[bell and birdsong, sound of a paintbrush]

Volunteer: It’s kind of effortful. You have to push into the nooks and crannies in the bark. The crevices. But it’s very satisfying to see the sort of glowing blue color kind of come out as you cover up all the bits of the natural tree color.

Host, Dinah Cardin: This temporary artwork called The Blue Trees has been featured around the world and is made using an environmentally-safe watercolor. The blue pigment is harmless to people, critters, plants and waterways.

Konstantin Dimopoulos: The color doesn’t last, nor did I want it to last. But the idea of it will last.

Dinah: Konstantin Dimopoulos is calling in from Melbourne, Australia to discuss The Blue Trees with artist Wes Bruce who recently carried out Konstantin’s vision at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.

Wes Bruce: Yeah, I was really drawn to the temporal nature of the whole thing. The trees kind of have this chapter of putting on this new costume.

Dinah: A group of volunteers helped Wes with this harmless colorant that will fade over time. It helps draw attention to deforestation and the climate crisis.

Volunteer: We are with Speak for the Trees Boston. We plant trees, we give away trees, we educate people about trees, we teach youth how to care for trees. Anything that has to do with a tree, we try to do. We’re just trying to get what we call tree equality to be a thing in Boston. To get people to pay attention to why trees matter for people's health and well being.

Volunteer: I’ve never done this before. I didn’t know what type of paint we were going to use, but I found out it’s not going to harm the tree….it’s a really pretty blue. I wish you all could see it.

Volunteer: Blue Man Group blue. (Laughs)

Volunteer: Exactly.

Konstantin: In Vancouver, Canada, we did it by a library and a mother and a daughter started walking toward the trees…as they got closer, the little girl let go of her mother’s hand and said. “Mom a blue tree!” and wrapped her arms around it. That mother and daughter had walked down the path 100 of times to get to that library. That day, she saw the tree and she saw the tree because the tree was blue.

[brush sounds]

Volunteer: People are kind of slowing down a bit when they see us as they’re walking by.

Volunteer: A lot of glances and definitely inquisitive faces.

Volunteer: It feels kind of odd, I have to say, but it is really beautiful, and it makes you look at the crevices and the bark really deeply, which I haven’t done before, so definitely a new appreciation for what is on a tree.

Dinah: Wes Bruce says that to pause and pay attention to the installation is to be on tree time. Grounded, rooted, if only for a moment.

Wes: One of the main objectives of the project is to get people to ask the question: Why are you painting them blue. That becomes this doorway for us to have a conversation about deforestation and wider climate issues. We’ve been finding that people have this really strong reaction that we have been calling tree empathy. They’ll say why are you hurting the tree or don’t you know that’s hurting the tree? They’re clearly really empathizing with the tree. It’s this large spark that we’re seeing with folks.

Dinah: The color will gradually be washed from the trees in the coming months by rain and storms.

Wes: It’s certainly the case that we do protect the things that we love. Some of these projects that come through the Art and Nature Center, and even larger than that through PEM, is intended to spark and swirl and cast this spell of love or get people to notice the things that they love, to pay attention to those. Through that comes conservation and activism and everything else sort of in that category.

Dinah: Welcome to the PEMcast, conversations and stories for the culturally curious. From the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, I’m your host, Dinah Cardin. In this episode, in the words of our Director Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, we “offer an invitation to be human together.” This is what it will take to address the climate crisis facing us all. Experts say that we can’t change the world without first changing ourselves. And what better way to change ourselves than using the provocative, inspiring power of art. In this episode, we share conversations with artists who are using their gifts to spark action, as well as a conversation with the director of a museum dedicated exclusively to the crisis, The Climate Museum in New York City. We'll even get to hear from Jane Goodall -- perhaps one of the world's most famous conservation advocates.

[music]

Jane Goodall: The human race right now is at the mouth of a very long, very dark tunnel. Right at the end of that tunnel is a little shining star. That’s hope.

[building music]

Dinah: As part of PEM’s Climate + Environment initiative, PEM is hosting a series of exhibitions and programs focused on the planet. Let’s jump in and meet another of these climate-focused artists now.

Stephen Gorman: As it turns out, this was the first pairing that I noticed, because of the similarities of Ed's creature's posture and the posture of my polar bear walking before a gigantic pile of whale bones.

Dinah: Stephen Gorman is an award-winning nature photographer, author and explorer. He was here for the opening of Down to the Bone, an exhibition that features his work.

Stephen: The similarities just hit me right in the face, and that's when I got the idea for putting the show together.

Ed Koren: It was basically your idea, and my hat's off to you.

Dinah: Our current exhibition pairs Stephen’s photographs of polar bears in the melting Arctic with the provocative drawings of Edward Koren. Koren is among the great cartoonists who have defined The New Yorker magazine over the last half-century. Ed Koren’s creatures — human and animal at once, composed with a flickering line — make his work instantly recognizable. These two artists hope, by exhibiting these works side by side, to draw attention to the calamity they see unfolding as we recklessly consume finite resources and overheat the atmosphere. The visual conversation unfolds in eleven pairs of images. These works amplify the uncanny synergy of their two very different bodies of work.

Ed: Just the formal way in which these images have been put together, there's a great similarity. There's a horizontality – if I will be an art historian – and the central figure, the body language, the gaze.

Dinah (tape): Can you describe this photograph?

Stephen: Yeah, it's a mother polar bear with two of her cubs lying down on top of her. One of the cubs is looking right at us with his eyes wide open. This is on Barter Island, which is an island beyond the last frontier. It's off the north coast of Alaska. This is the last place. This is the very end of the frontier.

Dinah: Many of these images feature female polar bears stranded onshore, waiting for the sea to freeze. The sea ice serves as their platform to hunt seals. They haven't had a meal in months. When you look directly at the eyes of these bears, they are looking right back at you. Stephen calls them “castaways.”

[music]

Stephen: Our whole history of exploitation and development of natural resources has led us to this point. This is it. This is the end.

Dinah: The photograph is titled Solastalgia, a word that means emotional or existential distress caused by environmental change.

Stephen: We feel solastalgia when we see that a housing tract is gone into a forest, a beloved landscape. That development has gone in to build a strip mall in a place where we once played. That's solastalgia. It's a real emotion. The massive effects of climate change are affecting people so much that they are now experiencing not only nostalgia for lost times, but they're feeling solastalgia for lost landscapes and lost environments.

Dinah: While the artists both live in Vermont and work toward a similar mission, they long worked independently, unbeknownst to one another.

Dinah (Tape): I love that piece that ran in a local Vermont paper for you guys that said something like, "All of a sudden it was like, 'Why is Ed drawing Steve's photographs?'"

Stephen: (Laughter) That was my wife Mary when we walked into Ed's exhibition at a gallery in Vermont. We went over to see his drawings and we walked in and Mary said, "You know, Ed has drawn your photographs."

Ed: I was equally gobsmacked by, "What? What? I've been drawing these drawings for a long time, and Steve has come along and copied them for photographs." Not at all…not in the least. just serendipity. Total complete chance.

Dinah (tape): How did these creatures come about?

Ed: I don't know. They just came. [laughs]. Literally that’s the case. It starts with a mark on a piece of paper and proceeds from there to the final drawing and sooner or later I’m confronted with something I really like. I've had this art practice for six decades and I just love to do it. Oftentimes, I'm surprised by what comes out from my hand and brain, and particularly this series. These are kind of comic figures, but they're dealing with general perplexity about their existence. There's humor here and there's tragedy, and there’s love, and there’s empathy and there's general frustration that it's not going to change much.

Dinah: Just as the polar bears stare back at us, Ed’s shaggy illustrated figures exist in a wasteland, asking the viewer “What happened?” Together, these works reinforce the message that our collective actions are determining the environment we will inhabit tomorrow.

Ed: The cubs are mirrored in my drawings by these eggs that are just hatched from this avian, maybe avian, creature. New and clearly right at the beginning, anxious little creatures as to what their fate is going to be. Right from the get-go. The parent, equally as puzzled, what have I done and how am I going to take care of what I've nurtured and created? And what's going to happen to them?

Dinah: It’s a grim topic. Studies show that people don’t want to talk about the climate crisis. Our real feelings may be panic and hopelessness. What is there to say? What is there to do? Do we have only one shot at getting this right?

Ed: It's more than one chance. There are many chances. There are many approaches to this. It is so complex. It's so difficult to understand because there are so many facets to it. It allows us to throw up your hands and say, "It's too big. It's too much. I can't deal with this. I'm going to go to Wal-Mart and find something to make me feel better." There's a social and political and comical aspect to this about how people are dealing with it, which is not dealing with it.

Stephen: If you become ecologically and environmentally aware, then all of sudden, these scenes are all around you. At that point, you experience a tremendous motivation to make a difference.

Dinah: (tape) What do you both hope that people feel? You had an event last night, what did you want them to really walk out and think and do?

Stephen: I hope that people understand that the way we live has consequences and that perhaps there is another way to live within ecological boundaries. That wouldn't require that we sacrifice joy and happiness and the sense of purpose and well-being in life. In fact, those things would probably be enhanced if we substituted purpose in life for consumerism. We'd probably be a lot happier, psychologically better off. Certainly, the planet would benefit.

Stephen: I hope that people understand that the way we live has consequences and that perhaps there is another way to live within ecological boundaries. That wouldn't require that we sacrifice joy and happiness and the sense of purpose and well-being in life. In fact, those things would probably be enhanced if we substituted purpose in life for consumerism. We'd probably be a lot happier, psychologically better off. Certainly, the planet would benefit.

Dinah: Right behind us during this interview, kids are engaging in response stations, answering thoughtful questions posed in notebooks. Ed reads a few.

Ed: This response, first page, first entry says: I would miss nature. My family and I love to spend time hiking and camping. I would miss flowers. I would miss seeing all the animals in the woods when I go on walks.

[music]

Ed: I would miss the smell of the ocean, the taste of rain, the feeling of the sun after cloudy days, the rush of wind through my hair and across my face.

Dinah: If like these kids, people are now waking up to caring so much about the climate crisis, then why has the artistic response been so slow coming?

Stephen: We have, what, 250 channels on our televisions? There's a lot of competition for our attention. Most people would rather not go here. It's so big that most people can't get their hands on it. But, We need to get serious about the situation that we're in, and try to think creatively about it and boldly.

[Sound clip from Don't Look Up]

We discovered a very large comet.
Oh, good for you.
It’s headed directly toward Earth.
This comet is what we call a planet killer.

Dinah: A Netflix movie that came out around Christmas 2021 finally looked at climate change as a metaphor in the form of a meteor headed straight for the Earth.

[SOUND CLIP FROM DON’T LOOK UP]

It’s real and it’s coming

Dinah: Half the planet, including US president played by Meryl Streep, ignoring the scientific warnings.

This is the worst news in the history of humanity and they just blew us off…
What are we going to do?

Stephen: I don't think it's denial. I think it's a willful disregard. It's just the way our culture works. Everyone knows that the climate is changing, whether they say it's a hoax or not.They know that what's it’s going to take to stop climate change and environmental catastrophe is an end to our way of life, which has been very profitable for them.

Dinah: Stephen captured the photographs in this exhibition in Kaktovik, Alaska. This tiny Inupiat coastal village of about 250 people is located on Barter Island just north of the Alaskan mainland. Kaktovik has been the focus of the longest environmental battle in American history. It’s already one of the fastest warming land areas on Earth. If the refuge is opened to oil and gas development, the melting of the sea ice will only intensify. Stephen has had a unique relationship with the oil industry since he was a child. He grew up in Belgium, the son of an American oil executive.

[Music]

Stephen: We were there to spread the good news of American motoring and suburban lifestyles to Europe. All I wanted to do when I was in Europe was to get back to America.

[Music]

Stephen: I wanted to see the America that I saw in movies, cowboy movies.

[Horse and cowboy sound effects]

Stephen: "National Geographic," and Ranger Rick, and National Wildlife, and just see wide open spaces and beautiful, untrammeled nature. That was my dream of America…and it still is.

[Music]

Stephen: All we have to do is take a look at the people who we share the planet with. The Indigenous cultures who have been living here sustainably for 10,000 years. What is the key to their success?

Dinah: Arm ourselves with education and take agency, says Stephen. Our catastrophic predicament cannot be solved by policy makers, politicians or scientists alone. Rather, it will be resolved when we realize that all of this is the result of our cultural crisis.

Stephen: We just need to open our eyes and take a look and see what other people have been doing for a long time. That's what drives my work….There is a solution to this problem, and it lies in the wisdom of other cultures.

[Music]

Dinah: Our goal here at PEM with our Climate + Environment Initiative and these related exhibitions like Down to the Bone is to offer an engaging, unapologetic encounter with art that draws you into the conversation and inspires you to act.

Silvia Lopez Chavez: I love painting. I love drawing, but painting is my jam.

Dinah: I caught up with Silvia Lopez Chavez as she created a mural this spring outside our Art and Nature Center, urging those who see it to reconsider the world around them.

Silvia: I'm a big fan of access when it comes to art, which not a lot of people have when it comes to galleries and museums necessarily. I love being able to design something that belongs there.

Dinah: Those familiar with Boston will recognize other murals Silvia has created – from an MBTA station in Roxbury to the waterfront in East Boston to the Charles River Esplanade and the campus of Harvard University. Her brilliantly colored murals have transformed architecture and beloved urban spaces. In Salem’s Point Neighborhood, one of her first murals is of a joyous little girl on a swing with rays of sunshine all around. Silvia has created murals raising awareness about air quality and rising sea levels.

Silvia: Who lives there? Who works there? Who uses that space? How will it impact them? It builds community. It also allows for belonging to increase and create a sense of welcoming into a space that sometimes is very unwelcome.

Dinah: For the exhibition Climate Action: Inspiring Change, Silvia was set up in the main atrium for two weeks. Visitors could watch her in action, creating this vibrant mural designed to both celebrate the resiliency of people and the planet and serve as an urgent invitation to act. She has titled this work Undercurrent, a recognition of how art has the capacity to subtly influence us.

Silvia: My hope is that this piece will be inspiring people to actually not only look at what the beautiful plant life and animal life we have in the North Shore, but also, inspire action. Inspire people to act and do the one thing that you can do personally. Because this problem is so big and climate change it's not going to be solved just with one person, but it can start with me. It can start with one person.

Dinah: Her 5-by-10-foot vertical mural at PEM contains things familiar to us here on the North Shore – a lighthouse and a lobster boat. The eye is drawn to an oversized hand cradling both ocean animals and marine trash. The color palette of bright oranges and blues, opposites on the color wheel, account for the two extremes of the climate.

Silvia: My roots are all in there. (Laughs) It's through the color palette. Elements of not only color, but also this idea of a hopeful future. People in the Dominican Republic have this ability that it doesn't matter how bad things are, how poor they are, they always find a way to be joyful in a moment, find a funny way of celebrating life. I am the daughter of my father. He engraved in me this sense of responsibility. Growing up on an island, obviously we'll go to the beach all the time, but we could not leave the beach until we picked up trash around a 10 feet parameter around us. If we all do a little something, creating art about it and talking to people about it, all the way to the people who are in leadership, making those decisions on what we can do at a national level, on a worldwide level, it would be what we need, really. We have no choice.

[Ocean sounds]

Dinah: Last month, PEM’s Climate and Environment Initiative was front and center at a conference where Janey Winchell, who heads up our art and nature center, presented. To be a responsible institution, Janey says, we need to be one with soul. MuseumNext hosted a Green Museums Summit to address how cultural institutions can reduce their carbon footprint and be more sustainable. Topics also included how museums are preparing for extreme weather and rising seas, something we think about here in Salem on the coast. And how art can get people talking about the environment, with collections, interpreted with positive change in mind.

[Music]

Miranda Massie: I pushed down the climate crisis, emotionally, for years.

Dinah: Miranda Massie was a civil rights lawyer who claims she kept re-renting the DVD of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, but would not actually watch it for months on end. She was not a climate change denier. She simply could not get her head around something so large.

Miranda: It’s very very hard for most people to make these first steps toward being climate protagonists or climate citizens. The reality is for many people even having a conversation about authentic feelings and thoughts about the climate crisis takes a lot of scaffolding and support and margin and a huge sense of community.

Dinah: Miranda made the huge shift to launch the Climate Museum in New York City because once she realized how important this issue was, she could not look back.

Miranda: It is very traumatic when people start to metabolize the information. Social awareness about it, social psychology, the culture into which PEM and the Climate Museum and other museums doing this work are intervening, it’s shifting so quickly. We saw it change really quickly with the extreme weather events of this summer, for example.

Dinah: The Climate Museum is co-curating Climate Action: Inspiring Change with PEM, which features inspiring works by youth artists to help guide us toward making a difference for the planet.

Miranda: For young people, every week of delay on meaningful, large-scale climate action guarantees, I won’t mince words here, suffering for them later in life. Giving people a sense that we can come together across boundaries of social difference and move forward together, that’s at the beating heart of what we’re trying to do.

Dinah: But what business do museums have in spreading the message of climate change? Miranda says these communal areas can become safe spaces for not only inspiration, but activism.

Miranda: When museums request action of visitors that is consistent to the museum’s mission or an exhibition, it enhances credibility rather than undermining it. People also want to be involved and engaged and acting on what we’re saying as museums. There is a level of co-creation that I think is very powerful.

[Music]

Jane: Well, If you look around the world, it’s pretty grim today. We all admit that. And yet we’re blithely told when people lose hope, think globally, act local. But you cannot. I defy anybody today to truly look around the world and not feel depressed.

Dinah: We recently virtually hosted an event with the one and only Jane Goodall.

Jane: But what about where you live? What can you do there? Find some people who care like you, roll up your sleeves and do something. I meet a lot of people who tell me that they really have lost hope.

Dinah: The conversation, led by the legendary conservationist, was about where we find hope and courage to act.

Jane: They think about the problems of the world and they feel helpless, hopeless. And so they fall into apathy and do nothing. To me, hope is not just optimism. It’s about action. We’ve got to roll up our sleeves, we’ve got to crawl under, climb over, work around all the obstacles before we can get to that shining star.

[Music]

Stephen: I really want to go to those last places and experience them, and have adventures in the outdoors and along the way, not only show people what we're losing but what we can still save.

Dinah: And as we wind down this episode, I want to share a powerful story that Stephen Gorman shared with me. It’s about being out in pristine nature, glimpsing wildlife in one of those moments when you know you’re exactly where you are meant to be. So, close your eyes and listen.

Stephen: There was a time a couple of years ago when I was in Arctic Canada, on a canoe expedition. We traveled 350 miles across the subarctic forests and got to a point in the river where the caribou were migrating. Thousands upon thousands of caribou are pouring out of the forest. These animals have probably never seen a human being in their lives. They just kept coming and coming. It was like seeing the buffalo herds on the Great Plains in the early 19th century. It's something that is almost unimaginable anymore. And that was what I've been looking for in my whole life. To go to those places, you are not only inspired by what still is out there, but also you realize how much is lost everywhere else.

[Music]

Dinah: Our ongoing series of special exhibitions, installations, and programs about our changing relationship with the world is designed to encourage reflection, inspire conversation and spark action. Our exhibition Climate Action: Inspiring Change highlights local and regional climate issues and opportunities. Leveraging creativity, science and participation to raise awareness, the exhibition focuses on known solutions, including Indigenous practices, to foster action. Our relationship with the land. With how our food is grown. With those who are most impacted by climate change. Come see what resonates with you. Where is your passion? Learn more about related exhibitions and programming at pem.org /climate. This episode of the PEMcast was produced by me, Dinah Cardin, and edited and mixed by Erica Sutter. To learn more, go to pem. org, where you can also find our series PEM Walks, audio postcards that will take you to our historic properties around Salem. We’re excited to announce that PEM Walks just won a gold Muse Award. PEM Walks and the PEMcast are generously supported by the George S. Parker Fund.