Christina Conklin Portfolios

Short version:

Christina Conklin is an artist, researcher, and writer who lives in Half Moon Bay, California. Much of her work concerns the ocean as both site and metaphor, in the context of ongoing climatic and cultural change. A one-time religious studies major, she thinks a lot about the intersection of belief systems and natural systems as they converge and conflict on time scales ranging from the geologic to the genealogic. She co-authored and illustrated The Atlas of Disappearing Places: Coasts and Oceans in a Time of Climate Change (The New Press, 2021), using an ink-on-dried seaweed process.

She is a little obsessed with salt. At the moment she has two fresh grey whale bones curing in her garage, along with various articles of moss-encrusted clothing collected out of local streams.

Long version:

Christina Conklin is an artist, writer, and researcher whose work focuses on developing public dialogue at the intersection of climate and culture. In 1990, she received a B.A. cum laude in religious studies and studio art from Middlebury College, followed by a Thomas B. Watson Fellowship to study the Gaelic language and culture in Scotland. There she worked with local activists and artists, documenting the traditions of an indigenous culture struggling to adapt to modernity.

Christina returned to her native Portland, Oregon, where she worked in the publishing and non-profit sectors for a decade. Having learned to weave in high school, she continued to pursue her passion for the textile arts throughout her twenties, studying dyeing, printing, and stitching techniques with leading teachers. Upon moving to the San Francisco area in 1998, she became a full-time textile artist, showing in regional and national craft exhibitions. During her thirties, she traveled widely and lived in Amsterdam for two years, writing freelance articles on textile artists and traditions, while raising young children.

In 2012, she entered a Master’s of Fine Arts program in textiles at California College of the Arts, where she developed process-based ephemeral works at the intersection of scientific experiment and contemplative practice. Her thesis, Immanence: Reconsidering the Spiritual in Art, explored process philosophy and systems theory as frameworks for an open “trialogue” between three ways of knowing: art, science, and spiritual inquiry.

Christina’s award-winning work has been exhibited in the US, Japan, and Hong Kong. Worlds in the Making: New Ecological Rituals at the University of San Francisco presented interactive artworks through which visitors could explore their personal response-ability regarding climate change. She co-authored and illustrated The Atlas of Disappearing Places: Coasts and Oceans in a Time of Climate Change (The New Press, 2021) using an ink-on-dried seaweed process.

Christina lives in Half Moon Bay, California with her husband and two children. They have vowed never to move farther from the ocean, only closer to it, which leaves them a long, but very narrow, shoreline along which to roam.

The Art of Living in the Both/And

07/19/2021

How do we live in the middle: between systems that aren't working that we nevertheless participate in, and the new societies that we are working to create?

Fluid Times: What Coronavirus and the Climate Crisis Have in Common

03/27/2020

Think of the climate crisis as a slowed-down version of the coronavirus crisis. Both are asking us to work together as one humanity, using all our knowledge and effort to build a healthy planet. Let's get started.

Bio

Short version:

Christina Conklin is an artist, researcher, and writer who lives in Half Moon Bay, California. Much of her work concerns the ocean as both site and metaphor, in the context of ongoing climatic and cultural change. A one-time religious studies major, she thinks a lot about the intersection of belief systems and natural systems as they converge and conflict on time scales ranging from the geologic to the genealogic. She co-authored and illustrated The Atlas of Disappearing Places: Coasts and Oceans in a Time of Climate Change (The New Press, 2021), using an ink-on-dried seaweed process.

She is a little obsessed with salt. At the moment she has two fresh grey whale bones curing in her garage, along with various articles of moss-encrusted clothing collected out of local streams.

Long version:

Christina Conklin is an artist, writer, and researcher whose work focuses on developing public dialogue at the intersection of climate and culture. In 1990, she received a B.A. cum laude in religious studies and studio art from Middlebury College, followed by a Thomas B. Watson Fellowship to study the Gaelic language and culture in Scotland. There she worked with local activists and artists, documenting the traditions of an indigenous culture struggling to adapt to modernity.

Christina returned to her native Portland, Oregon, where she worked in the publishing and non-profit sectors for a decade. Having learned to weave in high school, she continued to pursue her passion for the textile arts throughout her twenties, studying dyeing, printing, and stitching techniques with leading teachers. Upon moving to the San Francisco area in 1998, she became a full-time textile artist, showing in regional and national craft exhibitions. During her thirties, she traveled widely and lived in Amsterdam for two years, writing freelance articles on textile artists and traditions, while raising young children.

In 2012, she entered a Master’s of Fine Arts program in textiles at California College of the Arts, where she developed process-based ephemeral works at the intersection of scientific experiment and contemplative practice. Her thesis, Immanence: Reconsidering the Spiritual in Art, explored process philosophy and systems theory as frameworks for an open “trialogue” between three ways of knowing: art, science, and spiritual inquiry.

Christina’s award-winning work has been exhibited in the US, Japan, and Hong Kong. Worlds in the Making: New Ecological Rituals at the University of San Francisco presented interactive artworks through which visitors could explore their personal response-ability regarding climate change. She co-authored and illustrated The Atlas of Disappearing Places: Coasts and Oceans in a Time of Climate Change (The New Press, 2021) using an ink-on-dried seaweed process.

Christina lives in Half Moon Bay, California with her husband and two children. They have vowed never to move farther from the ocean, only closer to it, which leaves them a long, but very narrow, shoreline along which to roam.

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