Elemental Change: Reframing Our Climate Future

IN GALLERY- APR 21-AUG 5, 2023

Action transforms...giving form to the idea that it is in working against climate breakdown that humanity can create a new and more hopeful story, even if the ending is unknown.

– Peter Friederici

Artworks by Bryan David Griffith, Shawn Skabelund, Larry Stevens,

Kathi Baron, Susan Lamb and Lauren Raine with student contributions

Introduction

By Peter Friederici

Professor, NAU School of Communication and Sustainable Communities Program

“From now on, our actions are always and never too late,” the psychologist Robert Jay Lifton has written of our collective responses to climate change—or, more accurately and to the point, climate breakdown. It is always too late, it is never too late: this is the central paradox of the situation in which we find ourselves. Like a smoker on the verge of quitting again, we know we could have done far better in the past even as we steel ourselves to finally take that hard step.

The paradox unspools in manifold ways. It leaves us with parlous relations between the old—some of whom knew better long ago, and some of whom had the power to do something about it—and the young, who know they are facing futures of a sort their elders did not. It leaves us with anger and regret, a cascade of coulda-woulda-shouldas. It leaves us with a pit-in-the-stomach sensation of dread, a freefall of loss foretold, even as it teaches us to appreciate all the more what we can still see, hear, touch, smell, prize: the glitter of spring runoff, the smell of ponderosa bark, the bouncy calls of pinyon jays flying over, the genuine affection in a neighbor’s voice.

But however much we dissect it into particular inflections of meaning, the paradox remains. It’s easier to imagine that it is simply too late, period, for then we can engage in the time-honored human tendency to pack all the meaning into endings. People with very different beliefs about how humans interact with the global climate have done just that, are doing just that. It’s easier that way.

But those are dead-end stories, quite literally, and though they have an understandable appeal they contribute nothing to the future. They don’t partake of the elaborate dance we humans have always enacted: consuming beauty with one hand while creating it with another, negotiating the boundaries between species, feeling out the nebulous boundary between death and life. It’s through art, through story, that we inch our way forward and come to better understand where we are in time as well as in space.

Events

April 21, 6 – 8 pm • Opening Reception & Speakers
Starting at 6:30 pm: Artists’ Introduction • 7 pm: CLIMATE—A New Narrative, with Peter Friederici – Professor, NAU School of Communication and Sustainable Communities Program, and author, Beyond Climate Breakdown: Envisioning New Stories of Radical Hope, with student presenters Megan Quinn and Frank Telles

May 5, 6 –8 pm • First Friday ArtWalk Reception & Speakers

Starting at 7pm: AIR—It will Surprise You, with David Spence, MD – Climate activist, NAZCCA & Fossil Free Arizona evan LaGuardia – Meteorologist, NWS Flagstaff • Jenna Ortega – Climate Engagement Coordinator, City of Flagstaff

June 2, 6 –8 pm • First Friday ArtWalk Reception & Speakers

Starting at 7pm: WATER— Making the Most Out of Less, with William S. Vernieu – Hydrologist, USGS, (retired)
Larry Stevens, PhD – Director, Springs Restoration Institute • Jon Mason – Hydrologist, USGS Arizona Water Science Center

July 7, 6-8 pm First Friday ArtWalk Reception & Speakers

Starting at 7pm: EARTH— Our Only Option: Use Less & Share More, with Stefan Sommer, PhD – Director of Education, Merriam-Powell Center for Environmental Research, Board of Directors, Northern Arizona Climate Change Alliance, John Taylor – Educator, Director, Terra Birds

August 4, 6 –8 pm • First Friday ArtWalk Reception & Speakers

Starting at 7pm: FIRE—Mitigating One of Our Greatest Threats, with Jay Smith – Forest Restoration Director, Coconino County • Marty Johnson, MA – Sustainability Specialist, Coconino County • Amy waltz, PhD – Director of Science Delivery, Ecological Restoration Institute