Fran Beallor wanted to be an astronaut as a child. Now, the artist, curator and educator has drawn a series depicting glaciers based on NASA satellite images. “Portraits of Glaciers,” illustrated in striking detail with colored pencils on paper, features glaciers from around the Earth. Two works from this series are on view through April 23 in “Water’s Voice” and April 24 in “Our Fragile Moment,” at the Hudson Guild Galleries in New York City.
Part of the Hudson Guild’s “Art in Response” initiative, the two exhibitions bring together more than 90 artworks by 38 artists. They explore the fragility, resilience and hope artists have for the environment, inviting viewers to reflect on climate change.
Julie Reiss, a lecturer and art historian who teaches at Columbia University’s M.S. in Sustainability Management program, has noted a growing interest among artists and young people in exploring how we might adapt to climate change. They’re imagining what that new world could look like, rather than “just as a terrifying dystopia,” Reiss told GlacierHub.
Drawing was not what Beallor wanted to do in her early years as an artist. But after becoming a new mother of two, drawing became the only way to get back into her practice. When she rediscovered a notebook filled with her daily self-portraits at age 20, she decided to continue them again at 40, and then again at 50, and at 60. Her series of self-portraits, “SELF,” grows in dialogue with her new series, “Portraits of Glaciers,” offering a timely interpretation of what the self can mean in a melting world.
I sat down with Beallor to talk about her artistic choices, her reflections on the interconnectedness of humans and nature, and the deeper meanings that these works hold for her.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for concision and clarity.
Why did you decide to represent glaciers in your work as an artist?
In 2004, when my kids were about six and eight, we took a cruise on the Inside Passage of Alaska on a tiny boat. I had always loved nature and the idea of glaciers, but I hadn’t seen them or actually experienced them firsthand. It was magnificent being next to them. It’s hard to explain how vast they are and how small you feel in your little boat. Up close from the ship, they were monumental and magical. I fell in love with glaciers at that moment. And the idea that they’re melting and disappearing is beyond tragic.
The glaciers you depict span the world from Argentina to Antarctica. How do you choose which glaciers to include in the series?
They’re all amazing, so it almost didn’t matter where they were. I was looking for visually striking images. There also aren’t that many places where there are glaciers. They’re all in the polar regions—in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, Antarctica, Patagonia. It was hugely aesthetically driven.
Could you tell me more about the aesthetic choices you’ve made?
As we flew over the coastlines of Alaska, I looked down on the terminal. They’re like living beings that move over time. As they move, they drag earth with them, and that creates patterns. From the plane, they resembled long roads—like giants had used enormous tractors to make plow lines in the Earth. In my dreams, I had taken photos of the moraines, but some years later I discovered there were none. The moraines were emblazoned in my memory, but I had no photos to work from. So my husband suggested I use open-source NASA aerial satellite images.
For the framing, most times I would print the entire satellite image and play around with it to get a composition I wanted. Other times, I looked at the satellite image and drew the section I wanted. It takes about a week to pick the material, colors and satellite composition. I would work on them on and off for a week, a few hours at a time. I work very slowly and like to build up layers of colors. So it might start out pale and then I’ll build it up with more saturated colors as I get to the top layers.
What goes into producing a portrait of a glacier?
Recently, I read “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and something she wrote resonated with me. She explains how, in the Potawatomi language, trees, rocks, wind and things are not nouns, but verbs. They’re alive. They’re all part of our family. With that perspective, glaciers become so much more than just chunks of ice. Glaciers have been there for millions of years. The fact that we could lose them in one human generation is terrifying. So I wanted to memorialize them, to commemorate them, to respect them, to apologize to them and to share that with people. I wanted to say, “Look, this is what we’re losing.”
My drawings tend to be more realistic, sometimes a little surrealistic. But what I find so interesting about drawing glaciers from this aerial perspective is that they look abstract, when in fact, they’re not. They’re realistic renderings of that specific place in that specific moment. To me, this is a metaphor for the overwhelming and abstract concept of climate change and planetary loss. But when you really take a moment to look at them, they’re intimate. It draws a person in and makes them feel more connected.
In “Water’s Voice,” photographer Camille Seaman approaches her photos of icebergs as portraits of individuals. When I read that, I was like, “Yes, I feel the same!” She goes on to say that her photos of icebergs are “much like family photos of my ancestors.” That gave me goosebumps, because what she’s talking about reminds me that the ice and water in these glaciers are so ancient that it’s like drawing a very old person with so much personality. To me, that idea of conveying them as a portrait of an ancestor was really intense.
“Portraits of Glaciers” seems to be in dialogue with your ongoing drawing series of self-portraits, “SELF.” What stories are you trying to tell differently with “Portraits of Glaciers”?
I think everything we do is kind of a self-portrait. No matter how similar two artists may be, they’re always a little different if they’re using their own genuine style. That style is a fingerprint—it marks our vision and our way of seeing the world. In that sense, artworks are always self-portraits, because they reflect the artist’s way of identifying with the subject.
If glaciers are self-portraits in some way, then what would it mean if they disappear?
The glaciers are melting. And as they disappear, so does our environment, and ultimately our ability to survive. Maybe it’s not that the glaciers reflect us, maybe we are their self-portrait. The Earth came first and created us, so we are a representation, a manifestation of the living part of Earth.
