Imaging the Climate Crisis. The Ceramic Art of Horie, Galloway, Snider, and Rhymer-Zwierciadlowska

This contribution focuses on four contemporary ceramists who believe that art can be a vehicle for social change. The climate emergency informs the work of Ayumi Horie, Julia Galloway, Amy Snider, and Julianna Zwierciadlowska-Rhymer. Each desires to create a dialogue with the viewer and to incite positive environmental action. Horie began The Democratic Cup in 2016. She adapted the concept in 2018 to bring people with divergent views of the environment together for civil discussions in four different cities of Minnesota. Galloway was so shocked at the decapitation of the Wandering Albatross and its near extinction that she set about to create classical funerary urns to draw attention to the endangered species of New England. Amy Snider’s objects concern the world’s melting glaciers and the climate crisis that is causing their disintegration. Julianna Zwierciadlowska-Rhymer’s sculptural installations explore society’s relationship with food. She creates banquet tables of beautifully crafted cakes on their delicate pedestal holders to call attention to both the extravagance and waste of living in the twenty-first century as well as the treatment of animals and food additives.