ELEVEN SIX WOMEN | ZARIA FORMAN

Can you speak to your journey of becoming an artist and what led to the passion behind the subject of climate change?

I have been an artist my whole life! For 14 years, my work has focused on conveying the urgency of climate change. I’ve traveled to remote places where ice melts, and sea levels rise…I actually grew up spending a lot of time outdoors in far flung landscapes, and those experiences instilled in me a love of landscape. When you love something, you want to protect it! By making large drawings, I hope to offer you a chance to connect emotionally with places you may not have the chance to visit. By conveying the beauty of these places, I hope to inspire you to want to protect and preserve them.

Climate emergency work requires thinking ahead several generations, and how we pass the torch from one to the next. I might be particularly attuned to this dynamic because of my mother, Rena Bass Forman, who was a fine art landscape photographer.  Her work focused on the Arctic, and she passed that torch on to me. Her love of photography propelled her to the most remote regions of the earth. My family and I were fortunate to join and support her on those adventures, from riding camels through Northern Africa to mushing near the North Pole.

So even though I’ve been a professional artist for 16 years, when NASA emailed me 4 years ago, inviting me to join them in Antarctica, I thought it was a prank. To my surprise and delight, it turned out not to be! NASA’s Operation IceBridge is an airborne science mission that has been mapping changes in the ice at both poles for over a decade. I have been privilege to joined some of their flights over Antarctica, Greenland and Arctic Canada.

Through my work I’ve been fortunate enough to have traveled to many stunning places, but Antarctica is in a category of its own. The first time I went there was in Dec 2015, as the artist-in residence aboard none other than… The National Geographic Explorer. The ice radiated a sapphire blue that took my breath away and inspired a drawing that I made a time-lapse of me making SEE HERE

Ultimately, By showing the beauty of remote landscapes at the forefront of the climate emergency, I hope to inspire you to take action to protect and preserve them.

Can you speak to your process from research to a final drawing?

My process always begins by visiting the places at the forefront of the climate emergency. When I travel, I take thousands of photographs. Once I return to the studio, I draw from my memory of the experience, as well as from the photographs, to create large-scale compositions, sometimes 12ft wide. I begin with a very simple pencil sketch so I have a few major lines to follow, and then I jump right in with the colors, layering pigment onto the paper and smudging everything with my palms and fingers. I draw with soft pastel, which is dry, like charcoal, but with colors. I consider my work drawing, but others call it painting. I tend to break the pastel into sharp shards to render finer details on top of the base color. 

Occasionally I will re-invent the water or sky, alter the shape of the ice, or mix and match a few different images to create a balanced composition, but I’d say 90% of the time I’m depicting the exact scene that I witnessed, because I want to stay true to the natural landscape that existed at that point in time, (which by the way, often looks completely different by the time I’ve completed the drawing). Each piece can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months, depending on size and level of detail.

On listening to your incredible Ted Talk we learned of your Mother’s passion for the Arctic. Can you share how you led an exhibition to Greenland and carried out her lifelong wish?

How do you think art can help solve the climate crisis? 

My motivation as an artist has always been to evoke an emotional connectedness to these dramatic and fragile places and to forge a sense of stewardship. Because few people are able to experience these remote and extreme landscapes themselves, the large scale size of my drawings serves to physically and emotionally envelop the viewer, facilitating both intimacy and awe of witnessing an iceberg close up.. By showing the beauty of remote landscapes at the forefront of the climate emergency, I hope to inspire you to take action to protect and preserve them.

I rely on other specialists to make rational, data-driven arguments for why we must take action to preserve our ecosystems.  But through my work, I’m trying to make the appeal on a more elemental level.  According to behavioral psychologists, much of our decision-making comes from our emotions. And art has a special ability to tap into emotions. So, when I make these drawings, I’m trying to create immense images overflowing with details that draw you in and transport you. 

 In the book ‘On Beauty and Being Just’  Harvard English professor Elaine Scarry suggests that when we witness something truly beautiful, be it an ocean, or a poem or a face or a glacier, it causes in us what she calls “a radical decentering.”  She says, when we see a beautiful thing, our own importance is diminished: It is not that we cease to stand at the center of the world, for we never stood there. It is that we cease to stand even at the center of our own world. We willingly cede the ground to the thing that stands before us.”  That is the experience I hope to evoke through my work.

With the new administration in place can you speak to how positive progress can now be made with climate change initiatives being put into action.

There is, of course, all kinds of devastating news out there about climate change. The last decade was the hottest on record, extreme weather is wreaking havoc all over the world, we are running out of time to avoid climate crises like extreme drought, crop failure, millions of climate refugees, famine, etc, and the last administration rolled back so many environmental protections, that we’re going to spend a good deal of time playing catch up before we can even make any meaningful change.

That said, I actually feel more hopeful now than I have in the 14 years I’ve been doing this work. Globally we are finally moving in the right direction, and there are so many things to celebrate! At home in the US, we finally have an administration that understands the severity of the situation, and has already set in motion the most aggressive climate plan our lawmakers have ever attempted.

Across the globe green energy has become far more affordable and accessible in the last decade 1,200+ institutions have divested in fossil fuels, totaling over 14 trillion dollars! Public pressure and economic incentives are finally strong enough to motivate companies to do the right thing, for example General Motors committing to making only electric vehicles by 2035.

Research now shows that taking fast action on climate change will not only save us money, but actually create a lot of wealth. A recent study showed that fast decarbonization could add 26 trillion go the global economy by 2030!

You just had a beautiful baby girl so your mind must be on the future generations of the planet in an even more acute way. What progress/change must we make to make impact in just the next vital 100 years alone?

What do you suggest the most effective everyday actions people can take to make an impact on a micro level to climate change and reducing our carbon footprint?

Again, this is not nearly as important as corporations and governments making massive change. Still, we should do what we can as individuals. We can reduce our carbon footprints in lots of simple ways, and most of them will save us money, like plugging leaks in your home insulation to save power, installing a smart thermostat, switch to more efficient light bulbs, turn off the lights in any room where you are not using them, drive fewer miles by consolidating trips or taking public transit, waste less food, and eat less meat.

Perhaps the biggest single thing individuals can do on their own is to take fewer airplane trips; just one or two fewer plane rides per year can save as much in emissions as all the other actions combined. If you want to be at the cutting edge, you can look at buying an electric or hybrid car, putting solar panels on your roof, or both.

If you want to offset your emissions, you can buy certificates, with the money going to projects that protect forests, capture greenhouse gases and so forth. Some airlines sell these to offset emissions from their flights, and after some scandals in the early days, they started to scrutinize the projects closely, so the offsets can now be bought in good conscience. You can also buy offset certificates in a private marketplace, from companies such as TerraPass in San Francisco that follow strict rules set up by the state of California; some people even give these as holiday gifts. Yet another way: In states that allow you to choose your own electricity supplier, you can often elect to buy green electricity; you pay slightly more, with the money going into a fund that helps finance projects like wind farms.

In the end, though, experts do not believe the needed transformation in the energy system can happen without strong state and national policies. Speaking up and exercising your rights as a citizen matters as much as anything else you can do!

Can you recommend any resources that educates on climate change for people who would like to gain a deeper understanding?

We hugely admire your powerful and important work and are even more honored that you wear and showcase ELEVEN SIX. Can you speak to what draws you to our brand and also and which piece from the Spring 21 collection you are enjoying and why?

I love that the clothing is sustainable - each item is handmade so well that I will be able to pass them on to my daughter! Catherine is empowering the woman artisans in Peru, as well as the artists she collaborates with. And every single item I have is SO comfy, fits perfectly, and I literally get at least three compliments every time I wear them out - no joke!  My current favorite is the ZANNA Sweater. I've been calling it my birthday cake sweater because the colors are like cake frosting with melting sprinkles. And it fits and feels as delicious as that sounds.

For the remainder of Earth Month we will be giving a percentage of sales to Conserve.org an organization that protects and conserves land. We can identify the exact land area and plan to conserve a large Cloud forest system in the Northern Highlands of Guatemala.