Printmaker Todd Anderson Captures Disappearing Landscapes
By Allison Palenske, contributor
Idyllic and sublime scenery has inspired artists for centuries, and for printmaker Todd Anderson, it is imperative that we continue to precisely capture the emotive qualities of landscapes today. Interdisciplinary collaboration is key for Anderson in addressing climate change through the arts, as he explains, “I'm trying to bring a larger audience to the science, and I'm also trying to bring the science to another way of looking at these things.”
Anderson's effort to document receding glaciers in Montana's Glacier National Park has formed the basis of his ongoing collaborative project The Last Glacier. The project has produced photography, prints, and artist books addressing the visible impact of climate change on the national park's glaciers. Glacier National Park was founded in 1910; at this time, over 150 glaciers existed within the park. Today, there are only 25.
Anderson, a Master Printer, implements a reductive woodblock printmaking technique for his work in The Last Glacier project. The artist carves into sheets of balsa wood to shape an image of specific topographic scenes, similar to the way glaciers carve undulations into the land. The blocks are run through a printing press numerous times to make multiple versions of a layered image, and while each version of the print may appear similar, they are never identical. Anderson mentions that by continually carving and running the block through the printing press, the wood begins to shrink and eventually can no longer be used for the printmaking process, mirroring the disappearing glaciers and the foreboding permanency of this phenomenon.
The artist is compelled to document changing landscapes, in Glacier National Park and elsewhere, due to a sense of responsibility he feels to capture the ephemerality of these places. Anderson sees cross-disciplinary exchange between the arts and sciences as an integral part of his work, and believes that both artists and scientists have a role to play in raising awareness of climate change. Scientists can provide the hard data, in this case regarding the receding glaciers, and establish concepts such as climate change, while artists are able to disseminate these concepts through various visual and sensory channels to ultimately reach a wider scope of people. The liberties granted to an artist also provide a greater freedom of creative documentation, an aspect that resonates through Anderson's work.