Grisselle Chock supports World Albatross Day 2022 with her evocative artworks illustrating climate change

“Climate Change 2” Black-footed Albatrosses, mixed-media/digital art; after a photograph by Laurie Smaglick Johnson

The Albatross and Petrel Agreement has chosen the theme “Climate Change” to mark the third World Albatross Day, to be celebrated on 19 June 2022.  This follows the inaugural theme “Eradicating Island Pests” in 2020 and “Ensuring Albatross-friendly Fisheries” last year  (click here).  The featured species chosen for 2022 are two of the three species of albatrosses that breed in the North Pacific: the Black-footed Phoebastria nigripes and the Laysan P. immutabilis.  Both these Near Threatened albatrosses have most of their breeding populations on the low-lying atolls of the USA’s North-western Hawaiian Islands.  There they are at risk from sea level rise and increases in the number and severity of storms that result in flooding, both considered a consequence of climate change.

ACAP is once more working with ABUN (Artists & Biologists Unite for Nature) over the first three months of the year on its 39th Project (“World Albatross Day 2022 - Climate Change”) to produce artworks that will help increase awareness of the conservation plight facing the world’s albatrosses (click here).  The response to date, as for the previous two collaborations with ABUN, has been most pleasing, with many members producing to date a total of 66 artworks that depict the two species.  ACAP Latest News takes pleasure in featuring one of these artists with a selection of her evocative works for WAD2022.

"Dance of the Laysan”, a Laysan Albatross couple go through all their “dance moves”, after a photograph by Eric Vanderwerf

Grisselle Chock works on her artwork of a Laysan Albatross (see the completed work below)

Grisselle Chock is an illustrator, painter and graphic artist, who recently joined Artists and Biologists Unite for Nature to lend her talents to the urgency of saving endangered species around the world.  Born in Puerto Rico, the warmth and bright colours of the tropics have followed her to Ohio, USA, where she now resides, and form an integral part of her  artistic style.    Grisselle’s mediums are oils, acrylics, watercolours and digital media. and her inspirations are nature, social and environmental causes.   She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Puerto Rico and an Associate Degree in Illustration Magna Cum Laude.

A colour-banded Laysan Albatross in flight, Arteza gouache on Strathmore paper by Grisselle Chock, is the start for her poster “Climate Change 1” (below); after a photograph by Hob Osterlund

Grisselle describes her A2 poster below as first consisting of a gouache illustration painted from Hob Osterlund’s photograph (above).  She writes: “I then sat down and meditated for half an hour, thinking about the theme for WAD2022 and its purpose and I could see this colourful and interesting picture forming in my mind.  It shows a Laysan Albatross half-faded, as it tries to fly over the tipping point, my own version of the global warming stripes graphic that portrays long-term temperature trends, with the words: “CLIMATE CHANGE” also fading behind it.  I then added all the elements together digitally, creating the stripes and the type and opacity effect and that’s how this poster was born.” She has also produced a second version, this time depicting the Black-footed Albatross (see the feature photograph above).

“Climate Change 1” Laysan Albatross, mixed-media/digital art; after a photograph by Hob Osterlund

“Albatross at Sunset”, a Black-footed Albatross, mixed-media/digital art; after a photograph by Laurie Smaglick Johnson

With grateful thanks to Grisselle Chock and Kitty Harvill, Artists and Biologists Unite for Nature, and to the photographers, Laurie Smaglick Johnson, Hob Osterlund and Eric Vanderwerf.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 22 March 2022