EVERETT — Next weekend, artist and science communicator Jill Pelto will curate her first art show, and it’s all about glaciers.
Pelto is bringing together nine artists, including herself, for “Shaped by Ice,” a collection about changing glacial regions and their impact on surrounding environments and communities.
“Our goal is to increase awareness, foster curiosity and inspire personal connections between people and glacier loss as a visible impact of climate change,” she wrote in an email on Monday.
One of Pelto’s new pieces for the exhibit will highlight glaciers that feed into the Skykomish and Snohomish river basins. Her paintings depict the mountains surrounding the town of Index — including Columbia Peak with Columbia Glacier and Lake Blanca nestled between its slopes.
With a bachelor’s degree in earth science and fine art and a master’s in earth science, Pelto’s pieces hinge on the intersection of hard data and artistic storytelling. Many of her works combine landscapes or animal portraits with graphic figures depicting scientific trends, like graphs showing global average sea levels and pairs of nesting sea birds.
“I think that data and graphs tell really important stories, but they can be really technical and dense,” she said in an interview on Wednesday.
Pelto’s piece about the Skykomish River Basin will include data about the temperature and discharge of the Skykomish River and snowpack levels in the North Cascades. She is also creating a piece about glaciers in the Nooksack River Watershed.
Opening weekend for the show is April 11 at Slip Gallery in Seattle. It will have multiple activities for guests to participate in. Additionally, the show will have an artist panel supported by Protect Our Winters, a national nonprofit focused on environmental policy and civil engagement.
The program will run until May 3. You can find out more about the artists at shapedbyice.com/.
Eliza Aronson: 425-339-3434; eliza.aronson@heraldnet.com; X: @ElizaAronson.
Eliza’s stories are supported by the Herald’s Environmental and Climate Reporting Fund.
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