Reflection

Living every day in this place we humans call home, I realized it's not just ours. This planet belonged to animals long before humans even existed. With this in mind, I thought about how we are mindlessly creating and releasing toxic fumes and greenhouse gases into the Earth, acting self-centered, without considering the 11,000 species of animals that have done nothing to deserve this. This led me to focus on the polar bears. Polar bears are among the many species of Arctic animals losing their homes due to global warming and the melting of their habitat. Creating this piece made me feel a mix of worry for the planet and determination to inspire change. Through this art piece, my message was clear; our constant high demands (shown on the arm/hand) are leading to people feeling the need to make more, waste more, and spend more, just to keep the human race happy. All of this manufacturing and overproduction leads to greenhouse gasses and then to the rapid growth of heat inside our planets atmosphere (shown by the smoke from the factories heating up the pot). The heat is gradually melting, and decreasing the amount of space the polar bears have to survive in and soon, none of them will have a place to call home, the polar bears will go extinct (shown by the melting of the ice and the polar bear being lowered into the boiling pot).