Diane Fiedler Floating Watercolors Art Installations: Polar Bear Effigies 2015

Explorer/author Milbry Polk and members of the Adventure Canada staff floated and photographed my 55 x 99 inch watercolor painting of polar bears off the Western Coast of Greenland in the The Bay of Eternity in summer 2015. This painting is meant to be an acknowledgement and offering of polar bear "effigies", offered to the forces of the elements in order to protect living bears from the ravages of sea ice loss and climate change.

The first photograph below shows the West Greenland installation near Ililussat Glacier. 

Shortly after returning the heavy, soaked painting back into the zodiac, a portion of the glacier, seen in to the left of the photo in aqua blue, gave way and calved into the sea, chasing the zodiac and its artwork with a dangerous wave...

The second & third photographs below show the installation in Nunavut, Canada, off the waters of Baffin Island at (approx.) 65 01 0901 N, 60 19 1321 W.  

Shortly after laying the painting into the water, the currents surrounding an iceberg began to drag the painting under the passing berg.  The amazing Adventure Canada crew & Polk struggled to save the painting, ultimately laying it to rest onto of the very berg that would have towed in under its belly... So my polar bears did, indeed, struggle with the turbulent meltwaters and then found a resting place on the quickly melting, moving sea ice... 

My Polar Bear Paintings set sail from Aasiaat today!

This is a portion of a watermedia painting sent along with the Explorer's Club Flag to Assiaat, Greenland this week.  

I have made a simple representational watercolor & acrylic painting on a roughly 4 ft by 9 ft watercolor paper (vertical) of 3 polar bears swimming. 

They will be dropped into the seas of the Davis Strait and filmed as they sink below the waters to symbolize the peril that polar bears face.  

Polar bears use ice floes as a station for hunting seals and belugas; as the ice floes disappear from climate change, polar must seek ice floes further and further away from their hunting grounds.  Many drown while finding these-- the distances are becoming too too far.

I am offering painted "effigies" or polar bears sinking below arctic waters to substitute & "protect" actual polar bears who are in danger of drowning due to climate change's reduced ice floe coverage. 

Today the Wanderbird sets sail from Aasiaat, Greenland in Disko Bay with my polar bear painting and several other projects of mine.  She is on a mission to follow the 1869 expedition of Romantic painter/explorer William Bradford as he recorded Greenland's icebergs and glaciers for artistic use.  See more about his voyage at the Clark Art Museum's online show http://www.clarkart.edu/exhibitions/bradford/content.cfm?id=1

and about our expedition at

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/701351414/chasing-the-light?ref=live