Welcome to The Leaving Earth Project

Leaving Earth is a socially engaged artist book project that fosters connection with nature through community workshops and collaborations all over the world. Leaving Earth is a series of sculptural artist books that document textures and atmospheres from our home planet. The books are an extension of my painting practice in that they are about a deep engagement with the climate-crisis-challenged landscapes we inhabit.

Click here to meet the institutions and artists who are supporting the Leaving Earth Project by providing material or financial support.

Inspired by dystopian science fiction and climate predictions, I have been making sculptural books as aide-mémoires - a French term that translates as an 'aid to memory'.

These concertina books are ways of recording and evoking textures and atmospheres that are being lost due to climate change and overdevelopment. They can be folded, pocketed, and kept to remind us of the unique experience of being in the natural spaces of planet Earth. I imagine a future space traveler taking one with them to remind them of home.

Like a message in a bottle to the future, these books are poems about light, texture, and shadow patterns made from different kinds of documentation - printmaking, photography, drawing, painting, and foraging textures and materials from nature.

As an eco-social project, the goal of Leaving Earth Project is always to engage people with our beautiful planet. That’s why many of the materials I use to make the books are being created in Leaving Earth workshops. Hosted by museums, environmental collectives, and community art spaces, the workshops invite participants to engage with and respond to their environment.

The Leaving Earth Project is addressing climate change with a quiet activism. Quiet activism is a term used to describe grass-roots interventions that address the climate emergency at a local and personal level. At the heart of the Leaving Earth Project is my belief that quiet actions can shift perceptions, educate, and generate transformative change.

More About Amanda Mears’ Leaving Earth Project

Why Is the Book Series Called Leaving Earth?

While this project is couched in science fiction, we actually do live in a time where climate change and habitat loss are very real concerns for life on Earth, and billionaires are rumoured to be building themselves intergalactic arks in which to leave Earth.

Habitat loss means fewer wild spaces for plants, animals, and humans. Access to natural spaces is also being impacted – in LA the entire mountain areas north of the city were recently closed to public access due to increased fire risk. Campsites are regularly closed for the same reason. North American National Parks are considering a lottery system for access and rising water levels threaten the coastal villages in Devon, England where I spent my childhood, as well as countless other coastal cities and island nations. Biodiversity has reduced enormously in living memory. My father remembers a very different climate growing up in England: more birds and wild animals, a smaller less impactful population, and a more direct connection to the land and nature.

“Sometimes I picture a botany book in the future saying something like, “The lilac is now extinct. Its fragrance is thought to have been something similar to … and then what can they say?”  – Andy Warhol, “A to B”

Leaving Earth is an innovative memory cache that speaks simultaneously to our most precious memories of this world, our interstellar future, and the sense of loss so many of us already feel in the present.

Imagine Yourself at the Museum of Art and History on Mars

I like to imagine the Leaving Earth books displayed at a future Museum of Art and History on Mars – something from the old planet with a rich art historical heritage. Each one a three-dimensional sculptural concertina evoking through color and texture the visual experience of being on Earth. 

To museum-visiting Martians, the books would be a glimpse into the unimaginable visual and tactile richness of a lost planet, while to today’s earthlings they are clarion call to conserve and value what we have.

What Would You Miss Most About Life on Earth?

In Tarkovsky’s movie of Stanisław Lem’s novel “Solaris,” we find the astronaut Kris Kelvin walking through the countryside near his home before leaving for outer space. He looks at the mist, the tree shadows, and the weeds winding in the flow of the river. He caches these memories. He may never return to Earth. He is experiencing the loss of these things before he loses them. In the current climate situation, where natural spaces are under threat and many no longer have the privilege of access to nature, we are all like Kris Kelvin because we too may only be left with memories.

“What did that word mean to me? Earth?” ― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

What effects of the light, what views and experiences would you most miss from our home planet? If you found yourself about to board an interplanetary Ark, what would you want to take with you to remind you of what you are leaving behind? Perhaps a book that reminds you of all that you once had?

How are the Leaving Earth Books Being Made?

Each book in the Leaving Earth Project is made from different materials and methods of documentation and imaginative response. Many of the materials are gathered through free public workshops and community outreach. Presence in nature is the central theme of Leaving Earth so workshops focus on observing and recording responses to the natural environment visually or through writing.

Workshops for Leaving Earth have been supported by institutions including The University of Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum (UK) and The Torrance Art Museum (Los Angeles). Artist collaborators from around the world are also bringing their communities’ unique voices and techniques to the project.

Each book is assembled by me, often in collaboration with other artists. All participants’ names are recorded in the book they contributed to.

How Will People Experience The Leaving Earth Project?

Because the books (mostly) fold up, they are easily transported. My hope is that Leaving Earth will travel widely to libraries and schools, government buildings, and other community spaces as well as traditional art venues.

Portable and accessible, reminiscent of a pop-up book, they engage diverse audiences. Leaving Earth is not dystopian or didactic, it is an aide-mémoire of a beautiful, diverse planet. It is both a celebration and a warning. I hope that Leaving Earth will continue its life as an ongoing conversation about climate change and global equity.

“We really had it all didn’t we.” - Leonardo DiCaprio – “Don’t Look Up”, 2021

Leaving Earth Project Press