In the summer of 2012, Anne Covell and her family were peacefully gliding through a lake buried in the wilderness of Montana when her tour guide pointed out something strange. 20 feet wide and stretching out as far as the eye can see, a clear-cut swath of barren land splits the wild northern forest into its American and Canadian sides.
She returned home curious, and discovered in her research that this patch of land — aptly named “The Slash” — stretched for all 5,525 miles of the United States-Canadian border.
Covell was immediately hooked. All of a sudden, she’d become fascinated by borderlands: the intersections between the wildness of nature and the boundaries we build. This research culminated in her piece, “Towards a Just Landscape,” which Covell presented to the 5C community this last week.
Covell explores the connections between humanity and its surrounding world through her intricate book art — manipulating the book’s materials to express the ways in which the human race shapes its environment.
On Sept. 29, audiences filed into the Bette Cree Edwards Humanities Building for Covell’s presentation, “Artist’s Books and Environment: How Humans Shape the Natural World.” This presentation was hosted by Scripps College as a part of their fall 2025 Frederic W. Goudy Lecture series.
Throughout the lunchtime talk, Covell showcased a selection of works depicting environmental issues such as invasive species, rising sea levels and deforestation. She discussed the different techniques, prior research and inspirations that contributed to her pieces, highlighting “Towards a Just Landscape” and “History of a Felling.”
These pieces both drew inspiration from that summer afternoon when she first discovered “The Slash,” and her subsequent fascination with the borders between humanity and wilderness.
Christina Ranney, the assistant to the core director and administrative coordinator of core curriculum at Scripps, especially resonated with these pieces.
“I am Canadian and found the piece a beautiful representation of the space that divides the U.S. and Canada,” Ranney said. “[It] touched my memory of what the border represents, and the physical reflection of the space in her art is lovely.”
While much of Covell’s work reflects the interactions between human activity in the natural world, much of her other artwork provides insight into the future of this complex relationship. She showcased, for example, the piece “Sea Change,” a collection of hypothetical maps that depict what the state of Florida would look like at varying heights of the sea level rising.
Covell worked on this piece during her fellowship with the University of Florida under their Coffey Residency for Book Arts program, which invites artists to explore resources from the Special and Area Studies Collections (SASC) at the George A. Smathers Libraries.
During this time, she was invited to create a piece of book art related to Florida, which led her to want to depict the impact of sea level rising on the state’s geography.
When browsing through the SASC, Covell came across an anthology of Sanborn Maps, a format for maps commonly used to depict the layouts of cities across the United States throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Seeing the evolution of urban areas inspired Covell to create a similar system for theoretical scenarios of what Florida could look like if the sea level were to rise between 2 to 10 feet.
“I had an epiphany,” Covell said. “This is the perfect way to talk about sea change, the perfect way to talk about sea level rise, because we are sitting with these predictions for what is possible,” Covell said.
This piece stood out to Tia Blassingame, associate professor of art at Scripps, who praised Covell’s creative process.
“I definitely was intrigued by the whole process of ‘Sea Change’… just sort of tying archival research through special collections, also [through] field research as well,” Blassingame said. “And I felt like [the presentation] really encapsulated her process really well. I feel like it was very timely as well.”
When the floor opened for questions, one audience member asked Covell if she plans to use her art as a tool to fight for environmental justice, or if she is creating purely as an outlet for self-expression. While Covell explained that her work leans more towards the latter, she hopes that it can be an instrument for change in the future.
“I think it comes from a place of needing to get it out of my body because I just have to make it, so I do, but [it would be] wonderful if it can make an impact,” Covell said. “I think [if] more people get into special collections, see the work and experience it, more exhibitions can get [this kind of] work out there.”
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