RESILIENT LANDS PHOTO AND ILLUSTRATION CONCEPT

Illustrations by: Alix Pentecost Farren

This Winter 2020 magazine article focuses on research by TNC scientist Mark Anderson and his team. Their work revealed that, as climate change progresses, there will be pockets of “resilient lands” throughout the country that will allow for the movement of plants and animals to migrate either to higher elevations, cooler pockets of land, vital sources of water and other types of spots in order to survive. Covid-19 prevented us from creating new photography but I also felt that simply photographing landscapes or animals in those landscapes now did not fully capture the reality or the imaginative quality that Anderson’s work deployed. I began to think of animals moving off a photo and into the white space of a printed page as a migration into the unknown future, and pitched this idea to our magazine team. The creation of this work was a collaboration between our Art Director, the assigned illustrator, and myself.

CREATIVE EXPLORATION

Before assigning this art, I researched the story further and developed sketches to pitch to the magazine team. I also researched illustrators who would be able to execute this project with just the right optimistic but tempered tone that the story topic needed. Alix Pentecost Farren did an excellent job in creating art that was entirely her own but that met these needs.