Hold Your Baby, Monotype prints, 2018
(I envisioned Endangered as an exhibition about our disconnection from nature and the inevitable tragic outcome, a continuation of Seton’s warnings. The invited artists created a variety of responses. Intended for the walls of the Seton Gallery, the show is presented in a series of blog postings. Images and text copyright belong to the individual artists. dlw)
I spoke with Diane about Endangered on January 25 this year about the influence of the natural world on her work. Like many of us, she found special inspiration during a long-ago visit to Yosemite National Park, accompanied by her three-year old daughter. She felt that nature was giving her a message: “You see beauty where other people don’t so you need to share it with the world.” Connections to the outdoors ran in her family. Her grandfather was an early supporter of the Camp Fire Girls. Diane is especially intrigued by plants long buried in ice that nonetheless survive.
Last winter she was thinking ever more about the damage humans do to the environment, convinced that life will go on, but perhaps without us. “Disasters are a wakeup call.” Seton would have agreed. This year nature has certainly been sending us lots of those.