Reflection

Reflection

I was inspired for this piece by my experiences visiting my grandparents’ home up in Washington State every summer. For as long as I could remember our family and all our cousins would come together, the parents reconnecting while us kids spent most of our time running around the backyard playing hide-and-seek, pretend and whatever game we could invent. These were great memories, but as we got older I began to realize that every summer was warmer than the last. This came to a peak a few years back where temperatures remained in the hundreds for about a week and our family decided not to visit due to wildfires in the area. It was in this that I realized the impact climate change unchecked would have not only on my family’s traditions, but also on the childhoods of kids in the future. To visualize this, I attempted to introduce time into my drawing to show the audience the change I felt coming back every summer. At the far left representing the past the grass is green and healthy, the sky is blue but not baking, and water is abundant. My younger self (the girl in the red shirt) plays outside with her cousins without a care in the world. As we move right towards the present the grass becomes yellow, then brown; plants wither, the thermometer rises and a red glow overtakes everything, which we see at the very far right of the picture comes from a blazing fire beyond the treetops. This fire hangs over my present/future self, but she does not let it drag her down for long; instead she focuses on the memories of her youth as motivation to make more eco-friendly choices in the present so that future generations will get to experience that summer memory instead of what she sees now. The overall mood and theme of this work is meant to be one of both optimism and warning: preserving some of our childhoods is still possible, if we act now, but the clock is ticking, and fire is on the horizon. If we want our children to see the beauty we remember, we’ll have to work for it, without losing hope.