Margaret Bellafiore

Now over 70. Post pandemic (or is it?). Still questioning the survival of not just me but all life as we know it. My granddaughter was just born when she came to my installation at Mobius then located at Harrison Avenue in the South End. Entitled “Global,” a huge chunk of ice melted onto the floor where I had drawn with powdered chalk animals and plants endangered by rising temperature. The audience had the option of walking on them or around them. Would they destroy them? What saddens and even infuriates me, fourteen years later, is that two scientists from the Union of Concerned Scientists (ucsusa.org) came to my reception and spoke of climate forecasts for New England. Like rising seas, like days over 90 degrees F, like torrential rainfall, and a lot more. And it was possible then to use political will to slow it all down. We didn’t.

In 2018, I drew plants and animals that were vulnerable to increases in temperature due to global warming along the paths of the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston. This was part of the “Transactions” exchange with Mobius and artists from Northern Ireland.  

 I am now on the board of Fore River Residents Against the Compressor Station (nocompressor.com) working to stop the expansion of fossil fuels locally/globally. My performance, “Black Widow,” focuses on the danger of living close to a toxic methane gas compressor station in Weymouth, MA. There are 3100 children living within one mile of the incineration zone.