Small Paintings as Data Points

Installing paintings to add context

As we prepare for our show in Maine, John and I are thinking through how to arrange the paintings in the gallery. Part of that plan includes painting two lines across the walls of the space to trace changing ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Maine. Standing in the middle of the space, viewers will be ‘located’ in the waters off the coast. This part of the Atlantic Ocean is warming at a rate three times faster than the global average. The lines we paint on the gallery walls will make that change visible, and the data points will be represented by our small 4”x4” paintings. Like shells, these paintings are an intimate size, and will hopefully bring a sense of personal connection to the information.

I like working this way. I try to tie small individual experiences to the systems we live within. When I began work on the installation I presented in 2020, I had questions about my community. I knew that I was living in a very segregated space, but how that came to be was less obvious. And that became my starting point. I worked from the personal to the systemic.

In Maine, I see the boats floating on the surface of the sea, but I know there are environmental impacts happening below the surface. Along with the Gulf’s rapid warming, fertilizer from farms and residences wash into waterways and alter habitats. Pet and livestock waste, stormwater runoff and sewage, overflow during storms into the rivers and the sea, and ocean acidification caused by burning of fossil fuels.

Individuals, researchers and other organizations like the Downeast Institute are innovating ways to save clams from invasive green crabs. But the only real solution to the crabs would be for the water to be colder. The crabs are migrating because the water is now warm enough to suit them. As their numbers increase, they destroy eelgrass and other habitat while devouring the tiny clams and other shellfish before they can even grow to market size.

Our lives are shaped by large forces. Individuals often bear the cost of those forces. This is true for shell fishermen in the form of compromised clam beds, and for many black people who lack generational wealth because of racist financial practices. I don’t equate these problems. But I do see a parallel in the invisibility and sometimes denial of the underlying systems at play.