NORTH CASCADE GLACIER CLIMATE PROJECT
Interdisciplinary Art, 2020-2023 Field Seasons
For the last four years I joined Dr. Mauri Pelto and the North Cascade Glacier Climate Project as a guest artist, writer, and storyteller. I have shared 33 cumulative days with the team on-site and created at every one of their field sites.
The North Cascade Range holds a special place in my heart, as it was here that I painted outside for the first time in 2010 as a participant in an Inspiring Girls Expedition. That experience was, in many ways, the inspiration for the science communication work I now do. Visiting these landscapes on a long term basis provides a unique opportunity to observe the impacts of climate change firsthand, which I document in paintings, words, photos, and video. In the galleries below I share a selection of paintings and snippets of writing. It is a long term goal to incorporate my interdisciplinary story paintings from this location and others across the west into a book.
“The summit of Mount Baker is coated in a layer of dirt, and the mountain is more melted out than I have ever seen it. The exposed blue ice that I paint is visible from the rocky moraine below to the top of the peak, and the normally large white snowfields are smaller than the swaths of ice. It is beautiful to see, and the patterns enchanting to paint. But this other-worldly beauty carries an undercurrent of sadness. I met this glacier 11 years ago, and it is melting before my eyes. Disappearing in all too human time.”
- Field journal, August 10, 2021
