Micro views: Threats & prospects on climate change

Food for Thought at San Juan Islands Museum of Art

— from Diane Martindale for San Juan Islands Museum of Art —

Robert Dash provokes a compelling look at essential foods at the San Juan Islands Museum of Art (SJIMA). Dash’s work illustrates that photography has no bounds when met with imagination and innovative technology. Photomontage is used to create a surreal conversation between everyday foods and microscopic parts of themselves. The works ponder threats to, and prospects for, solutions to the state of food on our planet and dinner plates in the face of climate change. The exhibition is open from September 27 to December 9, 2019.

Dash’s fascinating art intrigues and provokes deeper exploration of forms of foods essential to our very survival. His work ponders THREATS to our staple foods from: crop loss due to droughts, floods, soil loss, pests, deforestation; loss of crop nutrient value, and stresses on developing nations; the shifting ranges of many crops; the shift of seasons and implications for syncing with pollinators; and the crash of insect (bee and other) populations.

At the same time, a great deal of work is underway to make agriculture a net carbon sink rather than a net carbon emitter. Dash’s images also reference hopeful solutions as PROSPECTS: regenerative agriculture, carbon farming, permaculture, forest gardens; rebuilding soil through cover crops, perennials, agroforestry, no-till, plants such as azolla which have balanced atmospheric CO2 over millions of years; and small scale efforts to develop locally-viable, backyard grains.

His photographs reveal the genesis and exquisite beauty of our daily foods.  

In compositing elements captured with an electron microscope and DSLR macro photography, Dash reveals the building blocks and a microcosm of sustenance, making the invisible visible, for a visual and educational experience.

Dash is an educator, photographer, and naturalist whose work has been published by National Geographic, TIME, and LensWork, and shown in galleries and juried shows in the US and abroad.

In 2016, he presented a TEDx talk entitled “The Intercourse of Nature: It’s What We Are,” and in 2017, published his Nautilus Gold Award-winning photography/poetry book, On An Acre Shy of Eternity: Micro Landscapes at the Edge. His new book, FOOD FOR THOUGHT Micro Views: Threats and Prospects, is currently in development. In this book, San Juan Island resident, Thor Hanson, Ph.D., writes part of the book’s foreword. Hanson is a Guggenheim Fellow, an award-winning author (Buzz, The Triumph of Seeds, Feathers, and The Impenetrable Forest), and an independent conservation biologist. 

Sponsors of Food For Thought are Janet Alderton, Kim Miller, Grange member, Anonymous, Browne’s Home Center, San Juan Island Grange # 966, Kenmore Air, Town of Friday Harbor, Stephen King, Printonyx, and Harbor Rental.

Also open is Tide of Transition by Cathryn Mallory, a site-specific installation in the glass atrium inspired by the sea’s kelp beds and the nutrition they offer. In the North gallery is The Natural World of Malcolm Curtis Ross, a retrospective exploring Ross’ joyful life in art.

Exhibition ours are Friday-Monday 11-5. Admission is $10 and free to SJIMA members and those 18 and under. Mondays are Pay As You Can Days. SJIMA is located at 540 Spring Street in Friday Harbor, WA.

Go to www.sjima.org to see the full array of lectures and Family Art Days available to the public.