While the fusion of arts, music, and creative methods is fused within my research and teaching, I find quite intense fascination with bringing these methods and artistic practices in conversation with the sciences, especially tree ring sciences, climate sciences, and botanical sciences. Some of the artistic and musical methods I use are the following:
- Printmaking
- Textiles and Quilting
- Embroidery
- Jazz Composition
- Botanical Illustration
- Ceramics
Below are some of those projects!
Transcalar Triptych with Ellen Bergan
Read more in NiCHE and Antennae Issue 64!
PhD Dissertation Cover
The cover of my dissertation titled “The Missing Ring: Tree Ring Scholar-Activism, Creative Justice-Based Pedagogies, & Community-Centered Geographies in the Climate Crisis.” This piece juxtaposes my ongoing, internal conflict of navigating academic spaces will staying true to my environmental justice and activism roots. On the left is a scan of my fingerprint from being arrested at a non-violent sit-in and the left is a print of a block of wood depicting it’s many decades of lived experiences in the tree’s rings.
Tree Ring Printmaking
While I have mainly used tree ring printmaking as an education tool, the power of printmaking to make visual the intensities of landscape change I find absolutely mesmerizing. Above is a print from a tree that shows a thin white line about halfway through the tree’s life that is the year that white settlers colonized a part of Mississippi and drastically changed the Indigenous fire regime.
Jazz Composition from NOAA Climate Data
Climate Quilt
Stemming from a class assignment, I have now accumulated over 30 handmade quilt squares that harkens back to the AIDs Memorial Quilt and challenges students, community members, and beyond to try and depict what is lost with global climate change.
Nick Koenig 