Jonathan Marquis At Missoula Public Library: The Glacier Drawing Project

In conjunction with Jonathan Marquis's MAM exhibition, Something to Hold, The Glacier Drawing Project, admirers of the project and Marquis's work have an opportunity to hear from the artist himself about his adventures in the wild at the Missoula Public Library.

In the words of the artist, "The Glacier Drawing Project is a long-term endeavor to visit and draw all of Montana's glaciers. It is the only on-site, hand-drawn visual record of the fifty-nine named glacial features in Montana's Crown of the Continent and Greater Yellowstone ecosystems. I began the endeavor in 2014 to draw Montana's glaciers before a warming climate melts the ice beyond recognition. Every year, I visit new glaciers, revisit others, and often draw from mountain summits that grant glimpses into some of Earth's most iconic and intact wildland geographies.

The drawings explore a personal connection with glaciers through color, mark-making, and careful attentiveness. 'You better hurry up,' people often joke when I describe my project. The response is likely harmless banter, yet the knee-jerk, cynical reply assumes a glacier-less future is already a foregone conclusion. I fear such narratives reinforce apathy and the stories of loss that often frame climate change. If global warming and glacial disappearance are inevitable, why change our behavior?

Drawing is a creative and sensory response. Like a pencil marks paper, a glacier draws the land. Drawing puts us on the ground and establishes a personal relationship with the ice. Like a glacier, drawing is slow. Repeated layers of material and movement shape the land and reveal a picture. How we imagine a glacier is crucial to the ecosystem's health on the ground.

The Glacier Drawing Project reminds us that glaciers are here, and like paper and pencil, we hold them in our hands. I am often asked, 'Is the project over when you visit every glacier?' No, I respond, I will keep drawing glaciers until I can't get there. We need to think and act on a glacier's time, and like a glacier, the work is slow and never complete."