It's Just Math
It's Just Math
Bonnie Peterson
Artist Statement
Climate change is science. Its Just Math! Some of the math behind recent studies of air bubbles trapped in glacial ice cores, is embroidered in a graph depicting 400,000 years of Earth's atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. The graph is surrounded by stitched map fragments, my photographs from winter cross country ski explorations in the Lake Superior region, and satellite images of the ozone hole over Antarctica. Climate Change modeling equations are embroidered around the outside of the photographs. The explanation of how 400,000 years of atmospheric carbon dioxide is calculated (from ice core research), is almost invisibly stitched into the orange and deep pink silk outside the climate equations. (Text: Tiny air bubbles were trapped in the ice. The analysis of air bubbles trapped in a 3.2 km long core of frozen snow shows current carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas concentrations are substantially higher now than at any time in the last 800,000 years.)
A 1914 quotation from the intrepid Antarctic explorer, Ernest Shackleton surrounds the reassembled map pieces. (Text: "The ice is rafting up to a height of 10 or 15 ft in places, the opposing floes are moving against one another at the rate of about 200 yards per hour. The noise resembles the roar of heavy, distant surf. Standing on the stirring ice one can imagine it is disturbed by the breathing and tossing of a mighty giant below." Ernest Shackleton, July 21,1914).
The final outside gold brocade binding is printed with text from many climate change studies and documents.
Key to photographs (clockwise from 12:00 position):
Birch trees on top of red sandstone cliffs with ice caves at the
Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, WI
Birch trees near the Falls River in L'Anse, MI
Birch trees near the Pilgrim River in Houghton, MI
Lake Superior ice formations found walking between Little Sand Bay
and Sand Island in the Apostle Islands, WI
Car on ice road to Madeline Island near Bayfield, WI
Ice map of the Great Lakes, NOAA
Ozone hole, NOAA
Greenhouse in Elmhurst, IL
Apostle Islands ice caves
Ice at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI
Bogs near Manitowish Waters, WI
Pancake ice floes at the mouth of the Presque Isle River, Porcupine
Mountains State Park, MI
Bogs near Manitowish Waters, WI
Birch trees near Pilgrim River in Houghton, MI
Made for the exhibition, "Paradise Lost? Artists on Climate Change in the Northwoods," a project with 20 artists, 5 scientists and several educators, funded by the Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment and the Wisconsin Arts Board.
Personal note: I'm no rocket scientist, but climate change is a matter of ‘Just Math' to me. I cannot sit on the fence and doubt the science behind earth's increasing temperatures. I am convinced by the science of ice core research and the math of computer models. Personal observations such as fewer and fewer ski days in Chicago, fewer days to walk along the ice caves at the Apostles, melting glaciers in Montana, less snow in the Porcupine Mountains, and droughts in Colorado, are measurements that feed into mathematical equations. Increases in temperatures follow increases in carbon dioxide concentrations. Recent ice core data show our current CO2 concentrations to be 30% greater than any time over the last 800,000 years!
Biography
Bonnie Peterson received Illinois Arts Council
grants in 2003, 2000 and 1995, a grant from the Illinois Committee,
National Museum of Women in the Arts, and other prizes. She was
an Artist-In-Residence at Yosemite, Rocky Mountain, Isle Royale,
and Crater Lake National Parks. Her work is in the collection
of the Museum of Arts and Design, NYC, the National Park Service
and other public and private collections. She has an extensive
exhibition record, an undergraduate degree from the University
of Illinois-Urbana and an MBA from DePaul University.