COSAM News Articles 2020 March Mother Earth as Art

Mother Earth as Art

Published: 03/11/2020

Mother Earth as Art

3^rd March to 26^th April 2020 at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art

In celebration of the 50^th anniversary of Earth Day, the museum is pleased to present this exhibition combining art and science through unique photographic manipulations of the Earth’s surface taken by environmental satellites operated by the USGS, USDA, DLR and Teledyne Brown Engineering and NASA. The worldwide and regionally significant locations displayed here depict not only the aesthetic beauty and geological diversity of the Earth but also humankind’s presence and impact on the planet. From their orbital vantage points, these satellite images offer rare perspectives on our home and create opportunities to reflect on our interactions with her.

The museum is grateful to AlabamaView (the Alabama chapter of the nationwide AmericaView consortium for remote sensing education, research, and geospatial applications) and the Department of Geosciences at Auburn University, in particular Dr. Chandana Mitra and her graduate students Megha Shrestha, Elijah Johnson and Ishita Eva Akhtar, for all of their extensive efforts to make this exhibition possible.

The exhibition is beautiful, and there has been lots of traffic in the Corridor Gallery. Some of the artwork was used in Thursday’s “A Little Lunch Music” (photo attached). The art connection linked chromaticism in Western music. As the pieces became more complex, the art projected moved from monochromatic to more complex…like the amazing colors featured in “Cubism—Landsat Style.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPtBDZF0DRM&feature=youtu.be