This colorful pair of paintings by Jill Pelto incorporates three line graphs depicting changing environmental conditions, increasing support for environmental protection, and restoration efforts in the Gulf of Maine.
Students will see that art can be a useful tool to convey ideas about science and data.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This resource provides a hopeful perspective, displaying how people can come together and take action to make a difference.
This piece takes scientific data and blends it with artwork for a meaningful multidisciplinary resource for students' exploration.
Additional Prerequisites
It may be helpful to show students on a map where the Great Marsh and National Wildlife Refuge in Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire are located.
This resource provides references for the data presented.
Have students analyze and compare the data represented in this Jill Pelto watercolor painting that also explores effects of rising temperatures and human activities in the Gulf of Maine.
Give students the opportunity to explore the data references listed at the bottom of the resource.
Art classes could take time to learn more about Jill Pelto, her artistic methods, and what fuels the content of her artwork.
Pair students up to have them analyze the data represented in the art, discussing the line graphs and what specific trends they notice.
In groups, have students do a deeper dive into the specific actions people have taken to restore the Great Marsh, such as replanting marsh grass and monitoring sea level rise.
Scientist Notes
This artwork conveys climate change impacts. This resource could be helpful in explaining that art also conveys a message and how, through art, knowledge can be passed on. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
MS-ESS3-3 Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.
5-ESS3-1 Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth’s resources and environment.
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
MS-LS2-1 Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations of organisms in an ecosystem.
National Core Arts Standards
Visual Arts: Standard 7 - Perceive and analyze artistic work.
VA:Re7.1.IIa Recognize and describe personal aesthetic and empathetic responses to the natural world and constructed environments.
VA:Re7.2.IIa Evaluate the effectiveness of an image or images to influence ideas, feelings, and behaviors of specific audiences.
VA:Re7.2.4a Analyze components in visual imagery that convey messages.
Visual Arts: Standard 8 - Interpret intent and meaning in artistic work.
VA:Re8.1.8a Interpret art by analyzing how the interaction of subject matter, characteristics of form and structure, use of media, art-making approaches, and relevant contextual information contributes to understanding messages or ideas and mood conveyed.
VA:Re8.1.IIa Identify types of contextual information useful in the process of constructing interpretations of an artwork or collection of works.
