Ancient Pollen

Watercolor and Colored Pencil, 2020

Collaboration with scientist Dr. Laura Parducci

Climate change artist Jill Pelto has been collaborating with an international science team for the last few years. The team is based in Sweden, Norway, and Italy. The primary collaborator on this project is Dr. Laura Parducci, a paleo-ecologists currently based in Rome. Jill created five paintings for the team that tell a story about how Laura and her co-workers do their field research, what they find, how they use the data, and why that’s important today.

This painting is the third in the series — depicting what is found in those sediment cores taken from lake bottoms and bogs. The scientists can look at each layer individually. Within are ancient pollen grains and seeds from various plant species. They are preserved, although not always perfectly. I painted these based on microscope images my collaborators sent me. The pollen grains are the more rounded, smoother shapes, whereas the seeds take many forms. The seeds would actually be much bigger than the pollen, but I wanted to depict them in the same amount of detail. There is a blue graph line to the right of the core, this shows the percentage of spruce grains with depth in the core. As the strata transitions to more grey (inorganic) material, the spruce pollen grains are no longer present. This again represents a time when the region where this core was taken would have been covered by ice, with little to no trees or plants present. 

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