Let’s take a deeper dive into the exhibit on view in the Gallery at 3S Artspace. From artist Lynn Cazabon, Losing Winter is up until March 30th. I'm Shannon Garvey, Marketing Specialist at 3S Artspace.
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I’m in the Main Gallery at 3S Artspace. It’s two in the afternoon, and the sun is streaming through the loading dock windows and onto the concrete floor. Approaching the windows, I see in reverse, the outline of a child standing in the snow on Congress Street in downtown Portsmouth, NH. Stepping back, I see the outline of snowbanks in the 1867 photo arc over the child’s head. I try to remember the last time I saw snow piled that high.
There is so much history in Portsmouth, NH, but in Losing Winter, Lynn Cazabon has brought special attention and a personal touch to the history of our community’s winters. Looking into the ways in which the seasons of our lives have shaped us, she asks the question — how are our collective memories of winter changing as time goes on? What will be left of these memories and experiences as climate change continues to erode what we used to know of the season?
Walking across the gallery, I spend some time watching the vertical screens that are a key part of Cazabon’s exhibit. In one, a 96-year-old, lifelong resident of Newmarket describes how she used to skate on the river behind her house as a child and tells the listener “You people don’t know what snow is.”
Do I? I try to imagine the many ways in which the world has changed in this woman’s lifetime.
On another screen, there is the recognizable fading light of a winter’s golden hour. Outside the paned glass, trees are bare so that you can see through them. The ground is scattered with brown leaf litter. There isn’t a mound of snow in sight.
As I leave the Gallery and walk to my car, the February wind makes me pull my layers in closer, and I’m left asking myself how I’ve seen winter change throughout my life. We’ve had a cold and snowy winter this year in New Hampshire, but with each passing year, I’m left wondering what is the new normal, and what is a fluke. The 2023-2024 winter in New Hampshire was the warmest ever on record. What will next winter hold? And what will the coming generations expect from the season?
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Losing Winter is an ongoing participatory artwork and archive of memories and emotions about winter, revealing the personal and cultural ties we have to the season and reflecting upon what we are collectively losing due to climate change impacts on seasonal patterns.
The project addresses the phenomenon of environmental amnesia, wherein with each new generation, the changed or degraded state of the environment is perceived as normal, by preserving personal memories about the season as it was in the past in a particular location.
“The seed that grew into Losing Winter started with a rediscovery of a photograph of myself as a young teenager taken by my father in southeast Michigan where I grew up,” said the artist, Lynn Cazabon. “The image sparked a visceral memory in me of skating on Lake Saint Clair, a lake that was an important part of my childhood. This led me to think about how that lake no longer freezes reliably for skating any more and that the winter I experienced there as a child is not the same as the winter my nephews who live there experience.”
Losing Winter is an exhibition built on site-specific interviews, research, and creation. The first realization of Losing Winter took place in 2018 in Bucharest, Romania with the National Museum of Contemporary Art.
“In Romania, I recorded memories from over 100 people and also created a video featuring custom-made ice sculptures that portrayed images from a selection of the memories. The project was always conceived to be ongoing and site-specific, each time responding to the location and gathering memories from people who live there,” said Lynn Cazabon. Since then there have been iterations of Losing Winter in and about Maryland, Massachusetts, and the Netherlands.
For the 3S Artspace exhibit of Losing Winter, Lynn interviewed residents of Portsmouth across generations.
Losing Winter features photographs, videos, and sounds of the winter season in Portsmouth and the Seacoast region. 3S Artspace fostered connections between the artist and community residents to record memories, as well as Portsmouth High School students, who created original artworks in response to the recordings, both included in the exhibit.
“For this exhibition, I worked with Portsmouth High School students (with help from art teachers Sarah Mundy and Eric Moore), asking the students to view the recorded memories and to create artworks inspired by them while also reflecting on their own memories of winters,” said Lynn Cazabon.
“3S has received a number of submissions from artists whose work addresses climate change. What drew me to Lynn’s work, in particular, was her desire to explore the emotional side of climate change through multi-generational community engagement,” said Beth Falconer, Executive Director of 3S Artspace. “Her work is personal, and the result is a fascinating blend of multimedia artwork centered around human stories. We are pleased that this exhibition, while being unique to our region and community, will join a portfolio of exploration around climate change that Lynn has done around the world.”
“I [Lynn Cazabon] hope that the exhibition will inspire people to reflect on their own memories about winter and other seasons, to consider what we are losing, and to discuss this with others.”
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Losing Winter is on display in the Gallery at 3S until March 30th.
Please join us for: Losing Winter Artist Talk and Q&A with Lynn Cazabon:
1 - 2pm in the Gallery
Free and open to the public
In conjunction with the exhibit, we also invite the public to the screening of 300 Miles Melting: Film Screening and Q + A with POW and Torey Lee Brooks, sponsored by Treeline Outfitters on March 20th.
300 Miles Melting is a documentary film that explores climate change, winter recreation, and skiing 300 miles up the state of Vermont. A Q&A will follow the screening. Featured panelists will be announced soon!
You are always welcome to come enjoy Losing Winter during the Gallery’s open hours!
Thurs - Sat 11 AM - 6 PM
Sunday 12 - 5 PM
The Gallery is free and open to the public with the generous support of our sponsors, donors, and members.