Blue Tears

Cascading from above, diaphanous images of glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland sway gently as visitors walk around them, echoing sad memories of glaciers calving and disappearing forever into the ocean. Throughout the exhibition, each layer is released and floats to the floor where it remains, in an undulating ocean of silken glaciers.

Interdisciplinary installation
Silk organza, light, sound, performance
12’ x 17’ x 12’ (adjustable to accommodate exhibition space)
Includes wall-mounted white neon 6’ x 5’: “i love you don’t leave me”

View a statement and videos of Patricia Carr Morgan’s performance of Blue Tears as well as KUAT Arizona Public Media’s in-depth look at the exhibition at Tucson Museum of Art below.

Performance Video by Patricia Carr Morgan

ARIZONA PUBLIC MEDIA VIDEO

“My first connections to the natural world were crickets singing me to sleep on warm summer nights and lilacs sweetening the air. As an adult, I ventured beyond my backyard to see manatees in the mangroves of Florida. I stretched my arms in a futile attempt to reach around the giant redwoods of California. In Nome, Alaska, I sat on a black beach and felt the cold spray from the dark Bering Sea. I dragged my chair into the Sonoran Desert and drew exotic cacti. I marveled at the vast desert of Egypt where everything seemed golden. Yet it was an epiphany in Yosemite that firmly cemented my love of our planet. Alone by my campfire at the base of Half Dome, thinking about a powerful glacier sculpting it from an immovable mountain, I found comfort in my insignificance and peace in my connection to our slowly changing planet. My small footprint and minor foibles didn’t even measure a millisecond.

“I knew everything was fine.

“Later in Antarctica, I was overwhelmed by the scale of unending whiteness. It was intimidating and dangerous, but it was also the most sublime piece of Earth I had ever seen.

“By then I knew everything wasn’t fine.

“I headed for Greenland to see more. I see now. Everything is not fine. The glaciers leave the earth inching their way to the sea. I cannot carve my name in them like Napoleon’s soldiers did at the pyramids. There are crevices that open into their depth, and when they crack, they crash into the sea. First there is a swell, and then only a whisper as the ice floats away, disappearing into the warming sea. The krill will die, the penguins, the leopard seals. The humpback whales will become extinct, so why not me? The ocean currents are changing, bringing us drought, devastating storms, and famine. We rape the earth, again and again.

“I know. I’m awake now.

“Earth is not a paradise lost, but a paradise losing. The line in Anna Akhmatova’s love poem “He Whispers” could describe our dysfunctional relationship to our planet: “either be mine alone or I will kill you.” We have always taken what we wanted from the earth as we marched forward into the twenty-first century. At first we didn’t know what we were doing; we thought the riches of our planet were endless and its survival forever. Now we know we’re a mere interruption in the history of our planet. We know we have broken its balance. The climate we’ve adjusted to over 10,000 years is getting warmer each decade. With our carbon dioxide emissions we have created a greenhouse we struggle to control but cannot.

“The glaciers are weeping. Their tears fill the oceans.

“I’m sorry. My footprint was small and brief, but not without consequence. Greenland and Antarctica, with your glaciers of many blues, your vast whiteness—I love you, don’t leave me.”

Patricia Carr Morgan