Outliving Glaciers

Artist / Maker April Surgent (American, born 1982)

Date2023

MediumCameo engraved glass, metal bracket

ClassificationsSculpture

Credit LineCommissioned by University Museums. Gift in memory of Lori A. Jacobson from Jason D. Kogan. In the permanent collection, Brunnier Art Museum, University Museums, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.

Object numberUM2023.199abc

Status

Not on view

Collections

University Museums Collections Handbook, 50th Anniv. Edition 2025

CultureAmerican

Label TextFrom the University Museums Collections Handbook, vol. 2, 2025: April Surgent works with an ancient technique that few contemporary glassmakers choose to attempt. Cameo engraving entails precise and painstaking work to carve through layers of various colors of glass to create unique low relief images. Surgent draws on her experiences with several science-funded research grants to inform how she chooses to represent the natural environment. Each research trip, from areas as diverse as Antarctica to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, has yielded a range of breathtaking imagery that later, in her studio, is recorded in glass. There is great emphasis on using her engravings to document the present moment in the face of the accelerated loss of natural habitats and environmental impacts due to climate change. The depictions stand as a testament to the significant change that has already occurred, marking where the land, the sea, and animals are today; yet on this trajectory, the imaged landscape will no longer exist in just a few decades. Outliving Glaciers depicts the Columbia Glacier in Alaska, the second largest tidewater glacier in North America which since the 1980s has retreated twelve miles and more than half of its volume. The engraving captures a moment in time that has already shifted as rapid deglaciation continues.

Locations