ARCTIC ICE MELT: moulins of my mind
The paradox of water as an element of natural beauty and an instrument of destruction fascinates me. I first attempted to express this duality in THE TSUNAMI PROJECT, an exhibition of sculpture based on tsunami waves carved in response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004. Reviewing my exhibit in the December, 2006 issue of SCULPTURE, William Zimmer wrote that “The exalting of something awful is a seeming contraction that might be difficult to assimilate, but it’s the kind of singular tension embraced by the highest art.”

My focus has recently shifted from tsunami waves to glaciers and the problems
of Arctic ice melt. From the air, Greenland’s vast ice cap appears perfectly calm, but things are not as they once were. Sadly, the Arctic is warming faster than any place on earth. Pieces of glaciers tumble into the sea and melt-water surges downward through holes in the ice called moulins. Water cascading into these tubular chutes

pushes down with relentless force, lubricating the underside of glaciers, causing them to slide into the sea.

I am an artist, not a scientist. Something ineffable drew me to the notion of moulins
long before I understood their emotional resonance in my mind’s eye. Quite
serendipitously, while reading a Barnard College alumnae magazine, I discovered
Dr. Stephanie Pfirman’s work as an Arctic ice specialist. Dr. Pfirman directed my
inquiries to Dr. Konrad Steffen, Professor of Climatology at the University of
Colorado, who had lowered a rotation laser digital camera fifteen hundred feet into a moulin to measure the volume of melt-water running through it. His images of surging water cascading into this moulin confirmed that the moulins I was sculpting were valid symbolic representations of a phenomenon of nature seen by very few people.

ARCTIC ICE MELT: moulins of my mind
is my emotional response to Dr. Steffen’s
pioneering photography. By suggesting abraded surfaces and turgid swirls,
I have tried to convey the ominous message that global warming portends for a world of ice that is increasingly threatened.

              Cornelia Kubler Kavanagh