I started calling this a daily climate change ritual. I started with the daily newspaper. Stacked up in my studio. Recycling the blue plastic newspaper sleeve. Each day, picking up the newspaper-warmed from the morning sun, dewy, soaking wet from over night rain. Reading the physical newspaper and noting the evidence of climate change.
At an art residency I went to recently, a poet, called it climate catastrophe. In her poem, she said it so simply. Matter of fact. It struck me. I thought of my newspapers. I thought of the daily experience of seeing wild fires in the west, floods in other countries, hurricane preparations, drought, pH balance rising in the sea, shifts in global supply, devastation to countless communities. I keep witnessing each day, unknown to the creative current swooshing around inside me.
I started with the broadsheet, the full page. Then I photograph the paper. Then I tear it up. Then I let is sit in piles, overwhelmed in my stuckedness in finding my process. Then on the summer solstice, the process appear. It came to me like hearing a familiar voice call to you from afar. Try this.