Eileen Wold

Veneer Fire Studies

2022

View Gallery
Taken from the Post Carbon Institute Essays on Resilience, the following passage inspired me to submit these veneer studies on fire to the latest What’s Next For Earth Call: Building Community Resilience. (In The Leopard, a novel about the 19th century unification of Italy, a character says, “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” In other words, to keep some of the things you care about, you sometimes have to give up other things. This is the essence of transformation, as opposed to mere adaptation.)

Veneer Fire Studies, 2022, are a series of works that explore wood as a carbon resource, climate stabilizer, and warning sign for accelerated global temperatures through increased wildfire threats. Human activity is still the number one threat to our forests and as we close out this year, I want to thank all of the community activists and artists keeping these conversations in the forefront.
©
2022
  • Eileen Wold

A slice of Red Alder wood

Red Alder wood
Silver leaf, burn

This slice of Red Alder wood has been silver leafed and burned to reference the connections we are finding between increased ice melt in the Arctic with increased intensity of wildfires in the Pacific Northwest region. How will we use this understanding of a deeper connection in the natural systems around us to protect lives, ecology, and culture?

Resilience boils down to an ability to adapt to both short-term disruption and long-term change while retaining the system’s essential identity. Building resilience starts with decisions about what we value about a system. Concepts like the adaptive cycle and panarchy further aid our understanding of resilience in systems.”
– Richard Heinberg
©
2022
  • Eileen Wold

Fan Bearer

This sculptural work built in collaboration with an engineer combines a windshield wiper motor, repurposed solar panel, and old rakes I turned into fans with recycled paper that slowly lower to “fan” passers by.

An older work but the first thing that came to mind when reading the latest essay from the Post Carbon Institute -what’s next for earth art call. “Culture Change and Neuroscience”

As the pharaohs once were cooled by manpower, the American capitalist culture expects unprecedented amounts of comfort and gratification at any cost to our environment. We tear down mountains in West Virginia to mine coal to make electricity only to waste it on making ice cubes to cool our drinking water or to light up a billboard in Times Square.

How can we reflect the true cost of consumption?
©
2022
  • Eileen Wold

Fragmented Remains

Transfer drawing of charcoal, pencil, and watercolor,
photographs

View Gallery
A project that examined washed-up objects found on a mile stretch of shoreline behind a harbor hospital in Baltimore City. I collected trash for months, taking time to consider each object found. Mostly vessels, packaging, and containers, these objects were made to be discarded. Never before has a civilization produced such abundance with an intended use duration of seconds. It is a cultural norm that must shift. Design, production, packaging, and consumption. Transfer drawings of charcoal, pencil, and watercolor were paired with photographic documentation of the collection process.
©
2021
  • Eileen Wold

Square Meters

Reflective aluminum metal posts inscribed with words that contemplate systems of sustainability stand in the corners of implied square meters in the landscape.

View Gallery
Notating each planetary square meter of 100-year-old mature forest needed to act as the carbon sink for each gallon of oil we burn, the square meters create intimate physical spaces that shrink these global relationships of equivalency down to human scale. Examining ideas of balance between industrial and natural systems we rely on; they highlight the contradictory human desire to both produce and conserve. 3 square meters are currently on view @unison_arts In New York as part of the Owning Earth outdoor sculpture exhibition.
©
2022
  • Eileen Wold

Accidental Meadow project –
Transitional landscape in Baltimore Maryland.

Photographs and acrylic on panels
each piece is 6"x6"
2017-2018

Accidental Meadow project looks at temporary ecologies as land is developed, abandoned, and cleared. Examining what is left behind and what biodiversity is missing. This body of work consists of photographs and paintings that explore the natural cycles of temporary ecologies such as meadows as well as the liminal spaces that humans create in the natural world.
©
2021
  • Eileen Wold
The Value of a Kilowatt
Ecoartspace: What’s Next for Earth + Think Resilience

Join The List

Want to hear from us occasionally? Subscribe to our newsletter

Join The List

Want to hear from us occasionally? Subscribe to our newsletter