Environmental Art - Semester Final

For our semester final, my group (Barbie, Madison, Jared and I) created a piece of environmental art. Our inspiration was the White Pine, which is both native to Idaho and nearly extinct due in large part to Blister Rust. We wanted to create a painting that incorporated an image of a healthy and thriving white pine and also one infected with blister rust and on the edge of dying. These two represent the life-cycle and different realities for the white pine. We used mostly oil paint on canvas and then put pieces of bark, needles, pine cones and other pieces of the tree onto the painting and sealed them. By doing this we were able to learn a lot about the background of the white pine and also how to recognize and differentiate it from other types of pines and trees. One of the most distinct features is that it's needles come in bundles of five and are smaller and finer than many of the other pines in it's family. We are hoping that this piece of art can bring to the public the diminishing reality of the white pine and possibly urge them to re-introduce them into the area.