COSAM News Articles 2020 June Mother Earth as Art

Mother Earth as Art

Published: 06/30/2020

In the weeks leading up to the 50^th anniversary of Earth Day, the Department of Geosciences, in collaboration with the Jules Collins Smith Museum (JCSM) of Fine Art, hosted the “Mother Earth as Art” exhibition. The exhibit featured real satellite images of Earth taken from USGS and NASA. These images were then color enhanced and framed as pieces of artwork and hanged in the museum gallery. Led by Chandana Mitra, in collaboration with students Megha Shrestha, Elijah Johnson, Quinlan Swain and Austin Barnard, the exhibit was geared toward raising awareness about the beauty of our planet and human induced landcover changes and climate change effects. The gallery was made up of three sub-sections of images: Our Beautiful Earth, Human Footprint on our Beautiful Earth, and Future of our Beautiful Earth. This project is a part of a USGS funded program ‘AmericaView’ which mainly focuses on remote sensing education and outreach.

For the opening of the exhibit, the Department of Geosciences invited Brent Yantis, a geography faculty from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the chair of ‘AmericaView’, to hold a lecture on the importance of remote sensing (satellite images) and the ability to connect this technology with the artistic world to encourage the general public to take an interest in remote sensing technology. Yantis has traveled various places within US with similar exhibits in hopes to spark interest on using remote sensing to showcase our beautiful Earth. The Department of Geosciences would like to thank Yantis for taking the time to speak at the JCSM of Fine Art in Auburn.

The Mother Earth as Art exhibition was originally intended to be viewed in person at the JCSM of Fine Art, however due to the ongoing threat of COVID-19, changes had to be made. The museum created a wonderful online gallery of the exhibit that featured all the images within their three sub-sections, along with the information about each image. The Department of Geosciences would like to encourage students and citizens to view the Mother Earth as Art exhibition and share these beautiful images with their family and friends. This gallery can still be viewed online.

More information about the Mother Earth as Art exhibition can be found in this video, which provides an expanded explanation of the goal of the exhibit, as well as thoughts from Mr. Yantis and a visitor who attended the opening.