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The Olympic glow is still warm for nature photographer, Terry McTavish, owner of Pendragon Prints and publisher of the Visible Changes card line. He was thrilled to see one of his images sharing the spotlight with “half-Canadian” Hannah Kearney’s gold medal for moguls. She held it up in an ABC interview, then read what her trainer had written to inspire her, giving the card more screen time than her medal.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/hannah-brings-home-gold-9840316
McTavish jokes that he is Canada’s least known million selling artist.
Although his work can be found in many locations, including Chapters and Indigo stores in the west, he is gratified by the exposure. He hopes that it may lead to greater awareness of his photography, and mission.
His mission, along with giving people a beautiful way to convey their heartfelt messages, is to nourish our emotional connection to our land. If we love the land, he says, if we have a feel for it, we’re more likely to be moved to use the ever increasing wealth of information that we have to take proper care of it.
Notes on nature:
His deep feelings for nature and his insight into humanity’s ecological impact were fostered by growing up on the tattered edge of the wilderness, where it was yielding to the man-made grid.
We hold the fate of the world in our hands, he says. The peril we face due to overpopulation was made very clear to him in his youth by the boom and bust cycles of local rabbits and beaver. He watched as their populations soared, as they stripped the land bare of food, and then died.
He’s confident that people can manage a population crisis better than bunnies and giant rodents.
But first, we have to recognize that all of the environmental crises we keep hearing about stem from the fact that our still rocketing population is already fourteen times our historic norm. Then, we must come to acknowledge, to track and take action on an emergency so long in the making that it’s conditions seem normal, yet so vast and dire that our minds resist its reality.
Notes on the card market:
Terry chose the humble greeting card to bring his images of the natural world to the urban setting because of their potential to touch far more people than other, higher profile mediums.
As it turned out, the card market has the most concentrated ownership and the least open sales channels of any creative industry. So, while building a retail presence and selling over a million cards in the last twenty years, he’s also been doing what he can to marshal efforts to reform the Canadian card industry; to bring it more in line with the more diverse and vital UK model.
It’s a good example of how efforts to help our planet take place on many, often unexpected, fronts. Using recycled paper to make cards? That’s obvious. Trying to promote structural change in the greeting card market so people can find good Canadian cards? Less obvious.
Contact info, for further information, or to arrange an interview, is available via the Contact Us button.
March 29, 2010