Another collaboration I did during the residency was with the photographer Victoria Crayhon who during her travels to Greenland captured a photo of this glacier, which in the two years since she’s been there has melted into the ocean and no longer exists.
Immortalizing a dead glacier through clay had me reflecting on our relationship to snow, ice and water in a time that they are becoming increasingly rare. It also made me think about the loss of Ok in 2019, the first of Icelands large glaciers that melted back into the ocean due to climate change. Andri Snær Magnason wrote a eulogy to this glacier claiming that in the next 200 years all glaciers are expected to no longer exist. He stated, “How do you write a eulogy for a glacier? Think about it. How would you go about that? Having grown with glaciers as a geological given, a symbol of eternity, how do you say goodbye?”
These questions made me think about my travels to Vietnam, where entire mountains were being erased from landscapes through mining, creating flatland where highland once was. This made me wonder at the time, how does a community mourn the loss of such an important geological element, what does losing a mountain do to the human psyche that has grown up around a landscape that no longer exists.
Sculpting this glacier with local Finnish clay perfectly fit into the Suomi collection, which has been focused on the four elements that for me represent this land: birch trees, moss, rocks and snow.
Another collaboration I did during the residency was with the photographer Victoria Crayhon who during her travels to Greenland captured a photo of this glacier, which in the two years since she’s been there has melted into the ocean and no longer exists.
Immortalizing a dead glacier through clay had me reflecting on our relationship to snow, ice and water in a time that they are becoming increasingly rare. It also made me think about the loss of Ok in 2019, the first of Icelands large glaciers that melted back into the ocean due to climate change. Andri Snær Magnason wrote a eulogy to this glacier claiming that in the next 200 years all glaciers are expected to no longer exist. He stated, “How do you write a eulogy for a glacier? Think about it. How would you go about that? Having grown with glaciers as a geological given, a symbol of eternity, how do you say goodbye?”
These questions made me think about my travels to Vietnam, where entire mountains were being erased from landscapes through mining, creating flatland where highland once was. This made me wonder at the time, how does a community mourn the loss of such an important geological element, what does losing a mountain do to the human psyche that has grown up around a landscape that no longer exists.
Sculpting this glacier with local Finnish clay perfectly fit into the Suomi collection, which has been focused on the four elements that for me represent this land: birch trees, moss, rocks and snow.
