Season 2, Episode 12: Art Gives Ecological Grief a Body, with Daniela Molnar

Climate Change and Happiness

image credit | Genaro Molina, Los Angeles Times Staff Photographer

Season 2, Episode 12: Art Gives Ecological Grief a Body with Daniela Molnar

Thomas and Panu were joined by artist and poet Daniela Molnar, who creates her paintings using scientific records of glacier retreat in the Cascade range and natural paints and pigments she gathers near her home and in her wilderness journeys. The trio discussed how art making is one way to “enfranchise” climate grief that otherwise goes unrecognized, where in Daniela’s case she confronts forces of grief and wonder, in dynamic interplay. “Making paint is a kind of ecology,” Daniela observed. When making your own pigment the “world becomes full of colors,” rocks and plants gain agency and different waters from rain or sea behave in a way that is very much alive. Daniela evoked the creative tension apparent in regeneration of damaged landscapes where a “wound is simultaneously an injury and a process of healing.”

“When we talk about non-resolution in a work of art and how it has that dynamic equilibrium, that's what beauty is. It's that tension. And the world is beautiful. You know, the world is incredibly beautiful. Even as it's incredibly wounded. And to allow ourselves to experience both fully is really a way to live in the world. And live our lives fully. And live in a way that moves us into different cultural territory that I think is essential.”

Links

• Daniela Molnar

• Instagram

• Video on her art method

• Media

• Poetry

• Reading at Round Weather Gallery, February 23, 2023

• Projects in Finland between atmospheric scientists and visual artists

• Siperstein, Hall and LeMenager 2016 Teaching Climate Change in the Humanities

Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.

Thomas Doherty: Please support the Climate Change and Happiness Podcast. See the donate page at climatechangeandhappiness.com.

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

Thomas Doherty

Please support the Climate Change and Happiness Podcast. See the donate page at climatechangeandhappiness.com.

Doherty: Well, hello, I'm Thomas Doherty.

Panu Pihkala: And I am Panu Pihkala.

Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness. Our podcast. This is a show for people around the world who are thinking and feeling deeply about global climate change and other environmental issues that are affecting us as people around the world. And here we really get into our different kinds of feelings and our different kinds of emotions. We go deep into that. It's a rare opportunity and we're really glad to have it.

Please make sure to find us at climatechangeandhappiness.com. And please support us on our Patreon. And – we've had a theme about art and creativity that Panu and I are very close to. Today we're really lucky to have a guest.

Daniela Molnar: Hello, my name is Daniela Molnar. And I'm an artist, a poet and a writer. And I work with themes of climate change and climate grief. I work a lot with natural pigments. And I'm delighted to be here. Thank you.

Doherty: It's really great to have Daniela. I met Daniela a couple of years ago when she was teaching at one of the art institutes here in Portland. And we had a talk on eco-anxiety and climate change. And so I've been able to track her work a little bit. And also interact with her in terms of general therapeutic work for people in climate and environment.

But I've been really excited to explore Daniela's process and to learn how she makes her work. And so we're going to talk about that on a number of levels today. And listeners, you can think about your own creative life in various ways as this comes up. Panu, I know you're interested in this too, do you want to get us started?

Pihkala: Yes, warmly welcome, Daniela also for my part. Very nice to meet you. This is the first day that we meet you. We just had a brief conversation and found out that we have something in common. We both know a little Hungarian. You have much stronger roots there, but I've got some family connections also.

But we would like to start with your journey with climate change. I know that you've been doing many things in relation to it. But would you like to share something of your journey?

Molnar: Sure. Thank you for the question. I think that my journey with climate change, and it has changed a lot over time, began probably when I was an undergraduate. I studied both art and environmental studies. And I actually focused more on environmental studies for a variety of reasons. So this was the late 90s. And I was learning about climate change sort of as this big thing that we knew about, but it didn't have nearly the same sort of scope or emotional impact that it has now. But I was working with forest ecologists in the Pacific Northwest who were starting to recognize the enormous impacts that climate change was having. And it really impacted me on a deep level. And it also was the kind of thing that, and I think many people feel this, where I was like, well, I'm not sure what to do. And that feeling stayed with me for many years.

My life went through various twists and turns. And I ended up teaching, as Thomas noted, at an art school in Portland [PNCA]. And I started a program there in 2016 called Art and Ecology. And in that program art students were able to learn about ecological issues and use it as a lens with which to fuel their art. And in putting together that program, the core course focused on climate change. For obvious reasons. Climate change is this issue that touches on every other issue. Every other social issue, political issue, environmental issue, cultural issue. It's an incredibly complicated and vast topic.

So I use that as the core course to orient us to these ideas. And in putting that course together, I just went deep into climate change research. And, frankly, went into a state of profound climate grief. I was so overwhelmed. Completely just struck by the things that I was reading. And had no idea what to do with it. And then was in this position of trying to teach it. And those circumstances put me in a position of really needing to work through what I was experiencing with my art, as I was trying to teach others to do the same. So that's a little bit about how I came to where I am now. And that's still really very much what I'm doing with my work.

Pihkala: Thank you very much for sharing that. So it's quite a journey. And you already described many of the emotional tones you had and the earlier what should I do about this. Which on one hand, is a sort of question of what can be called practical anxiety. You know, there's some problem which has some uncertainty in it. And it leads people to ask: what's my relation to this? And what should I do?

But it really sounds like it struck you much more forcefully during that time when you were reading science. And then having this difficult role where you have to do something with other people. Which is a responsible position. And then one may be quite torn by the almost traumatic consequences of the information. And this is something that many environmental educators I know have been struggling with. So thanks for sharing that intimately.

Molnar: Yeah, I think that teaching is, you know, it offers an opportunity to really work through these issues in a forum. I like to think of any teaching environment as a community in which I don't have, and this became very clear to me when I was trying to teach about climate change, I don't have the answers. You know, as the teacher, I'm not the authority. I'm working through it with everyone. And I'm grateful, even though it was a very difficult course to teach. I'm so grateful for the opportunity that I had to teach it because it really put me into a position in which I was able to more fully feel these issues. And feel them in community with my students. And they taught me a lot. And I'm grateful for that.

Doherty: Yeah, this is great. I, you know, as we were planning our discussion, I was thinking about my use as not a professional artist as but my use of art personally from my own coping and identity. Environmental identity and sense of place. But also helping other people use this. And teaching therapists how to do art therapy, essentially. And then for the listeners, there's different kinds of listeners for this episode. Some people are just curious about this. Other people might be professional artists doing their own work and their own sort of hero's journey with their art process.

So it seems to me there's two levels with this. There's the level one which is just art therapy, where we use even existing works of art, famous paintings, poems, you know, music. Panu and I did our music episode. We use these as ways to channel and express ourselves. And to find solace. And find, you know, comfort and universality that other people have tried these paths across times and places. And so that's really helpful. And it's relatively simple, although obviously, some artwork can be super challenging and really raucous. I mean, you know, what is it? Kafka has a quote about you know, art should be the ax that smashes the frozen sea within us. Or something like that, you know. So some artwork, obviously, is very challenging. But then there's the other level where people are actually on a path of creation. Where you don't know where it's going to go.

And I know, Panu you've talked about it, it can be really challenging. And I know your work. And so we can kind of maybe go in two directions here. About how people can, you know, find solace. But also maybe at some point today, I want Daniela to tell us literally how you make some of your pieces so people can really understand this process for you. Where do you think we should go? Any thoughts?

Molnar: Yeah, well, maybe I'll just touch on the idea of art. I think of art engaging with our either making it or engaging with art that others have made. And when I use the term art, I'm using it really broadly. Like, to me, the differences between a painting and a poem and a song are really just differences of kind, not of substance. So any type of art, I think, is a conduit. It's an opening. And it's a way to connect with someone who may have been dead for hundreds of years. And yet, still, you're connecting with the spirit of this person. And that may sound abstract or, you know, difficult to understand. But it's not something that I think needs to be understood. It's something that we feel. And because it's something that we feel, and I think it's just a very, very basic part of the human experience. It exists in all cultures, throughout time. It's accessible to everyone. Whether you make art or interact with art. It's a way to open up to someone else's spirit. And when you open up to someone else's spirit, you're also opening up to your own. So I think that there's always that available.

And I think, to me, it's one of the most beautiful things about humans. That we've made this culture in which we can freely share across generations and geographies and vast stretches of time. And I do think that it's a wonderful tool to use to more fully understand, you know, who we are and what we're doing with our lives. And then as you touch on, there's a difference between, you know, getting out some markers and some crayons and just letting yourself play. Or I think coloring books are a wonderful way to just let yourself play. And kind of turn off your conscious mind and get in touch with that spiritual and non rational part of ourselves that gets neglected so often.

And then there's, you know, making art a central part of one's life. And building an art practice and an art practice is, you know, it's a daily commitment that really is core to my experience. In which every single day I'm waking up and dedicating myself to the act of making art. And in doing that, very difficult things come up in that process. I don't think there's anywhere to hide in making art. There's no shadows that you can, you know, crouch behind. Anything that you're experiencing, is going to come up if you're making art in an honest way. And that brings its own challenges. It also brings tremendous possibilities.

So you alluded to the ways that I actually make the paintings, which I think is really, really important. And it does kind of open up this double sidedness of what I think of in my art as like this force of grief. And this force of wonder. And wonder and grief are always in dynamic interplay in how I'm working constantly. On a moment to moment basis. In the paintings themselves. So I make a lot of my own pigments from natural materials. And pretty much anything in the world can make a pigment. Which means pretty much anything in the world can be painted. And if you're walking down, you know, a street in the middle of the city, something's going to be there that can make pigment. So it really changes how one sees the world when you start to make your own pigments. And that the world becomes full of colors. In a way that's different from, you know, just seeing colors as like surfaces. But it becomes like a depth to the world.

And then I also combine the pigments that I make with waters that are from different sources. So rainwater, river water, tap water, ocean water. When I'm lucky enough to be by hot springs, hot springs water. And when you mix all these different things together, the paints that arise are really different in how they operate when you're actually using them in a painting. They behave in ways that are a little unpredictable and very, very alive. And what this pigment making process has taught me is that the materials that I'm actually using, many of which are rocks and plants to make the pigments, they're extremely alive. And they have their own agency. I'm not saying that they necessarily have their own minds. They don't have consciousnesses like human consciousness, but they have an agency that's very alive.

And when I'm making paint from water, which also has its own agency. And a rock, which has its own agency. and I'm combining them and putting them into a painting in which I'm trying to work through confusion and grief and challenging, you know, emotions and spiritual conundrums of all sorts. The rocks, and the water will often show me things that I couldn't have arrived at on my own. And often what they're showing me is this combination of grief and wonder or beauty and violence. That is simultaneous. And I think where it brings me in my work is this very fundamental, but difficult to hold onto, idea which is that in any exchange, in every single moment in our lives, we're constantly in this binary between, you know, how absolutely challenging the world is, and how absolutely beautiful the world is. And that our minds really want to have certainty. And so our minds want to go either towards the beauty or the horror. Neither one is more true than the other. And they're both utterly true.

And if I'm able, in my art making, or in interacting with other peoples art to engage with that non resolution, then I'm able to stay hopeful. And I'm able to stay open. And I'm able to allow myself to continue to experience the world and all its fullness. And that's really important for me specifically in relation to climate issues.

Pihkala: Yeah, thanks for all that. That's very fascinating and feels most important. And I can resonate with many parts of that myself. And I know many people who are searching for this difficult balance. Or actually the balancing act. I think it's a kind of dialectical thinking that you're sort of, there's some oscillation between opposing poles, so to speak. And out of that the fullness of life may emerge in all its colors to use this kind of expression. Co-creation is another word that came to mind. Both related to the teaching and education dynamic.

Stephen Siperstein is a very interesting climate educator and a poet who has written in a fascinating way about the interactive character of climate education. And becoming more aware of the problems of hierarchical attitudes towards education. And being open to what can be co-learned and co-created in the moment. And what you, Daniela, say about agency of the colors, and different elements of nature, there seems to be a co-creation, there, also

Molnar: Yeah, that's beautifully put. Absolutely. It's the co-creation or co-learning that I referenced with my students, which is ongoing. Anytime I teach, that's the case, is absolutely also the case with the pigments in the water, and the paint. That I'm co-learning and co-creating with them. And it really is a feeling of non-aloneness, which is important. Like it's this sense of being part of the world. And part of a human community. But also a more than human community. Which is, I think, completely essential to working through some of these very challenging emotions that come up around climate change.

Doherty: Yeah, I'm struck by a lot of parallels between other conversations we've been having. We had a great conversation with Kim Stafford, the poet, about him speaking in the voice of other parts of nature. And also connecting with children and their sense of wonder. And reconnecting as adults with our own sense of wonder. And then this other darker, more challenging theme of, you know, the penalties of an ecological education is living in a world of wounds.

So once we get curious about this stuff, and want to actually go to a glacier and see what's going on. And actually, experientially, you know, visit these places, it opens us up to this knowledge that then can, you know, as they say, things can't be unseen and unknown. So it is this rite of passage. I was talking to an old friend who was visiting and he's working in Antarctica. And he was telling me about it. We looked at the map of Antarctica from the South Pole, which I typically don't do, and he showed all the geology of the place. And explained why these glaciers and ice sheets are so important to the planet and plate tectonics and many things that I just never grasped. And he's been to Antarctica 23 times. And sits with this all the time. And there are people out there around the world, event listeners, who are sitting with this tough knowledge. Yeah. So, Daniela, I mean, you do go, part of your work is traveling into nature. And going to places. That's part of your gathering of the materials and gathering of your own experience.

Molnar: Yeah, it is. And it's an important part for me. You know, sometimes finding pigments means walking down the alleys in my neighborhood in the city. But oftentimes, it means going into wilderness areas. And I had the opportunity to go to Alaska, and hang out with some glaciers this summer. Which was profound. And I also lead others into wilderness areas and teach others how to do that themselves. Because I do think it's an extremely important activity that is its own type of creative practice. Because you are exposed to what could be seen as a wounded world. It is a wounded world. And there's no way to get around that when you start to know what you're seeing.

But I also think it's important to note that a wound, you know, if you cut your finger, that wound instantly starts healing. A wound is both, you know, the injury and it's instantly the process of healing simultaneously. And the same is true in wounds in the world. You know, even if that wound keeps recurring, which often it does with environmental issues. There's also a constant process of regeneration and rebuilding. And both of those things, I think, are really evident when we're able to, make ourselves open to these places and be in them fully.

Pihkala: That's very profound, I think. And reminds me of many things. The journalist Dahr Jamail, while traveling around the world and writing about that in his book, The End of Ice, for example. Several other examples. But perhaps what I'd most like to ask now is the link between what we started with you're telling of the journey towards the reading of climate science and teaching, and then the art practice? So how did it go for you? Did your sort of body or body mind start doing things with art and climate change? And how much was that conscious? And would you tell us something about that transformation period?

Molnar: Yeah, thank you, Panu. I think that whereas I have a background in scientific illustration. And I've worked with scientists in various contexts. So the way that I initially started working with climate change visually, was to actually rely on the visualization of data. By which I mean, I was looking at how the shapes of glaciers are changing. Most of them are dramatically receding. And I started painting that shape of what's been lost. And they're sort of elegies. But I was also, at the beginning, trying to communicate information. Really trying to kind of sort through it myself. And that's not exactly what happened. I don't think I arrived in the process of doing that at all.

I think what I arrived at was first a far deeper engagement with climate grief than I ever thought I would be able to do or withstand. But I did do it and I did withstand it. And as I've come out through the hardest parts of that reckoning, I've also come out, understanding that the art that I'm making doesn't need to explain anything. I think that the work you two are doing in this podcast, and then your own practices is crucial. Because I really do feel like some of the core work of climate change is cultural work. I think we need to feel our way through this as much as we need to think our way through this. And so what I'm doing with my paintings at this point is trying to welcome viewers into an emotional engagement with these ideas rather than present more information. And the colors are a huge way to do that.

I do think that the, you know, the stones and the flowers that I'm using communicate something directly to our bodies that can't necessarily and doesn't need to be put into words. And I think that people, through art, whether mine or someone else's, can kind of bypass the parts of our brains that want to find answers or find reasons or find ways to learn and justify or, etc. And just feel whatever needs to be felt in that moment. Which opens up space. It opens up space for whatever is going to happen next.

Doherty: Yeah. Yeah, one thing that we were thinking about for this episode, as well as just getting the idea of grief and ambiguous grief and disenfranchised grief. And so I think that's a place to maybe round up our talk today. You know, we've talked about this in the podcast, you know, grief is, you know, a feeling. You know, that when something either has been lost, is currently being lost, or we can also have anticipatory grief about things that we're going to lose. Even in the greatest moments of our lives, we already have an anticipatory grief that this is going to end. It's part of the human condition.

But with climate change, we've got this happening writ large. You know, so it's very ambiguous. What am I? What am I actually mourning? Is it something in myself? Is it something outside? And this disenfranchised grief, you know, when someone cuts down a tree, and I feel for it, but there's no way to have that be recognized in the culture. But so some of this is to flip it around, it's enfranchising the grief. Right? So it's giving it a place. I heard a quote, grief is love with no place to live or something like that, you know. So maybe we can end this idea of enfranchising, you know, giving. I'll have to look at the definition of the franchise, but it's giving something a role, power, agency. So, enfranchising, grief or other feelings.

Molnar: Yeah, that's great. I love that. I mean, I do think climate grief is a type of disenfranchised grief. And one thing that art does, is it does, it gives it a body, essentially. A painting is an actual, you know, body where these feelings can live. And I think that art is uniquely competent at also holding ambiguity and not not requiring resolution. So a painting, or a piece of music or a poem, thrive on what isn't resolved. Like that's the beauty of most art is these competing forces within it. And that, you know, holding those in dynamic equilibrium in a painting allows us to do the same. It allows us to feel both the grief and the wonder. And it allows us to understand that those are both very present in our lives. and that both deserve attention. And in ourselves. But we can bring ourselves fully to both.

Pihkala: That's wonderfully put , I think. Thanks for that. And also, Thomas, for what you spoke about earlier. And I'm leading a course at the University of Helsinki I designed about eco anxiety and various disciplines. So one could call it ecological distress or whatever. So one lecture is about various forms of grief and loss and sadness. And one is about art, or art-based methods where I'm inviting people who know more about that than ma. Of course, I do have some art practice myself. But my dear colleague Henrika Ylirisku, for example, who has been exploring the many possible functions that art can have in relation to ecological themes and climate. And sometimes challenging us. And sometimes providing opportunities to explore something. And we may still not get it after we leave the room. That is what has actually happened.

So I completely agree that there's great potential. And we don't always need to, or are even not able to, rationally name it. That's what's going on. But still it's important. And enfranchising grief is a great line. And I was just thinking about your ambiguous loss. And perhaps an ambiguous choice might be named also. That's related to the normativity around climate emotions. And some people are struggling that I cannot express joy, because the situation is so gloomy. And what I hear you say, Daniela, is that we should really give room and space for all kinds of feelings, including joy. Am I right? This is, of course, also my opinion.

Molnar: I think you're absolutely right. And yeah, I love that. I love that you brought up that phrase with ambiguous joy. Because joy is different from happiness. and grief is different from sadness, right? Both are far larger and more complicated. And I think it is more elemental to the human experience. But yeah, ambiguous joy, we need joy in our lives. And I think that beauty is both of those things, you know.

When we talk about non resolution in a work of art and how it has that dynamic equilibrium, that's what beauty is. It's that tension. And the world is beautiful. You know, the world is incredibly beautiful. Even as it's incredibly wounded. And to allow ourselves to experience both fully is really a way to live in the world. And live our lives fully. And live in a way that moves us into different cultural territory that I think is essential.

Doherty: Yeah, that's a beautiful way to kind of bring us back to our mission statement for this podcast. You know, Climate Change and Happiness. What does it mean to feel happier? To feel these kinds of things. And this idea of ambiguous joy is something we're groping toward and all these episodes. But I thought we did a great job, coming back to the feelings. And the core work here through art and through a conversation of art. So Daniela, thank you so much for coming in. This is just a taste of your work. But we'll have some links and a great video of your process on our show notes. And I really wish you luck with your shows in Oakland coming up this new year. Thank you very much for joining us.

Molnar: Thanks so much for having me. And thanks for the work you're doing.

Pihkala: It's been a great pleasure. All the best and all you listeners take care also.

Doherty: Yeah, so keep in touch with us at climatechangeandhappiness.com. We are a self-funded volunteer organization, so please support us so we can keep bringing you these messages of coping and ambiguous joy. And see our donate page at climatechangeandhappiness.com or at Patreon. You all take care. Bye bye.