ESTEVAN — Saskatchewan's Madeleine Greenway and Amy Snider are using their work to explore the emotional and physical impacts of climate change in their exhibition Earth Bound, now on display at the Estevan Art Gallery & Museum’s Gallery 2.
The show, which runs from Feb. 7 to March 28, brings together Greenway’s intricate prints and drawings with Snider’s conceptual photos of her clay sculptures and installations to examine the intersection of food, land and environmental anxiety.
Greenway, a Regina-based printmaker, creates work inspired by her home garden, reflecting on the joys and challenges of growing food in an uncertain climate. Snider, a master of fine arts graduate from the University of Regina, crafts fragile ceramic plates from compressed clay dust, symbolizing drought and the erosion of natural resources.
The two artists’ collaboration emerged organically – literally – from the soil beneath Greenway’s garden, which sits atop a clay bank. Snider used that clay in her sculptures, deepening their shared exploration of land and sustainability.
Their friendship played a role in shaping the exhibition, with conversations about climate change, loss and resilience influencing their creative process.
“When I’ve been at my most depressed and hopeless, Madeleine has sat with me in her garden and given me solace and care,” Snider and Greenway said in an interview with EAGM director/curator Tye Dandridge-Evancio. “Her food and her friendship nurtured me.”
While Greenway’s work leans toward celebrating nature’s abundance, Snider’s practice embodies grief and uncertainty about the planet’s future. Despite their different perspectives, both artists hope their work fosters reflection on environmental care.
“Art … can convey the weight of a difficult situation in ways that that journalism and other forms of media cannot,” the artists said. “Climate change is a crisis of care at this point – the vast majority of people acknowledge that it is real and dangerous; getting people to care enough to do something about it is the challenge right now. Art can play a role in this challenge.”
Earth Bound is open to the public at the Estevan Art Gallery & Museum until March 28.
