Resurgence

In her second Solo Show at LeMieux Galleries, Pippin Frisbie-Calder bears witness to the improbable ways that nature reasserts and rebounds.

Her show celebrates the recent return of Bald Eagles to our landscape, with more than 350 nesting pairs in Southern Louisiana alone. This body of work is a series of mixed-media silkscreens and woodcuts drawn from photographs and videos taken from years of observation. Many of the pieces were created during her spring residency at the Joan Mitchell Foundation.

LeMieux Galleries, located at 332 Julia Street in New Orleans

November 6th through December 24th, 2021

Watch this video for a guided tour of the exhibition at LeMieux Galleries

Full Artist’s Statement

In Resurgence, her second Solo Show at LeMieux Galleries, Pippin bears witness to the improbable ways that nature reaserts and rebounds.

The Bald Eagle is perhaps Southern Louisiana's greatest recent example. Representing strength, courage, freedom and immortality the Bald Eagle was selected in 1782 to be the symbol of our nation. By the 1960’s there were only four nesting pairs in Louisiana, a devastation brought about by the poisoning effects of DDT and reckless hunting practices. Pippin’s show celebrates the recent return of Bald Eagles to our landscape, with more than 350 nesting pairs in Southern Louisiana alone.

This body of work is a series of mixed-media silkscreens and woodcuts drawn from photographs and videos taken from years of observation. Through a vortex scope from the side of her boat or crouching in the grass, Pippin watched and witnessed the lives of adult eagles bringing rabbits, fish and snakes to the nests to feed the juvenile eagles. The process of observation and documentation remains in the final products with the drawings and prints heavily referencing the collaged photographs taken in the field. 

Of the five nests she watched, only one of them remains in the wake of Ida. The return of the Bald Eagle represents an uncommon but important example of the success of intentional policy change, public education and regulations on companies, prioritizing a species over company profits and in the face of many odds, working. However, in an age of rapidly intensifying storms and climate change it will take more than resilience to survive.

The return of the Bald Eagle is a reward from the hard work of past environmentalists. It is incumbent upon each of us to take up the mantle to create a future that maintains species diversity and the resurgence of the countless thousands of species that are currently threatened or endangered.