the present of my life looks different under trees | Caroline Roberts

the present of my life looks different under trees | Caroline Roberts
Back BOX

the present of my life looks different under trees is a quote from a passage in Annie Dillard’s “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” in which she muses on the differences between “soft-shelled humans” and the trees with their bark shields and immense lifespans. Trees ‘remember’ the weather through their growth rings and, in fossilized remains, the pattern of these rings is used to study past climates. What will current, living trees tell the future?

This installation consists of sixty 11’ high panels, each one representing a year of Houston weather data and encircling the Back BOX like a grove of trees. Each varies in width based on the rainfall intensity, as measured by the number of days on which the total rainfall was greater than 3 inches: the point at which street flooding occurs. The panel color, from ice-blue to blue-black, represents the average nighttime temperature for that year. At first glance the immersive nature of this cyanotype installation provides a cool environment as Houston temperatures fall into Fall. However, a closer look gives the bigger picture: more shocking than any graph, this forest-like environment shows the story of rising temperatures and intensifying rain events.

Caroline Roberts is a resident artist at BOX13 ArtSpace. The chance encounter of a sunny afternoon and a pack of sun print paper introduced Roberts to photograms. She was immediately drawn to use this direct contact between a light-sensitive surface and the world to sample nature – collecting ghostly reminders of its presence. Harking back to the era of Victorian gentlewoman scientists, her artistic practice draws on chance and her spirit of inquiry as she manipulates and disrupts her processes and materials. She draws on her scientific background to take complicated data and make it visible and, more importantly, tangible, combining science and art to allow the viewer to form their own hypotheses.

Born in the United Kingdom, she lives in Houston, Texas. Often found hiking in state and national parks, Roberts’ interest in landscape and the natural world is heightened by managing fifteen acres of riparian forest in rural Texas.

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