Spring Core Extraction

Watercolor and Colored Pencil, 2020

Collaboration with scientist Dr. Laura Parducci

Climate change artist Jill Pelto has been collaborating with an international science team for the last few years. The team is based in Sweden, Norway, and Italy. The primary collaborator on this project is Dr. Laura Parducci, a paleo-ecologists currently based in Rome. Jill created five paintings for the team that tell a story about how Laura and her co-workers do their field research, what they find, how they use the data, and why that’s important today.

This painting is the second in the series — depicting the boots of a scientist as they stand on a bog. They are taking a core in the bog, another region where layers are well preserved. I created this piece so I could highlight the varied strata beneath the ground — a cross section of history. The brown layers near the surface contain a lot of  organic material. With depth, the soil begins to get more grey. This transition shows the material becoming less organic, with more clays. This occurs when an area is glaciated - covered by ice or snow. This transition would not happen as close to the surface as I’ve shown here, that was a compositional choice. 

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