Rebecca Carlton, Artist Talk

Throughout Carlton's talk, she expressed her passion and interest in environmental causes and preservation. Her discussion of preservation comes through in several of her works. The first of which being her trees and leaves (pictured below). Carlton discussed, and gave quantifying numbers (to put into perspective), how few trees there are of certain species all over the world. Carlton explained the process of creating these trees. She did heavy research on the history of the trees and their significance to the land they are on (since she chose trees from all over the world), each individual leaf was shaped by hand, and then tree rings (which tell the age of a tree) were marked as a guide to orientate the leaves. 

Carlton's trees preserve how the leaves of the tree look, but additionally calls awareness to the risk of other endangered trees. She puts these trees forwards, but asks the viewer to think about what else is at risk. 

Another example of preservation is Carlton's bird/language project. She noted in her speech how many languages were spoken today, and how throughout her process of preserving the names of these languages, several of them are not spoken anymore. Her preservation of these languages is similar to that of the trees.