Art of the
Anthropocene:
Vida Pavesich
Stratigraphers coined the term “Anthropocene” to designate a new human-caused geological age, and they are working to date the beginning of it. Was it the onset of the Industrial Revolution? Was it the use of nuclear weapons? Or, was it even earlier with the invention of agriculture? Whether and or when the collective behavior of our species has ushered in a new geological age is somewhat in dispute. What is not in dispute is the staggering effect of the human footprint on systems that support life on earth as we have known it. My article on the Anthropocene attempted to understand the grip that the Anthropocene idea has come to have on so many people in so many disciplines. For more on the Anthropocene, see the Essay section.
On the left: Icarus, 2022
The term "Anthropocene"
Children as Hope
After the California fires in 2020, I continued to take photos of the Bay in Alameda at sunset and at other times. Children and families frolicked in the water. I was drawn to feature children in many collages. They inherit what we have left them. Older children, adolescents, and young adults are hyperaware of climate change and many are now promising activists. Younger children, temporarily free of this anxiety, became a focal point because they represent innocence and a fragile hope—to me what Jonathan Lear articulated in Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation. Lear pointed out that hope is not wishful thinking: rather, it is moving forward with an accurate appraisal of reality. The collages are a way of being on the fence and feeling my way through the intense oscillation between complete hopelessness and beliefs in possible futures. See more images in my children series on the Art page.
Forests & Trees
During Covid, I walked in the forest, soaking up the sublime quiet hope of lichen, fungi, ferns, and meditating trees.
Many collages involve photos taken in redwood parks. One, Henry Cowell near Santa Cruz, still has majestic, old growth trees that went unsacrificed to lumber companies in the early twentieth century. Thankfully, they didn’t burn like their neighbors in Big Basin.
Other photos were taken in Redwood Park in Oakland, where the second and third growth trees are protected. I also went to the outskirts of Big Basin after the fire and saw blackened, cremated corpses of trees. However, almost all the trees still standing were sprouting vibrant green shoots. They are wiser than we are.
Fires
Many collages involve photos taken during the California fire season in 2020, which created spectacular red and orange sunsets along the coast. Suffocating particles in the air reflected and filtered the sun’s light. Some sunsets were intensely red, others a deep pink and dusty bluish-purple, as if drawn with a range of pastel chalks. In some landscapes, people are small black figures against shimmering skies and water. They find temporary relief by wading in the bay. Day after day the fires created a toxic, lethal beauty. I got my first N-95 masks and three air purifiers, not knowing how much I would soon need them because of the pandemic, which is another chapter in the story of climate change and human encroachment on the habitats of other species. See more collages on the Art page.