This is the first of two series exploring the emotional impact of climate change. Climate Casual relates the struggle to process information about climate change and the transition to sustainability in the crowded informational space of the internet. We receive almost all news and data related to climate change via the internet. Yet with so much stimuli competing for our attention, it can be difficult to sort what is truly urgent from what is passing, fun and frivolous. News of record-setting wildfires appears appear in the same scrolling feed as cat memes and advertisements, and purveyors of disinformation seek to muffle factual urgencies. Climate Casual manipulates forms taken from virtual news feeds and mundane objects that feature in the digital sphere, particularly the scissors “cut and paste” and paper clips.

Created in the Spring and Summer of 2021 during a period when the internet, classrooms and remote learning were subjects of national import, the space of a classroom began to emerge as the series developed. This resulted in works that parodied classroom motivational posters with dark humor about children’s futures with climate change, in the context of the United States’s history of slow, reluctant response to the issue’s urgencies. This was balanced with pieces that offered a more optimistic view of a sustainable future being possible. The motif of children creating art projects about building a sustainable future, all the while existing amidst an environment of virtual information overload, become a focus which would inform the following series, Possible Landscapes. Spinning off from the art movements of Casualism (coined by Sharon Butler), Post-internet and Pop art, this series of paintings, prints, photos, assemblages and installation was developed to be ‘fast and loose’, in tandem with the speed of gigabytes and gigafires.

Media: Oil on canvas and panel, intaglio print (line etching, aquatint, soft ground, coffee lift), lithography, digital collage, inkjet prints, photography, various found, recycled and readymade objects..