On this episode of Profiles, we feature two conversations with artists who are trying to find new ways to depict the natural world in the hopes of saving it.
Maria Whiteman is an artist and photographer whose work defies easy categorization. It links the visual arts with the biological sciences and social observations, creating a document of how our current times are shaped by human activity. In 2017, around the time of the total solar eclipse, Whiteman began a cross-country road trip. She documented truck stops over the course of her trek, and the result is Stardust: a series of still photographs printed on aluminum.
More recently Maria Whiteman joined Indiana University’s Environmental Resilience Institute as a research scholar, where her work focuses on how art, ecology and climate change overlap. Recently, she joined author and Filmmaker Kalynn Huffman Brower for a conversation in the WFIU studios.
Rebecca Allan is a painter whose work centers on landscapes. Her creations have been exhibited nationally and abroad for more than a quarter century. In them, she attempts to express the fragility of our ecosystems and the unpredictability of nature’s cycles. Some of Rebecca Allan’s creations were recently displayed in Bloomington as part of a live multimedia performance, The Crossroads Project: Rising Tide. While she was here, she spoke with WFIU’s Shayne Laughter.
