Seaweed Photograms & Kelp Change — Oriana Poindexter
About Oriana Poindexter
Oriana Poindexter free dives in the kelp forests off the California. She collects seaweed and uses a mix of traditional and alternative photographic processes to create images that reflect their beauty. In addition to her own work, Oriana has curated the work of others to compare and contrast the changes in the marine forests that have occurred in the last two centuries. Oriana finds inspiration through her relationship with nature and believes that each person can find beauty as they interact with the natural world they live in.
From Seaweed to Photograms: Exploring Ocean Art and Kelp Forest Decline
Oriana discovered the photographic darkroom provided her the ability to study the natural environment and express what she learned in artistic way using the printmaking tradition. She enjoys using a Nikonos camera to capture underwater images but uses the photgram for her artistic expression. A photogram is an uncomplicated way to make a photographic print. The subject is laid on a piece of light sensitive paper and exposed directly to sunlight. Oriana collects seaweed and other materials from the ocean by free diving or SCUBA. She prefers free diving because diving with an air tank makes her feel like a dinosaur. In the years she’s been diving Oriana has noticed that kelp forests have declined. She surmises that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a large system wide pattern of warm water and cold water may have brought about significant changes that the kelp forest has been unable to recover.
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00:00:01 Pam Ferris-Olson Today on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast on womenmindthewater.com, I'm speaking with Orianna Poindexter, an artist whose work is a mix of traditional and alternative photographic processes. Her photograms capture images of a dynamic and biodiverse marine environment artistically captures the beauty of biological material and transfixes those who view her work.
00:00:30 Pam Ferris-Olson The Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast on womenmindthewater.com engages artists in conversation about their work and explores their connection to the ocean through their stories. Wo(men) Mind the Water hopes to inspire and encourage action to protect the ocean and her creatures.
00:00:50 Pam Ferris-Olson Today I'm speaking with Orianna Poindexter, whose academic studies in visual art and marine biodiversity and conservation, provide a frame for her arts. Diving into the waters off the California coast, Oriana collects specimens for her portraits of a life that exists below the waves. In addition to her own work, Orianna curated Giant Kelp Forests through Art, Science and the Archives, an exhibit at the Geisel Library Gallery at UC San Diego. Of interest is not only a comparison of Oriana’s work with those from the late 19th century but a look at how the marine biology may have changed.
00:01:39 Pam Ferris-Olson Welcome Oriana. I am really pleased you joined me for a conversation about your work and California's kelp forest. I have been following you on Instagram for some time and wanted to learn more about what you do. I'd like to mention that one of my earliest podcast guests was Mary Chatowski Jameson who also is inspired by seaweed. I'd like to remind listeners that Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast recently crossed the milestone of 75 podcasts. Anyway, Mary's work, like Orianna's, is inspired by seaweed, which she collects along the Rhode Island shore. Orianna, how did you come to study visual arts?
00:02:23 Oriana Poindexter I didn't really set out to study visual art specifically. I got to college and intended to start out as a pre-Med student and then shifted to ecology and evolutionary biology and then I discovered the dark room. I was really drawn in to the photography darkroom as a place where I could combine my interest in the natural environment with this artistic print making tradition of darkroom photography of black and white printmaking.
00:02:58 Pam Ferris-Olson Interesting pre-Med to underwater photography. So when did you realize that you wanted to explore marine science using photographic techniques?
00:03:13 Oriana Poindexter I grew up near the ocean here in Southern California. And so I was always very comfortable with the ocean and very drawn to it but I didn't really start diving or photographing underwater until I came back to the West Coast after I finished undergrad. Then I started spending more time in the water, underwater, and I picked up a Nikonos camera which is a 35mm underwater camera. I love using those cameras. They're such a wonderful tool to explore the underwater world for somebody like me.
00:03:58 Pam Ferris-Olson So one photo-based process you use is the photogram. What is a photogram and why does this technique resonate with you?
00:04:09 Oriana Poindexter So a photogram is kind of like the most basic way to make a photographic print. You take a piece of light sensitive paper and you lay your subject directly onto the paper and you expose that piece of paper. That can either be done in a dark room, in a traditional black and white dark room, using an enlarger or outdoors in the sun, using the sun as your light source, which is the way that I generally make my work. I collect fresh seaweeds or other materials from the ocean and lay them in direct contact with this light sensitive paper and expose them in the sun to create the images. So they're photographs but they're made without using a camera.
00:05:02 Pam Ferris-Olson That's quite a change from using the Nikonos which is high technology. So you've chosen to collect your own specimens using both scuba diving and free diving. Why free diving? Isn't it limiting? After all, it's dependent on how long you can hold your breath.
00:05:18 Oriana Poindexter I enjoy being underwater. Sometimes I joke that my art work is an elaborate excuse to go diving. I love being in the water. I'm very comfortable in the water. I always have been. In scuba diving you have so much equipment on, you're wearing a lot of weight. You have a tank on your back. You can't look up. Really, I just feel like a like a dinosaur underwater when I'm scuba diving. I don't feel like I can have that freedom of movement that the water gives you with all of that equipment on. And so for me, free diving came very naturally. It's very comfortable for me. I find it very relaxing and meditative. And it's just a more enjoyable time for me in the water.
00:06:08 Pam Ferris-Olson How long can you stay under [water] and how much material can you collect free diving?
00:06:14 Oriana Poindexter Well, it's not really about the amount of time or the volume of material, it's more for me about my experience in the water and what I'm observing on different days. So some days I feel great. The conditions are great. I can dive for long periods of time and really take my time. Other days the ocean is, you know, a totally different place. It's agitated or I'm not feeling great, or the visibility is not great and that's a different experience. And that can be reflected in what I collect. And therefore what I create.
00:06:44 Pam Ferris-Olson So in the show you curated at UC San Diego, you had the work of several 19th century seaweed artists. How has their work influenced you?
00:06:56 Oriana Poindexter Their work is incredible. The seaweed pressings that I was able to include in Ebb and Flow, some of them, the oldest ones, were made in 1890 and we have seaweed pressings that go up to the present. And some of those, some of the earliest pressings, were made in a very scientific manner with the intention of describing these species, which were some of them were new to science, and creating a record and adding to that record overtime. So yeah, the pressings made by Mary Snyder who was working in the 1890s to 1920s time period in Southern California are the most beautiful. I devoted two entire cases to her pressings because they were impossible to narrow down, just her attention to detail. The specimens that she chose were incredibly beautiful. And her eye for composition, even as she was primarily thinking about, I'm assuming based on the information I could find about her, she was primarily interested in recording them for scientific purposes. But the aesthetics are also just incredibly beautiful.
00:08:14 Pam Ferris-Olson As you look at the work from the 19th century artists, have you noticed changes in what they show and what has happened over the years to the kelp? Do you notice any differences in the environment of what they're sharing and what you see?
00:08:33 Oriana Poindexter I know there have been changes whether they’re, you know, totally visible in the materials that I've chosen or that I've curated for this show is probably not super clear to the casual observer, but there are is specifically one species that I have in mind that I never see find here in San Diego. I would love to find it. It's called sea grapes. It's common name is Botryocladia. Just beautiful little, what they sound like - sea grapes. I know they're still here. I sometimes find little, tiny bits washed up. But the pressing that Mary Snyder did in the 1890s of sea grapes is like massive and beautiful and fantastic and I wish that I could find something like. On a larger scale, yes kelp forests have declined here in San Diego, specifically over the past ten years. Up until then, it seems that they were kind of ebbing and flowing for lack of a better term, with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which is a large system wide pattern that happens, with kind of sections of warm water and cold water over a long period of time, but in the past ten years there have been significant changes that the kelp forest has not recovered.
00:10:06 Pam Ferris-Olson So has your knowledge of the marine environment added a different dimension to your work?
00:10:12 Oriana Poindexter Yeah, I mean, my work is all kind of wrapped up in me just being really curious about what's underwater and using the tools that are at my disposal and that I enjoy using. So I love being underwater. I love looking very closely at what I find. And so these have sort of all combined into different ways for me to learn about what's underwater and so sometimes I go and I find stuff that is unfamiliar to me and then I need to figure out what it is. I consult the people that know more than I do. And that's a way for me to kind of further my knowledge as well and open up that knowledge to the people that view my artwork and share that with them. .
00:11:03 Pam Ferris-Olson You know as you talk about it, that you love
to be underwater and you love the experience, I feel like you're saying that
your art is like taking us, as your best friends, and sharing with us. We're in your little bag swimming along with you and seeing what you see. So how have these changes influenced your art or your practice?
00:11:26 Oriana Poindexter I think it has. They've made it kind of more, almost more relevant, more pressing, for me to make this artwork and give it the context of the ecology. I like to think that what I'm doing is creating a record of what is there, a certain place at a certain time. Here is where I live. I dive in the same areas over and over and over again. So I'm kind of building up this portrait of what lives here. And when I, you know, hope that can serve as a record going forward and can add to the records that other people are keeping.
00:12:09 Pam Ferris-Olson So have these changes influenced your art?
00:12:14 Oriana Poindexter Yeah, they have me thinking about how I can do a better job of representing the changes in the environment with my chosen mediums. I've been thinking more about how I can illustrate the effects that humans have on the environment with the mediums that I've chosen. I've started including occasionally pieces of marine debris that I find in the water in the cyanotypes that I make. I've started including my own body parts as a way to explore the mark that we’re leaving as humans.
00:12:50 Pam Ferris-Olson Very interesting. Yeah, I like that. So what are your thoughts about the future of California's marine environment?
00:13:11 Oriana Poindexter I think we are, you know as most of you know, we've done a significant amount of damage as humanity to the planet and that is going to manifest in a bunch of different ways over the next 100 years. Water temperatures are going to get warmer. Species are going to either adapt or not. And the giant kelp, specifically here in Southern California, is already sort of at the edge of its temperature range. We hit 80° here in the summer now. Which is since 2014, that is what's happened,. I want to say seven years out of the past 10, and that's just not something that, you know, the giant help is evolved to withstand. So the way that that affects how these marine environments are evolving is yet to be seen. I'm hopeful that that we can maintain these environments because they're really just so beautiful to explore and also really functional and they, you know, they serve as habitat for all of these species that all have their own lives and that we also rely on. There is a lot of research going on, you know, how can we support the resilience of these species as their environment changes? And I do what I can to support that research and illustrate it in certain ways, yeah.
00:14:57 Pam Ferris-Olson So are you personally involved in efforts to enhance the sustainability of the near shore waters in California?
00:15:05 Oriana Poindexter I do my own work that I think draws attention to that and educates people on that. Whether I'm hands on, out planting [kelp], “No.”
00:15:10 Pam Ferris-Olson You call attention through your art and I like your answer about how you're beginning to include debris that you find and your body parts to reference that the changes are the result of man's and women's interactions. OK. So are there any thoughts you'd like to leave us about your art or the ocean?
00:15:43 Oriana Poindexter I just hope that people get inspired to go, closely observe whatever nature they have available to them. I find a lot of inspiration by, you know, by developing my relationship with nature further and for me that manifests like this. But I think everybody can, you know, through their own personality and their own environment can find something beautiful and exciting.
00:16:16 Pam Ferris-Olson That's very nice. Well thank you Oriana for being on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast. I personally find your work filled with life and movement. And I encourage my listeners to view your work either through the womenminethewater.com website or your website.
I'd like to remind listeners that I've been speaking with Oriana Poindexter and artist who captures life below the waves using a variety of photo-based processes. Orianna is the latest guest on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast. The series can be viewed on womenmindthewater.com, Museum on Main Street, and YouTube. An audio-only version of this podcast is available on womenmindthewater.com, on iTunes and Spotify. Wo(men) Mind the Water is grateful to Jaine Rice for the use of her song Women of Water. All rights for the Wo(men) Mind the Water, name and logo belong to Pam Ferris-Olson. This is Pam Ferris-Olson.
