Katie Bjornberg - 2024

Artist's Statement

My final project was a solo project that utilized the artform of painting in order to represent 4 out of the 9 planetary boundaries that represent our planet’s natural systems. Crossing these boundaries can cause great environmental damage, however, not a lot of people are aware of the gravity that this situation poses to our everyday life. I decided to focus on Ocean Acidification, Land System change (Deforestation), Freshwater Use (Overfishing), and Atmospheric Aerosol Loading…but with a twist. In order to emphasize the gravity of these environmental issues, I used characters from classic Disney movies that many people have a nostalgic relationship and beautiful memories with, and put them into an environmental situation. For example, I used Ariel from the Little Mermaid in order to depict Ocean Acidification and how that kind of pollution would affect a beloved character like herself. I thought it could be an interesting take to illustrate meaningful childhood characters struggling with the same things we are struggling with in our environment as it allows for an emotional response to be drawn from the audience.

The process of creating this art piece took a lot more background research than I originally realized. Seeing as these characters aren’t actually affected by environmental issues, I needed to research the issues I wanted to focus on and gain enough knowledge on each one in order to choose which character would correspond with each boundary. However, this allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of the topics we had discussed throughout this class and allowed me to really notice how these issues were affecting the world around me. The actual painting of the piece was difficult in a way where I wanted the artwork to fully grasp the message I was trying to send so that it would be easy for the audience to understand. I feel as though I was able to send the message I wanted to with the best of my ability, and really enjoyed the knowledge that came with the progress of this project.