1 million dots 1 million species

1 million dots 1 million species

 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades*

This work is my contemplation of this era, we homo-sapiens, are the only remaining human species.

Amounts, years, individual action and connections are all difficult to comprehend.  This is an attempt to make these visible and a way to offer a physical manifestation of this information.

This art installation is created from natural made ochre pigment, encaustic on paper

 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades*

This work is my contemplation of this era, we homo-sapiens, are the only remaining human species.

Amounts, years, individual action and connections are all difficult to comprehend.  This is an attempt to make these visible and a way to offer a physical manifestation of this informion.

1 million

                          to touch

                          to connect

                          to compile

                          fragments will remain

                           each hand a leaf

                            a layer

                            one over the other

                            beside the other

                                      a million

                                      layered thoughts

                                      layered lives

                              fragments will remain

PROCESS:

1 million dots, 200 dots per page, 10 sheets per packet

 5,000 sheets total

use your finger to fill in dots with ochre one after another each time touching and leaving your print

consider the passage of time and number of dots

ochre* pigment has been used by human species since the beginning for painting and in burials

as each page is completed they will be removed and coated with beeswax encaustic

once each page is coated it will be layered and covered, your marks will be compiled with all the others

the final formation of paper will form a block and be buried in the earth 

*Ochre is a naturally occurring mineral pigment hand mixed for this project

STATEMENT:

 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades*

This work is my contemplation of this era, we homo-sapiens, are the only remaining human species.

Amounts, years, individual action and connections are all difficult to comprehend.  This is an attempt to make these visible and a way to offer a physical manifestation of this information.

*The rate of extinction of species has been studied by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services an international body of scientists. The study states species of all kinds are disappearing at a rate “tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the last 10 million years.”  and “At least 680 vertebrate species had been driven to extinction since the 16th century and more than 9% of all domesticated breeds of mammals used for food and agriculture had become extinct by 2016, with at least 1,000 more breeds still threatened.” As this rate sharply increases in the coming decades it is sometimes referred to as the 6^th great extinction event.