I remember holding a soggy sketch in my hands and feeling my throat constrict. In the watery patterns of watercolored ice and wavering ink lines slipping away with each drop of rain, something shifted in how I understood this place. Climate change was no longer an abstract concept impacting people and places far away. It was here, now, and colliding with a landscape I had come to know like a friend. This painting, and this place, were catalysts for my current work.

Since that moment, I returned nearly every year to visit the Easton Glacier and bear witness to it’s loss. Since 1990, the glacier has receded over 465 meters. A distance that is hard to comprehend until you stand in the u-shaped valley carved by the glacier and look up at it. The ice feels so far away, and on the ground at my feet small trees are reclaiming the barren soil left by the glacier’s retreat.

“I hiked to the Easton Glacier alone today, to meet Dr. Pelto and his team. I know the route well now. I follow the memories and faded footprints from the last three years of coming here. Looking out at the peaks rising from the valley, I feel echoes of the joy I felt sketching it for the first time twelve years ago. The threads of a past self woven into the lines of graphite a delicate layers of color. I linger here for a long time, watching the light fade. In my now hard to see painting, the past and present blend in the whorls of pigment.” - Field journal, August 9, 2022

Beginning in 2020, I joined the North Cascades Glacier Climate Project, led by Dr. Mauri Pelto, for parts of their field season. Over the last three years I have spent nearly three weeks creating art alongside them, and integrating their observations and research into paintings. I share all of the paintings from those seasons in the art residency section of my site.

The gallery below shares moments from my time in the North Cascades working to observe, document, and embody in paint the patterns of our warming world.