“Human beings have always been on this path to extract what we can from the environment around us for financial gain, oftentimes without a mind to the kind of environmental costs that come along with that sort of industry.” — Naomi Slipp, chief curator, New Bedford Whaling Museum

One of my all-time favorite museums is the New Bedford Whaling Museum. It is a place where art, science and history intersect, where you can be caught in wonder and be educated at the same time.

This summer they offer an exhibition that places Scrimshaw in a context larger than the whaling industry it was traditionally associated with. The Wider World & Scrimshaw juxtaposes objects from their own collection with other items representing the carved decorative arts and material culture made by Indigenous community members from across the Pacific and Arctic.

Scrimshaw is the incising, engraving, carving or fashioning of primarily ivory and bone (and sometimes other natural and man-made materials) into works of art or other decorative or useful articles. The origin of the word is debated, likely an English nautical slang expression meaning “to waste time.” Carving on ivory and bone had been done by indigenous cultures for centuries before it took off as a trend among sailors in the whale fishing industries. Being on trips that could last up to three years, these folks needed something to pass the time.

These days it is hard to come by the original materials, so there are a lot of “fakeshaws” appearing – yes, that is actually a term used by dealers in those art objects. Faux ivory is made from molded polymers or celluloid plastics, which yellows with age like real ivory. The fakes are often enhanced with added materials during the casting process to give them the color, grain, patina, and weight of ivory. (Ref.) Motifs are taken from the original scrimshaw craft and applied to these fake surfaces.

This is very different from what is also shown in the museum’s current exhibition: new work by Duke Riley who uses scrimshaw on plastic objects found during clean-up actions of beaches. His contemporary approach to depict environmental degradation fits perfectly with the museum’s mission to educate about the cost of industrial extraction and pollution, and he does not disguise the true nature of his canvases.

He paints the found objects, laundry detergent jugs and plastic bottles, flip-flops, cassette tapes, with colors that mimic ivory or whale bones, and then carves or inscribes motifs onto them that are done in the style of traditional scrimshaw engravings, but portray contemporary pollution and the industrial figures behind the environmental destruction.

Riley’s work is deadpan funny, yet instills horror for those of us interested in environmental protection at the same time. From oil barons to marine creatures, he spins a tale that connects the dots from the beginnings of the whaling industry to the polluted oceans we are navigating today. More details about his artistic approach and philosophy can be found here.

What registered with me was the fact that the artist alluded to his frequent visits to the Whaling Museum as a child as an inspiration to link traditional craft as exhibited there to present-day conceptual ideas. In some funny ways, the same thing happened to me – although I visited only once 5 years ago, I was prompted to mix what I had photographed there – paintings of whaling expeditions – with my own representation of the needs to protect our oceans. The visit gave rise to the series Postcards from Nineveh, with the photographs superimposed onto shots of current landscapes or cultural landmarks. My show’s opening at the Newport Visual Art Center coincided with the first Covid Lock-Down in 2020, so hung unseen for many months.

I have written about the specifics of my approach here. The upshot, though, (and I am recycling my thoughts here) is that as artists we represent a subject. “Reasoning about and constructing representations helps us to grasp new perspectives and to learn about the world. In this sense art and science share a common core; the human ability to construct and interact with representations in order to learn about what it is that they represent.”

In the case of environmental degradation, we have to figure out ways of representing what is or isn’t done to the environment, the costs of inaction, and somehow capture what is at risk if we don’t change course. Luckily, with photomontage, we can go beyond what exists in real life (as depicted by photography) and convey something that is constructed, giving the artist the leeway to represent possibilities, anomalies, products of imagination, just like painters do. By combining, manipulating, and altering photographs it creates something that cannot be found in reality and yet convey a sense of alternate reality, of imagined recourse. And all this because I saw all these whaling-related treasures at the New Bedford museum.

Here are some samples.

Music today is a tribute to sailors. Shanties and ballads.