"Thunderbird Glacier" by Bruce Crownover

This week I was deeply saddened to read an article about how a tenth of the world's wilderness has been lost since the 1990's. Whenever I read about such issues of environmental concern - mass extinctions, deforestation, melting glaciers, and so on - I tremble at the realization that even in my short, human lifetime (a blink of an eye in geological time) I am witnessing that which is so grand and irreplaceable vanish.

Three artists, relief printmakers Bruce Crownover and Todd Anderson, and photographer Ian van Coller, recently created a large and stunning art book that documents their experiences hiking together in the Glacier National Park. This is one of the reductive woodblock prints by Crownover. It is my favorite from the set because of the dramatic color contrast that sandwiches the stark white of the glacier, thus giving the impression that the ice is both a presence and a jagged space where something has been erased.

More information about the project can be found at Crownover's website here. The book is titled The Last Glacier, and a video flip-through of the entire set of works can be viewed here. I have no idea if all 15 of the copies in the small edition have yet found their permanent homes, but inquiries about price and availability can be made here.