A Quick and Tragic Thaw is a series of artworks that explores the impact of a warming world using the arctic region as the symbolic apex. Through the study of scholarly research and data, use of mapping technology and satellite imagery, as well as essays, poems, photographs and illustrations, these artworks interpret the more recent story of human influenced climate change. More broadly, this urgent narration recognizes migration movements of biological forms, toxins, and water and is meant to be a meditation on loss and the fragility of the planet.
These artworks interpret and materialize the research of climate science and contextual literature by juxtaposing specific material with content intended to emphasize connections (and implicit irony) between indisputable data and the conceit of how we chose to live. This work also honors the fact that maps are an art form in and of themselves, that they are literate, and a scientific achievement. Read in one way, they are a narrative of human existence. Read another, they are an accounting of our planetary history and the emergence of the Anthropocene epoch