THE SHORT OF IT

During a printmaking class in the summer of 2023, I wanted to crystallize some of my feelings regarding the climate crisis into a print. I also wanted to offset it with a second print that would capture a cautious optimism or resilience in the face of such deep angst. This second, more optimistic print would become the piece titled “Better Angels”, which depicted a parent and child elephant marvelling at the beauty of the world.

In the first print, which focused on drawn typography incorporating elements of melting ice caps and rising sea levels, the text reads, ‘Yo sueño con el futuro’, meaning ‘I dream of the future’.

It’s an open-ended enough statement which doesn’t necessarily spell out doom and gloom for the human race: neutral, vague enough to leave room for interpretation, and to invite thought from the viewer on what their own thoughts might be on what the future may be like.

The print was created by using an intaglio (incised carving) etching process to create linework on a 6”x 9” zinc plate. In order to create areas of tone, an aquatint process was utilized: it is similar to the intaglio process in that it requires submerging the zinc plate into a container full of etching acid, but it is different because aquatint can etch broad areas whereas intaglio etching only incises linework.

THE LONG OF IT

The topic of climate change and environmental degradation is one I spend a lot of time thinking about.

There is probably something to be said about thinking too much about such an enormous and daunting subject. I often wonder how other people feel about the climate. It’s, in my opinion, the single greatest existential challenge we face, possibly only rivaled by the existence of nuclear weapons.

Most people probably don’t spend that much time thinking about it: if they did, they would struggle with the kinds of depression and anxiety I feel! I don’t doubt that my thoughts envisioning the future, influenced by countless reports of the ocean catching fire or the smoke clouds from cataclysmic wildfires blotting out the sun for weeks, are foundational in those dark feelings.

Sometimes I wish we didn’t live in this time, having to grapple with this kind of challenge. It’s so large and seems so daunting, to the point that it’s very easy to become depressed and feel powerless in its presence.

In my youth, as I think many of us did and perhaps still do to some extent, I thought this might be solved through our individual acts such as recycling and buying electric cars. As I’ve grown older, those ideas have been challenged. I have probably done alot of ‘doomscrolling’, as I have wanted to understand the problem and what we can do to solve it, so I am left unsure about how biased and skewed my worldview might be. But it seems very clear to me, even without my depression-colored glasses on, that our individual acts to care for the environment and cut down our carbon footprint, though very necessary, cannot be the sole solution to this problem.

There are too many oil companies and climate-denying businessmen and lobbyists that have too much concentrated power for that to occur. And my anxiety is, the people with the power to make actual change won’t do so because it is not profitabble to do so. It’s my fear that things will not change until it’s too late.

Enough with trying to predict what the future of the world might be. I don’t know! All I know is, I care, and I’m a bit confused and kind of scared. But I have to believe that there’s a way forward somehow. Somehow.