Alexis Rockman on: Artwork, Science, and Environmental Storytelling Part One
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Phenomenon
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/11/20
Alexis Rockman, an up-to-date American artist born in 1962, discusses his fascination with natural history, sparked by early visits to the American Museum of Natural History. He reflects on influences like King Kong and Bride of Frankenstein, and shares his views on science communication, AI artwork, and environmental activism. Rockman critiques market-driven journalism, celebrates Stephen Jay Gould and E.O. Wilson, and offers a skeptical but hopeful outlook on the longer term. With humour and honesty, he explores inventive process, despair over climate inaction, and the enduring need for storytelling grounded in scientific and ecological consciousness.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So right at this moment, we are right here with Alexis Rockman. Born in 1962, he is an American modern artist identified for his vivid, typically speculative landscapes that discover the intersection of nature and civilization. Raised in New York Metropolis, his frequent visits to the American Museum of Natural History, the place his mom briefly labored as an assistant to anthropologist Margaret Mead’s secretary, ignited his fascination with natural history. He studied animation on the Rhode Island Faculty of Design earlier than incomes a BFA from the Faculty of Visible Arts in 1985. Rockman’s work addresses environmental points reminiscent of local weather change, genetic engineering, and species extinction, with notable exhibitions at establishments just like the Brooklyn Museum and the Smithsonian American Artwork Museum. In 2025, he designed the official Earth Day poster with the theme “Our Planet, Our Future,” emphasizing environmental stewardship and renewable vitality. Thanks very a lot for becoming a member of me right this moment. I respect it.
Rockman: Pleasure.
Jacobsen: So, I did get to go to briefly as a Canadian travelling in the USA on Amtrak, all the best way throughout the USA. I used to be very struck by two issues in D.C.: the landscaping and the Smithsonian Nationwide Museum of Natural History. It was so huge in comparison with any museum I’d ever been to. It goes on perpetually. I couldn’t discover all of it throughout the half day I used to be there. Half day. Sure, I do know. I felt so… touristy. One other factor that struck me about D.C. is that the landscaping and gardening are finished higher than wherever else I noticed in the USA.
Rockman: It’s about public areas and energy.
Jacobsen: Sure, so, have your early experiences on the American Museum of Natural History and your publicity to Margaret Mead had a profound or a minor affect in your inventive path?
Rockman: Which?
Jacobsen: The expertise of going to the American Museum of Natural History and the impacts of Margaret Mead.
Rockman: Margaret Mead—my mom was the assistant to her secretary. So, I do know who Margaret Mead is. She’s an attention-grabbing determine. My mother discovered her abusive, for those who learn between the strains. By some means, she nonetheless beloved anthropology. Nonetheless, the museum profoundly affected me and shaped my notion and expectations about what nature must be. I’ve finished a good quantity of travelling, I’ve to admit. I typically secretly want that nature appeared extra like a diorama than some disgraced, eroded, or human-induced clear-cut forest—or one thing like that.
Jacobsen: How has King Kong—and is it The Bride of Frankenstein?—influenced you?
Rockman: You probably did your homework developing with these two motion pictures! They’re good examples of unbelievable world-building. King Kong and The Akeley Corridor on the AMNH share a number of cultural DNA and have been made across the identical time within the early 1930s. They’re each taking a look at nature as a theatrical expertise. Kong is horizontal tabletop miniatures, glass portray with cease movement animation fashions, and the dioramas are the identical thought, although lifesize with taxidermy with painted cycloramas. So that you’re coping with a extremely constructed stagecraft illustration of nature that could be very expressive and atmospheric. Each owe an enormous debt to artwork historical past, and Kong’s look relies on engravings by the good French illustrator Gustave Doré. By way of Bride of Frankenstein, that is among the nice witty horror black comedies. Once more, it’s a really stunning manufacturing, very theatrical, and an unbelievable cinematic expertise. Nice writing. They’ve nice scores from European émigrés, reminiscent of Franz Waxman for Bride of Frankenstein and Max Steiner for King Kong.
Jacobsen: How was your expertise collaborating with Stephen Jay Gould?
Rockman: Nicely, I by no means collaborated with him. I knew him, and browse his books, which I like. He wrote about my work, not me personally. He’s one of many science writers I love most on the planet—having the ability to convey so many concepts collectively. He wrote two essays about my work—one in 1994 and one in 2001, proper earlier than he died. That was a thrill to be taken critically by somebody I admired a lot.
Jacobsen: What are your ideas about E.O. Wilson?
Rockman: Wilson—I like him too. He was an excellent gentleman within the historical past of science and an excellent popularizer. His life’s work was the love of ants, in fact… After I returned from Guyana in 1995, I created a collection of portraits of ants impressed by his analysis. He wrote me an exquisite rejection letter once I requested him to put in writing one thing for a e-book I used to be doing! By some means, a few years later, I ended up on the duvet of one in every of his books.
Jacobsen: What analysis in science has fascinated you probably the most and led to a murals you’re most happy with?
Rockman: I don’t assume there’s only one. There are such a lot of issues in regards to the historical past of science that I’m fascinated by, and it’s an ongoing factor. I’ve labored very intently with scientists on sure tasks. To be clear, I do tasks which have units of guidelines, and I’ve ignored science on others—for instance, once I labored on the film Life of Pi, it had nothing to do with science. It was purely about world-building and fantasy. I identified to Ang Lee that there would by no means be meerkats on an island in the midst of the ocean as a result of they reside within the desert. And he stated, “Nicely, it is a fantasy,” and I rapidly realized he was proper.
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