| Earthly Eruptions; 2005 |
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| by Susan Van Dongen |
 We usually don't pay much attention to the concept of a living Earth, but the recent earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean were a reminder that our planet is, indeed, alive. Amid the stories of devastating human loss, we're hearing words like "plate tectonics" in the news for the first time — things normally discussed only by geologists.
"It's so overwhelming — it's hard to think about geology when you consider the human tragedy," says painter, photographer and world traveler Diane Burko. "But the Earth is alive and that's what got me interested in volcanoes. They're a phenomenon that brings you in touch with how dynamic the Earth is. It is always growing and moving and changing and you can see it happening when you see the lava flowing into the water in Hawaii."
Ms. Burko has visually celebrated the vistas of the American West and Alaska, the coastlines of Maine, California and France, the majesty of the Alps and the Himalayas for some 30 years. More recently, she is sharing the living phenomenon of volcanic lands — Iceland, Italy and Hawaii — with viewers. Her new exhibit, Landscapes: Paint/Pixel, features Ms. Burko's oil paintings, but it is also the first time she'll show inkjet prints of her medium-format photography.
The Philadelphia resident pays homage to places where the planet seems most alive — the edges of continents, active volcanoes, glaciers and hot springs. On a trip to Iceland, she even stood in the rift between the North Atlantic and Eurasian tectonic plates. Ms. Burko says she was awed to be standing between the Earth's "moving parts." Fortunately, there was no geological activity that day.
She finds Iceland particularly remarkable because it is so very alive. Resting on the rift between two giant tectonic plates — whose movements create the friction which in turn causes hot springs to bubble and lava to flow — the country is constantly in flux. Ms. Burko traveled there in the summer of 2004, making pictures and painting the spectacular glacial waterfalls she and her husband discovered. "The reason I went to Iceland is because it is one of the most volcanic countries in the world," she says. "It sits on the North Atlantic ridge and there are about 500 volcanoes that are active at any one time. You really experience the workings of the Earth there. It's also a very empty country and we were able to explore it as though no one else was there. "My fascination with volcanoes began about five or six years ago," Ms. Burko continues. "But I was interested in monumental geological phenomenon long before then. I always liked looking down on the Pacific Ocean from the California cliffs. I painted from photographs of the Alps and the Himalayas back in the '70s, then I did a series on the Grand Canyon — that was the first time I worked from my own photographs."
Known for her adventurous spirit, Ms. Burko has scaled mountainous terrain, trudged to unmarked spots on the map and scurried to the edge of cliffs to experience nature at its most spectacular and record it visually. She's also been observing Earth from the skies, in small planes and helicopters. Her first airborne nature reconnaissance mission was in 1979, when famed sculptor Jim Turrell flew her over Arizona's Painted Desert, the Grand Canyon and Lake Powell.
The works on paper at Rider are digitally manipulated photographs taken from aircraft over many of the landscapes she has painted. Mount Baker, Mount Rainier and Mount St. Helens are some of the locations Ms. Burko has photographed from the air. She's also looked down on Mount Etna in Sicily and Palami Pali, an active volcano on the big island in Hawaii. You can see the tiny shadows of planes and helicopters in several prints.
"Flying is exhilarating," she says. "The most dramatic experience I ever had was in a small helicopter flying... over the Big Island. I flew over that with the door off, which was such an incredible experience. I was hovering over molten lava spilling into the sea, with clouds of steam rising up, over skylights (openings through the hardening lava crust), and over smoke coming up from Kilauea. "But then I also walked on the lava at another time," she continues. "We were quite lucky. We saw what they call 'couching,' which is when a big chunk or 'couch' of lava falls into the water. We were standing on the lava near the edge and about a football field away we saw this cliff of lava suddenly fall in, with the colossal steam and color. This guy I was with was from Hawaii said it was rare to see this."
Ms. Burko says growing up in Brooklyn, then living in the city of Philadelphia as an adult, makes her hunger for the beauty and scope of nature. Born in 1945, she took art classes as a child at the Brooklyn Museum. Ms. Burko also considered a career as a psychiatrist and chose Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., because the school provided a strong art department as well as other options. She found a mentor there in Arnold Bittleman, who had been at Black Mountain College in North Carolina.
After graduating from Skidmore, she continued her study of painting, earning a master's of fine arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Fine Arts. Represented in Philadelphia by the Locks Gallery, Ms. Burko has shown her work extensively around the country, including the 2003 exhibit Extreme Landscapes at the Hunterdon Museum of Art in Clinton.
Naming Monet, Van Gogh, Bonnard and Courbet as just a few influences, Ms. Burko's work is in numerous public collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Pennsylvania Academy of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as well as the James A. Michener Museum in Doylestown, Pa. Her travels have taken her from Costa Rica to Alaska, and she also has been in residence at Giverny, France. Her next dream trip — combining exploration with creativity — would be to New Zealand. "What's amazing with landscapes is that you can reproduce that joy of discovery even though you're not the first one doing it," Ms. Burko says. "No one can be Lewis and Clark again. But it doesn't matter. If you can explore places that aren't tourist traps, you're still discovering." |
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| PacketOnline.com; Jan. 14th, 2005 |
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