There is a mystery to our climate that is visible yet elusive. To help elevate awareness around climate and it’s affect on us, I create charts using photographs I made of the ocean and clouds while at sea in the ITCZ. The Intertropical Convergence Zone or ITCZ (pronounced 'itch') is a narrow band of weather where the circulating trade winds of the Northern and Southern hemispheres collide. The heat released here drives the regional and global atmospheric circulation and is the birthplace of all hurricanes.
When I spent twenty seven days in the Pacific Ocean, the weather dictated my life minute by minute. I recorded the surface of the ocean and the strength of the wind hour by hour. The details I focused on in my remote location while at sea have become my pilot through an imperiled life today: wispy white cirrus float below dense blue cumulonimbus and darkness looms. The path through is interminable threatening to shift and become an iron albatross; waves are an undulating blanket with no rhythm or direction to usher. Observing and charting the dance between the open ocean and its weather makes the observer wonder at our planet's wisdom visible in every direction.
Each layered archival pigment print is hand marked to symbolize shifting but confined hurricane tracks and navigation plot lines then soaked in sea water collected at the ITCZ until it crystallizes in direct sunlight and reacts with the carbon in the ink to cause acidification.
