MIA MULVEY Studio

20” x 20”

2020

Svalbard's current climate is too cold and the growing season too short to support trees. As a result, the landscape is dominated by moss tundra only a few inches tall. In this landscape one is overwhelmed by distance, the immense walls of ice and mountain upon mountain of rock. Exploring a shift in scale I used a microscope to photograph the tiny below my feet, the miniature forests of Svalbard in the shadow of grand ice and stone surfaces.

The idea of forests in the northern arctic circle has its roots in time. In its past, 400 million years ago, Svalbard was at the equator and evidence can be found of the earth’s first trees, Lycopods. As the climate changed and the land moved further north it supported a variety of leafy tree species still recognizable as fossils under the churn of the ice. Hiking the rocky glacial moraines, I discovered fossilized wood as well as leaves from the tiny to a foot across.

2019- ongoing

Digital collage on paper

20” x 30” | 2019

Photogrammetry is a method of 3d scanning that utilizes still images. The process can be very detailed as well as blurred, stretching image into surface when it can't see enough information. These works are collages of scans taken in the field. While I am normally only concerned with the 3-dimensional forms created in this process these images are the first thing I see when completing a scan. I feel the ability to capture detail as well as something else, a distortion, parallels our inability to understand all of a thing or a place.

The cyanotype process was the first photographic system to be used for scientific investigation and illustration. In a series of works, the cyanotype images are paired with direct impressions taken from the tree’s surfaces. The history, materiality and chemical processes involved in both the photographic and ceramic methods collapse the past, present and future as portraits and recorders of time.

Embodied Forest, EcoArtSpace: https://issuu.com/ecoartspace/docs/embodiedforest2021