of our planet. With this in mind, ELEGE|S| is transforming into a public art project aimed at fostering this awareness through multi-generational communal projects that share in collective recollection, making, ritual and grieving for the landscapes that we live in and with, in an effort to re-connect with them to better protect them before they are destroyed. A first pilot iteration of this work will take place in the land that this work was inspired by – Iceland. Working in collaboration with Dr. Thorvar Árnason, Director of the University of Iceland Research Center in Hornafirði, we will explore and develop methods of connecting elders, youth, artists and scientists within the local community of Höfn, for collective imagining, ritual, making, and documentation – exploring the themes of anticipated loss, collective mourning, sense of place, embedded histories and imagined futures, kinship and local ecological stewardship. The collective work of this project will culminate in an exhibition and public space for mourning, recollection and reverence for the community’s precious landscapes and more-than-human kin. Following this pilot project, it is my intent to bring this project to other spaces, and to share the continued development, art, research and data from this work in an online, open source format for others to model and refine for their own local community.

As I come to the conclusion of this presentation, I ask you to think about a place that has been formative in your life. Marinate in the joy and transformation this place has brought you throughout the years. Consider if or how this place has begun to experience changes and if you have noticed the loss of animals, insects, plants, stones and water. Imagine this place in 10, 20 years from now – or a time within the span of your remaining years, and think on loss of this place due to climate change, development, or other anthropocentric forms of intervention and destruction. Sit with that sense of loss. Allow yourself to feel the grief that spills into the places that loss leaves behind. How would you describe this place to someone who has never known it in the ways that you have? Allow yourself to travel deeper, into the uncomfortable realm of hindsight – and consider all the things you could have done to protect that sanctuary that brought you joy. Now – I urge you to go out and make manifest these actions – grieve, bring together your community to foster awareness and collectively protect the places and kin that you care about for this and future generations to come.

To conclude and to summarize, I leave you with a quote from Jessica Marion Barr from her piece Art and Ethics of Ecological Grieving. “Elegiac works focused on the uncomfortable act of remembering and representing ecological loss, can aid in a potentially cathartic articulation of individual or collective pain, an act of feeling which can be the essential first step in a journey toward more positive and proactive ways of addressing the great problems of our time”