GLACIAL TIME, GLACIAL STILLNESS

This project was created in response to an artist residency in Glacier National Park in Montana. It consists of a box containing three handmade books.

The two perfect bound flipbooks illustrate the process of glacial recession for two of the park’s main glaciers (Grinnell Glacier and Sperry Glacier) between 1850 and the present. 

There is an additional book consisting of photographs and text that metaphorically explores ideas of how time is understood differently when represented as stillness or movement, both in our own lives and in relation to the loss of glacial ice. 

Archival inkjet prints, writing, photography. Drum leaf binding and perfect binding. Clamshell box.
Two versions: silver and white, and black and white
Each book: 3.5 x 6 x 0.5”
Box: 7 x 4.25 x 2”

Images of the complete project are below, followed by details of the contents of each of the individual books.

GRINNELL GLACIER: 1850 - PRESENT
Flip book illustrating glacial recession for one of the glaciers in Glacier National Park. The glacial perimeter maps I used to make each of the shapes on the 40 pages of the book are derived from USGS datasets.

SPERRY GLACIER: 1850 to present
Flip book illustrating glacial recession for one of the glaciers in Glacier National Park. The glacial perimeter maps I used to make each of the shapes on the 40 pages of the book are derived from USGS datasets.

GLACIAL TIME, GLACIAL STILLNESS
This book metaphorically explores ideas of how time is understood differently when represented as stillness or movement, both in our own lives and in relation to the loss of glacial ice. Original text and images of Sexton Glacier, Salamander Glacier, and Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National Park (complete text of book is below the images).

GLACIAL TIME, GLACIAL STILLNESS
(complete text of book pictured above)

How do we know that time is passing? That things that we see now are not what they were or will be? In the natural world and our own personal human one? In glaciers and in our own lives? How is time understood differently when represented as stillness or movement, as individual images, and as continuous flow?

If we see only one moment out of context — one photographic image, one glacial perimeter map – we might suppose that it has always been that way, that it will perhaps always remain so. 

A still image, after all, tells us nothing of what came before, or after. It is that moment only, standing in for all others, just a single instant, frozen in time. Frozen, like glacial ice. And yet both we and the glaciers exist in time, and glaciers are actually rivers of ice, always moving, flowing, even when receding: never static, even when they appear to our eyes to be so.

Seen collectively, visual representations of glaciers derived from scientific datasets show that the glaciers are not what they were, that each image has less glacier than the last, and that measurements of glacial perimeters can continue only until there is nothing left to measure. And then we will stop measuring. And then there will be no more images, no more glaciers. 

And our lives. Yes, them too, in time and in stillness: we exist in both, as do the glaciers, until both we and they are gone.

And they will be gone soon: in 1910, when Glacier National Park was established, there were over 100 active glaciers. By 1966, only 35 remained. By 2015, there were 26. By 2030, all glaciers remaining in the park are projected to disappear. 

Flip through the books from front to back to see glacial recession from 1850 to the present day. Or from back to front, because unlike in actual time, in books we can go backward if we want. Try flipping backward: try believing that each past instant can be restored to the flow of time, can be returned to a moment of fullness and certainty when everything seemed possible, and when it seemed like the glaciers, existing in geologic time, would outlast us, would provide something like permanence in contrast to the ever-diminishing days remaining in our own lives on earth.