With her latest challenge, conceptual artist and photographer Carolyn Monastra has been touring to locations the place birds are at risk of habitat loss. She hopes to spur viewers to take motion round local weather change.
With a passing look, the Canada jay overlooking Peyto Lake within the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, Canada, seems to be utterly actual—however if you happen to maintain your gaze, an unnatural define turns into clearer, and also you understand you’re taking a look at a facsimile. The photograph under is a part of a challenge known as The Divergence of Birds, through which artist Carolyn Monastra, FCRH ’88, pictures paper cutouts of birds of their native habitats—a nod to a future through which the true birds could also be compelled out of these present properties.
“Canada Jay” in evergreen tree overlooking a glacial lake
Monastra stated that the thought for the challenge got here out of studying a 2014 National Audubon Society climate report that discovered that 314 North American chook species will lose greater than half of their climatic vary by 2080—a quantity that elevated to 389 species in a 2019 report.
Monastra, who additionally teaches pictures at Nassau Community College, plans to {photograph} cutouts of every of these 389 birds for the challenge. Where she can’t journey to the precise habitats to shoot photographs, she stated, she’s going to recreate the atmosphere, and she or he’ll step by step doc all of the photographs on the project website, together with some behind-the-scenes photographs and movies of her course of.
“I want people to understand that they’re cutouts from the time they come to it,” she stated, “using that as a way to get them to pay attention to the birds in my photographs, see what’s happening to them, and then go outside and get engaged.”
“American Robin” with empty nest
“Brown Thrasher” in a magnolia tree
“Great Black-backed” Gull flying over sand dunes
Committing to Photography and Finding Inspiration
In the Eighties, Monastra majored in English at Fordham College at Rose Hill, the place she was a member of the honors program, however she additionally took a number of pictures lessons on the Lincoln Center campus. One of her pictures professors, Joseph Lawton, noticed her expertise behind the digicam and inspired her to pursue an M.F.A. after she graduated in 1988.
After a number of postgraduation years serving within the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Santa Monica, California, and exploring a profession in social work, Monastra adopted Lawton’s recommendation. She enrolled within the M.F.A. program in pictures at Yale Universityto “finally commit to being a photographer,” she stated.
Once she had her grasp’s, she started instructing, and she or he has held a number of highschool and faculty jobs, together with a yr as a pictures teacher at Fordham. She has been instructing full time at Nassau Community College since 2005, all of the whereas pursuing her personal initiatives exterior the classroom, like lovely, dark and deep, through which she turned to “the fragmentary space of dreams and my experiences with the environment to discover and create mystery in the natural world,” and The Witness Tree, which instantly preceded The Divergence of Birds and in addition handled local weather change, in that case by means of a sequence of panorama pictures displaying the consequences of local weather disasters.
Monastra first noticed the Audubon Climate Report whereas engaged on The Witness Tree, and the wheels for a bird-centered challenge started turning. She considered her personal historical past with the animals, and she or he started shopping for books for analysis—books that will in the end present a extra materials form of inspiration.
“I was really interested in how birds build their nests,” she stated. “I’d never really been a birder until I started this project, but my mom always had bird feeders, so we always had birds around. I was buying all these secondhand bird books to learn about birds building their nests, and then I just started cutting them out.”
She additionally was studying Philip Ok. Dick’s science fiction novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? round that point, and she or he stated that the dystopian world of the guide, through which electrical variations of animals are so reasonable that nobody can inform the distinction between them and the true factor, resonated along with her.
“That little part also made me think about this idea of facsimile and simulacra, and how sometimes we’re fooled by that. And in a future warming world, if we don’t protect what we have, that’s all we’ll have left.”
“Sharp-shinned Hawk” sitting on a rock with view of cityscape
“Yellow-billed Loon” swimming on a lake
“Rose-breasted Grosbeak” in forsythia bush
An Artist’s Responsibility
In addition to updating the challenge web site on a rolling foundation, Monastra has been occupied with methods to carry the challenge to a wider viewers in varied settings. In October, she had a residency at NYC Audubon’s environmental center on Governors Island, the place she used the pictures for banners she might string all through the middle.
And very like a Postcards to Politicians challenge she created for The Witness Tree, through which she inspired folks to handmake postcards from her collaged pictures and ship them to politicians to push for local weather motion, she wish to have interaction communities with The Divergence of Birds instantly.
“Adopt a Bird will be something similar, using recycled materials,” she stated of her subsequent deliberate public challenge. “I’ll have all the pictures of the birds in people’s area, wherever it happens to be. There will be a pledge they’ll make, as they adopt that bird, to promote climate change legislation.”
Beyond hands-on, collaborative artwork, she hopes that the photographs won’t solely get viewers all for birds but additionally spur them to take motion round local weather change in different methods. That is, she feels, one in every of her guiding forces as an artist.
“I think artists do have a responsibility to use their gift to talk about these issues,” she stated. “Whether it’s climate change or social justice or anything else, I think we have the ability to translate numbers and statistics into something that can move people.”
“Common Redpoll” in winter panorama
“Pine Siskin” in evergreen tree
“Canyon Towhee” in desert panorama
“Northern Saw-whet Owl” at nightfall
