 is a science communicator and the way that I'm doing that is especially through painting and art, but there's a few other things I'm doing with combining science and art that I want to share with you as well. So I do science communication through my art, and this is one example for the crop of one of my paintings in the background. And so this painting is showing salmon something across the page and beneath the salmon that jagged line is a graph aligned graph and that graph is showing their population over time, so how it's increased and decreased over the years. And so my goal was to use my painting of the fish my painting of the water all the patterns included to help tell the story of this population change and just bring that graph to life a little bit more. And so before going into more of this work, which is what I have been doing for the last five years i'm going to first go into a little bit about how I got started with this and a little bit about my science background to. So i'm working as an artist in a science communicator the photo on the left is my current studio space right now I just have a studio in my home in Westbrook. But i'm hoping to have a studio space outside of my home in the next year as well, and then in the photo on the right i'm making a painting of. One of the big mountains in Northwestern Washington state called milk baker and I work out there to do research on the glaciers in front of me, so all that the snow and ice covering the mountains and this photo was taken in August, which is why i'm wearing shorts and as well flowers and things around me. And then I have an earth and climate science background as well, I did a double major for my undergrad in studio art and earth science, and then I stayed on to do my master's in earth and climate science. And I really loved that getting to be in the natural sciences allowed me to go travel and get to ask questions about our world and how it changes over time. And so, in the top left i'm in New Zealand, I was taking a sample of that top surface of that boulder to figure out when I slept that boulder there in the past. In the top right i'm in the falcon islands and i'm measuring this thick this deposit of soil next to me. In the bottom left i'm in Antarctica, where I did my master's of science research and that was essentially just studying how that how sensitive the ice she is to warming. And of course that's my my research, which is one little piece of that puzzle it's not solving that question. And in the bottom right I am working on the mountain glaciers in Washington which i'll be talking about a little bit so. i've been working in Washington State for 12 years so every single August I work with a research team called the North cascade glacier climate project. And it's a project that my dad started he's a scientist and specifically a glaciologist and so that means studies glaciers and so. I joined him as a field assistant every August and we're basically studying glaciers like the one behind me, where a lot of that the big mouth. In places like you know Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Canada have have these glaciers covering them, and I think like in Washington alone, there are. I think over 700 glaciers is not this is not like an uncommon thing, and this ice can be you know hundreds of feet thick. And I think the most important or one of the most important things about it in terms of people is that. During the summer season when all the snow and ice is is melting and going into streams that feeds into. A lot of the water systems and the reservoirs for drinking water, they use a lot of hydropower out there and, of course, just on an ecosystem level for providing water for salmon for. providing like the certain climate for species, and so what I do with the project is study. year to year just how much those are changing and so we just take measurements of how the snow was that past winter we take measurements of how much the glacier retreated and got smaller and things like that for a few weeks. Another example of kind of climate change I experienced besides the glaciers changing has been a lot of forest fire activity and I know something in other parts of the world as well, but. It happened it's been happening so much in the you know Western United States and Western Canada, and this is a photo of a mountain lake near one of the glaciers where we work this lake is actually fed by the glaciers there in the opposite direction of this photo. And this has become really common where from one day to the next, like in these photos. For if the wind direction shifts and they're there are bad fires going on somewhere in the area, even if it's even it's 100 miles away that smoke is going to really fill. The air and it's difficult for us, because we're working outside all day we're camping and backpacking and so you know that's not really an escape and. This isn't something that I had experienced until 2015 and ever since then it's like every year just the new kind of normal. And one thing to know also is there are some schools, at least in the Pacific Northwest I don't know about in places like Colorado things, but. there's some schools and and like Oregon and Washington that you know have to have smoke days, sometimes for the kids affair quality is too poor. And so, then, this is a photo of me this past this past August and 2020 we were still able to go and do the field season, it was in question for a little bit. But behind me is the very end of one of the mountain glaciers that we work on and so. The lowest elevation kind of point where the glacier ends it's called it's terminus and that yeah that just means the end and it's extending it does extend above. The horizon for a few miles so it's it's a pretty big glacier you can only see a little piece of it, and I am standing where that glacier used to end when I first started working there 12 years before and so. Hundreds of feet of retreat, but you can also imagine such as the distance it's the kind of volume or thickness of ice that is needed to melt for it to pull back that far because it would probably take me. I don't know like 10 minutes to get up to where the ice is now it's not like a short walk and it's even more powerful to see where the glacier used to end. When my dad first started working here 35 years before, and so I just think that the landscapes like this, I guess, just glacial landscapes i've always loved and. I grew up in Massachusetts and have been living in Maine for a decade and so when I get to go out to places like this that feels like. Like so special because it's not the landscaper on me and I think they're so beautiful and you know I know they're going to change, but there's always that part of me that wishes they weren't, however, I think they're. You know positives there's things that you can embrace like you know more maybe wildflowers on the hills and things like that. And certainly like within within my lifetime and and beyond this known is not going to be bear glaciers they're going to get smaller but they'll still be there so. As a scientist, I have gotten to develop just those scientific practices like getting to go to places like Washington and ask questions about the way that the glaciers are changing. The water levels are changing and try to find answers to some of those questions. i've gotten to gain that background in the way that earth and climate system works and I. I think it's something that I wish was taught just in public schools for you know people to have a better understanding of climate change. And i've also gotten as a scientist to learn about what are the ways that you know scientists and to communicate their work that's often through. You know talks through posters at conferences and then, of course, through publications of their data. And I think those are all great ways, but sometimes there are those missing connections, I think, with the public war with general audiences who you don't have a background in what they're doing. And that that applies to someone like me who's in science, but only has once you know one specialty as well. So, as an artist, I think some some things i've been focusing on are developing that kind of creative narrative skillset and your work. Besides kind of the technical background is also just you know how to go about incorporating some sort of complex topic into my art. And then learning about how art can communicate and so for me that's painting so i'm focusing more on visual but. Through the composition through the type of emotion that you try to incorporate and I think some of these things can be applied to science as well, but I haven't developed them as strongly in science. So, in combining art and science, my goals are to pair science information with visuals and have those visuals give more of that emotional view of climate change data that can perhaps better communicate with some people so yeah just sharing environmental stories that that people can feel, I guess. So a lot of my paintings that combined our insights were have always been or were initially making paintings of things I got to see when I was out doing research, so this is a view on one of those mountain glaciers in Washington. And the ice that I painted that's that's in front of our behind the painting is those areas are called ice falls it's like all broken up like big blocks of ice like a clip of ice, and that just happens when the glaciers flowing over. Like a cliff in the bedrock underneath it so the ice is having to flow over this bed this cliff and it's all breaking up and forming its own cliff kind of. And so I was painting this landscape and what I paint when I started the painting that had been that kind of amazingly blue sky you can get like up in the mountains and then by the time I was done it was cloudy. And so just kind of capturing capturing this landscape and what was in front of me. So I do a lot of these. And then paintings like this to that I'll usually do when I get home based on photos I can capture more of the research being done. So the painting on the left is showing three figures and the one in red is standing on snow on a glacier and he's taking a core but he's not taking the core down of the ice he's only doing up the snow. That's the top of the ice. And basically he's able to just look at that past winter and what happened with, you know, snow storm events that past winter how, how does the snow look basically. And just, just to be clear also for glaciers or snowfall accumulates and it sits on top of the glacial ice and slowly over time the snow contacts to form that ice. And then the painting on the right is showing a woman scientist standing on despair glacial ice no snow on it. So that be lower on the glacier when all the snow from the past winter has melted and now the ice is starting to melt. She is standing in front of this big correct correct combined the words crack in the glacier so those are called pervasses, and she is basically measuring the depth of that crevasse, and she has this tool. She can wind down kind of like this some wire with a heavy dropper that ends when she knows when it gets to the bottom and measure how measure ice thickness basically. What I'm doing now with my work is a, again, making paintings that incorporate data and graphs as a way to combine our insights and tell these stories. And so the painting on the right is the first painting that I made where I came up with this idea of putting graphs into my work. And so this painting is supposed to be part of a mountain glacier kind of like the ice fall that I showed you, you know my version of it of using you know colors and patterns that I choose. And it was inspired by that work in Washington and seeing the glaciers for treating and wanting to communicate that with my classmates back in Maine because when I created this I was still a college student. And so the graph I use is on the left. And first, the x axis is to showing time 1984 2014. So 30 years of change. And then on the y axis that says annual mass balance. And so that's just the budget of a glacier, how much snow it gains in the winter versus how much snow melts away and loses in the summer. So the budget it's going to be negative when it's melting more than it's getting snow. And so that's what that that dark blue graph line is showing that sharp decrease in the glacier mass. And I should have said this before but this is the research from the project that my dad begins that I help out with in Washington. I used that. No, sorry, I use that graph as the kind of top surface, or kind of like profile side view of of the glacier, where it's steep, and I try to incorporate beauty and also kind of show how at the bottom it's more kind of gray is like rock and debris is kind of melting out as it gets thinner. So I basically just wanted to show, show people how sharply this decline was in glacial mass with this painting. And I've gone on to do a lot more graph paintings. So, just for this painting I wanted to kind of talk about how my process works in these and so first I choose a topic for my painting and that can come from a lot of directions you know it can be an image I see it can be news or social media, something I hear about you know it doesn't have to be research. It's usually not research that I've been involved with it could be topic from anywhere in the world. But the story I want to communicate in my art, and the example on the left, the topic is warming in the ocean, and I was specifically focused on focusing on the Gulf of Maine for this painting. And the second step once I had the idea of to do ocean warming was finding data, which can definitely be a tough part of my process is not just you know one place you can go, you know you can find data on places like NASA's website, or other, like that big science websites, you can find it and research papers that scientists put out. And one of the things I take some digging and another step I often take is to reach out to someone who's an expert in the topic I'm, I'm looking into, and, or the person who's data I'm going to use. And so the graph that I included. And the painting on the left is showing temperature change in the Gulf of Maine over the last 15 years and how it goes up and down but the overall trend is, is that it's increasing. And the biggest concern I think with that is not necessarily it's partly the increasing temperature but I think it's more that there's a lot more variability and temperature and so the background trend is forming. We have all these really quick ups and downs and temperature and I think those are not the regular cycles that used to occur, and it's probably difficult for species to adapt to. And one more step, once I have my, my data and my topic is to figure out how I'm going to tell the story about the data. And so just kind of imagining that this is just a blank graph right now what you know elements am I going to include in a piece of art to bring that story to life because there's a lot of different ways I could focus on it. I think it's more about humans and the impact on us, whether good or bad, I could have made about the fishing industry more, or about how warm oceans cause more extreme weather. But I kind of made it, I get, in my opinion, probably like the simplest kind of focus which is how it's going to affect the species that live in it, they live in the ocean. I wanted to include kind of like the whole water column of some different examples of species down to the bottom and so the fish are caught and as they swim across the painting they're concerned to disappear because they've also been really overfished as another kind of stressor on them. The, I included shrimp and on the bottom there's lobster and in the sand there's also soft shell clams and so all these species. This is their, you know, their habitat they can, I suppose, you know, maybe go further north if it gets too warm but they, you know, there isn't another ocean obviously. So, the last element I did include was the fishing boat just to kind of bring in the human element to the story is more causing this warming and we also have that role to play, you know, the coastal state with kind of management of these species are being stressed also by warming and by chemistry changes to the water. And so, yeah, that was that was the focus and there's there's always so many pieces to the stories in my painting and I, I don't expect, you know, the viewer to necessarily see all of them but I'll include, I always included caption with a brief paragraph about what my data is and like kind of just a few sentences about what I'm trying to convey so that people do want to learn about about it they can. They always do have kind of a bunch of different storylines within my work. So to start any of my paintings this is where I start and these were these were the sketches I made when I was trying to think about what to do for this painting. And so I start really simple and this is something that I was taught. I can at least remember in high school art class and was really encouraged to do through college as well. And they've always been called thumbnail sketches, but they're often just called that because they're small, you know they're a couple inches or whatever you want, and you're just supposed to use it to get ideas down on the page kind of like the same thing if you're like writing a paper you're trying to like outline it first and you know what do I even want to write about and same with art you, you know, sometimes hear that inspiration just comes to you and that can happen now and then but that's not, you you have to work towards creativity and new ideas. And so this is getting ideas down. And once you get your brain working you you think of so many more things that you wouldn't have. And so I use this to decide my final kind of approximate idea for my painting. And then I can make a final detailed sketch. And so that's what's in the left here is that that final detail sketch I do in pencil so I can erase it as I go. I transfer my graph onto it. There's different ways to do that I can trace it, or cut a piece of paper and trace it or do trace paper things like that. So I choose to paint just right on top of my pencil and kind of just work and work in layers and build up detail as different layers dry. And this is in watercolor, and most a lot of my work is in watercolor because that I feel like I found my voice the most with as an artist and have the most practice with so I really do all sorts of painting and printmaking and I've drawing and things but my favorite is just watercolor so most of these works are done with that. Oh, I guess that was it for that painting. And then just one more wanted to show you guys was the painting I did for the cover of time magazine. This past July 2020. So that was obviously huge opportunity for me as an early career artist and and on showing me kind of the, I guess, view some people's view of the importance of communicated climate change and climate change art specifically. And so I made this painting on the left specifically for time. It was up to me, you know what I created but the issue was going to be about climate was entirely about climate change. And so I wanted to be about global climate change not, you know, United States focused. And so I wanted to also have a kind of mix of messages and so I have five different graph lines in this painting and I have combined combined graph lines before. But this was the most and so starting from the bottom like that dark blue layer that is showing sea level rise from 1880 to present. And I believe there's been about I think eight inches of sea level rise. I think a lot more is predicted just for the next like, you know, 50 to 100 years than that. The light blue is showing total land ice loss. And by land ice I mean both the mouth like the mountain glaciers like, you know, and that I've been was showing you in Washington and places like that, but then also the two ice sheets that we have and the Antarctic ice ice sheet and the Greenland ice sheet. And so the total ice that's been lost from those from 1960 to present. The green the trees are showing the global increasing use of renewable energy over time from 1960 to present. And I hope that some, that's something that really starts to increase because I'm happy really happy to see this increase but it could, it really needs to be better. And in yellow is the global temperature change over from 1880 to present. And then the gray is showing the increasing use of carbon dioxide from 1880 to present as well. And on time, one thing at a time did say they were interested in that I agreed with was in showing how there was that slight little kind of decrease in CO2 use last year. I imagine largely due to like decrease in transportation I'm sure there were some other reasons as well. And they also after that little decrease they wanted me to have a little dash line showing how maybe continue to decrease and my thought was that with that was that. You know it, I expect that our CO2 use will go up again this year, but I think it is a good example of how if we were to globally act we could really quickly make a difference and you know what we're putting out into that in this year. And so I kind of use these graphs to make kind of this abstract almost kind of patterned landscape to just help bring the data to life and then time at made of the simple animation just to show first the graphs by themselves and then how my painting was supposed to again like tell those stories and I know my work is going to, you know I don't expect it to be the right thing for every, everyone to learn or to connect with. I just wanted to be, you know, for some people, the thing. So then lastly I just wanted to share what I am working on right now for paintings I something I'm starting to do is work directly with science teams in a collaboration and so by that I mean there's a research group that has to get funding to do their research they write a big grant, and I can be on that grant, and kind of paid like a commission, where, yeah I'm getting, I'm getting paid to do art that communicates their research and so it's a direct collaboration. And so that's something that I'm doing with one research group right now. And that research group studies paleo ecology so basically just how you know plants and plant systems and things have changed in the past. And that's especially important for just understanding how you know plants are going to have to adapt now as the climate warms. I tried to tell a story with paintings for them and so there are, I'm going to be making five paintings and I'm done with four of them. So on the left there's the first painting that I made for this group, and it shows two women scientists and they're standing on a frozen lake in Norway. That's where the, where some of the research is based. They're standing on the frozen lake in Norway with like mountains behind them, and you can see underneath the water, and that long, like line that goes down through the water is for them to be able to core the sediment that little strip of sediment at the very bottom of the lake. And so they, that's one thing that scientists do to, rather than having to go on a boat where it's like the boat was moving is they'll go on a frozen lake to take cores of the bottom of the lakes. The second painting is just providing kind of another view of that and I showed state said that neither one of these have, have data and I'm not all my work does. So the second painting is showing someone taking a core again but now they're standing on a ball. And again you can kind of see this cross section down underneath their feet in the soil so you can see what they're pouring and you can see all these layers. And you can see the layers are first kind of more brown like a lot of organic material from, you know, plants that are decomposing and then the layers get more gray, which is what happens when there's less plant material. And that means that that's when ice covered this area. So then on the left is my third painting in the series. And that is now showing what's in the layers that they court you know why are they looking, why are they taking these cores and what are they finding in them. And so, all of those funky shapes in the core layers that are supposed to be seeds and pollen that are preserved in the, in the sediment over time. So, basically they're it'd be ancient because they're preserved from plants that used to be alive. And so they can find out about what used to live in these areas in the past and how that's changed over time. So, then the fourth painting is a map, which I hadn't done before a map of Scandinavia, and I should have said before but the primary type of Cedar pollen that they're looking for was from the Norway spruce because they want to know how Norway spruce adapts to climate change. And basically, this map on the right is showing where cores were taken and so those little like kind of dots on the map and those are supposed to be the pollen greens of Norway spruce as data points and so those data points again are making where the cores were taken. And they're dating the pollen from those Norway spruce and finding out when they were growing there. So the colors on their map are showing the time frame when Norway spruce first kind of populated these regions after the last Ice Age. And so yellow is like the bright yellow is, is modern, and then going back to darker yellow and then green is going back further in time to the blue and the darkest blue is about 10,000 years ago. And looking at that like dark blue kind of block the dark blue blobs, I guess, 10,000 years ago it's where Norway spruce were, they couldn't grow further north because ice was covering covering the land. And as that ice pulled back and we got to the climate we have today the Norway spruce was able to spread all the way around that kind of like peninsula Scandinavia and spread. I hope that made sense and not all of the work that I do in collaboration with scientists will be quite this in my opinion like it's a little dense. You know some of a little more like kind of clear topics like some of the other work I was showing but I have fun doing a mix of things like this. And the scientists will send me photos of their field work to help inspire my inspire my work so one thing I didn't say is whenever I'm making these paintings I kind of make these collages on my computer of kind of reference images that you know help me think about how I want to paint it and colors to use and things like that. And so these were photos of this research group group going and taking cores and looking at these treat these Norway spruce trees and where they are now. These were photos or images they sent me from the microscope of the ancient pollen and seeds that they find in these cores and so I was using these as my references for my painting. And then on the right there was this kind of little sketch and descriptor that one of the scientists sent me about when I was trying to decide how to make my painting about what's in a core. So I, I have just wanted to share my view of what I'm doing because I think it's so important that for, you know, for any kind of important topic we find different ways to share it and so on the top left I have just the screenshot of the website for that project I work within Washington on that you can access all sorts of information. To the right of that, we always take photographs of our fieldwork to, you know, for us from memory of course but to share with other people and share share those stories to the top right is one of my landscape paintings again just kind of showing fieldwork. And the bottom left is one of the science papers from the project in Washington and so that's going to be more dense kind of really descriptive science writing. Again to the right of that is the data or the graph from the from the project and then, and then my data art to communicate that that graph and research. So there's just all these different ways that we can, you know, share kind of the same topic. And I think that is really helpful for me to think about with someone who's interdisciplinary. And then, lastly, I just wanted to share about some of the student outreach that I do associated with this and so I do a lot of classroom kind of presentations and then if teachers are interested and and have the time and their curriculum then I often will do data art projects with students and so it depends on, I've done that on K through 12 and so it depends on the age of, you know, I provide or the teacher provides a few, a few choices of graphs for students and those graphs could be, you know, could be even a local topic that maybe the students experience or, or some teachers will help the students find their own graphs and guide them in doing that, so they can choose a topic that they care about. And so then I have a bunch of examples here of student data art, and I've always been really impressed with the stories that they tell and are able to communicate. I do wish and something I think about my own work to is, I do wish that there was a few more stories that were positive because there's a lot. There's a lot of positive environmental actions and changes that are happening and I, I didn't share that quite as much in my work but that's something I've been started to include over the last five or not five years last few years are some messages messages of hope and hope and action. And then here's a few more examples of student data art that was really blown away with I think this was a middle school class in California. And I was like really impressed with their ability to and and I'm working a little bit I'm working kind of more intensely with some schools right now like one school I'm just starting a data art lesson with this week is yarn with middle school. And so I'm looking forward to seeing what those students create. And also work with organizations to, you know, promote my work of course and also to just get again this kind of climate change communication and different forms like skis and book and magazine covers and things and so some of that opportunities to come to me some of them are opportunities that I seek out. And I think the time cover really taught me that you can always try for something, you know, and you might not hear back you might not happen. And that's happened to me plenty, but it's worth it to try and I would have never thought to cover for them. So my things I wanted to share are just the first like, again, I think the different media can really communicate different types of complexities and so I've learned that in my science and my art and by seeing other examples from other people. It's been important for me to understand what the boundaries are of certain media and those founders are definitely not, you know, set or anything but you know what audiences are different forms like best intended for and what can I do to combine media to reach even broader audiences. And so, to I think that art is one of those really powerful ways to connect with people about important topics and so I'm doing that with climate change but that applies to so many things and I think that's a way that art has been used to represent important things in our culture always. I'm just saying that art can really tell stories and emotional ways and I can use it to again kind of bring these graphs to life and make make climate change feel really even if it's a climate change that someone hasn't experienced and I hope to also connect it with encouraging people to take action in the future. And again, I just hope that you know for some people, my art is a good a good way to communicate and get them to think and feel what these things really mean. Thank you very much for listening everyone. I look forward to chatting with you now and answer any questions you might have. Thank you so much that was fantastic I love seeing all your pieces and I will note that I follow Jill on Instagram and she has some great pieces she shows like her art as she's going along so if you're on Instagram I encourage you to follow her. But now for any questions folks have you can either just you know raise your hand and say them out loud since we're not a huge group or put them in the chat whichever you prefer. It looks like Lorraine you have a raising your hand. Yeah, I can put my face there's a face. Thank you so much that was so wonderful and I just love what you're doing. And the question that I have is, I'm a scientist and also really appreciate the arts. Um, is about how you thought about time, because their graphs they involve time and so you talked about having captions. And sometimes I could see that you made you sort of included visual clues to the time like with the cores and Scandinavia, but I just was interested to hear about, you know how you thought through sharing these graphs without a timeline. You know, in particular I'm thinking of the, of the like the ocean warming one with a cod and the lobster and everything. Anyway, that's my question time. Yeah I think that I think it's tricky and there's this like line I think as an artist and I included axes like once or twice but I think that is kind of like the purpose of the graphs that exist and so it's like how do I kind of make it. I'm I guess I'm still trying to I'm making kind of fine art and so how do I separate that a little bit from, you know, not have it be an infographic and not have it be the data, exactly and so I think what I, my main goal is for people to pay for their trend. Like, yeah it's just like the graph like increasing or decreasing but I think knowing the timeframe is really obviously a big part of it. And I. Like you, like I mentioned you and you said like I will include the timeframe and the caption. You know I'm, I know that you know not everyone's going to read those captions but they're there people want to. I think otherwise they're, you know people might not even without even like engaging with my work more reading the caption I don't even think that everyone would notice the graphs because that's a response that I've gotten, which is interesting to think about. And yeah I think showing time in another way is hard like I tried to show it kind of conceptually with like in the in that main warming one with the fish, the thought that they're like disappearing but otherwise there's not, not really. I think like a strict way that I've done that and like one kind of thing that I have seen some artists do is show kind of a time lapse with art words like oh you have the glacier now and then now and then now but I think that is not quite what I'm looking to do in my work but I think that's a better like I'm worth clear visual of time. That's a good question to think about and consider because a lot of times I'm kind of. I'm constrained by the graph that I find to in the timeline of that graph like sometimes I'd like to show more than I can because the data doesn't exist or something. Yeah, does that answer your question. But at the same time, in terms of engaging people say and climate change in particular. The details, you know that the scientist wants that gets in the way of people's emotional response to this and that's where I like where the arts stripped that away, not you know forget the details. Just how do you feel about this, the trend right. Yeah, actually, I really appreciate, you know that you have kind of cut that out. Yeah, thank you. Oh, Marianne, you're still on mute. I think I've learned by now. Anyway, it was fantastic I just loved your artwork. I was interested. I think you kind of answered the question about how did time choose you so you sent it off in hopes that they might choose your art and it was like a competition or something or an idea you had. No, I said that, or I was thinking after I got the opportunity and I was like, oh, I, it made me think about like, just going for stuff like that and not limiting myself I don't know how they normally choose their covers but for that one they reached out to me. They're one of their creative directors is like, I found about this, you know from the process is mainly in charge of like choosing the cover and each month and you know it's not always something new that's that's created depends but he had seen my work online somewhere and he didn't remember where like an online future and kind of saved it away because I'm assuming for his job he kind of does that and keeps track and so. So it's just a look ever to new that he'd seen my work and I think it's helpful because I have a very like a niche, you know, in my art and I'm doing something very specific. And so they reached out to me and asked if I, if I wanted to try and go for it and in doing so it was very clear that, you know, they may or may not use it because it's going to depend on what they want and they're always going to have backup plans and this and that, you know. And did what did they say last chance on the cover of time because that cover that you showed us didn't say the word time. What did the cover actually say, said time but it was kind of faded into the background, and then the headline that they again this wasn't like, this was all them the headline was one last chance and I think it was to do with like the momentum from. I guess, I don't know if it was from Kobe I think it's just where we're at with kind of an environmental change I mean, but I think they often to be blunt like I don't always love those type of a little bit more like alarmist headlines but that's what a lot of places do. So I think it was like one last chance to like because of the momentum from Kobe, I guess and changes to fossil fuels and I guess just where they were saying we're at where we really need to take action now which is true, but saying one last chance is a little more dramatic. That's okay and yeah, yeah, it's a good cover. Well, I mean it's a fantastic cover. I'm an economist and while you were, I was looking at the art and I was thinking of, hmm, as wondering if how you would use this kind of art in to show something in economics and one thing would be the increasing the growth of renewable energy compared to the growth of CO2 or whatever. And anyway, your information flashed by so quickly I couldn't get your email. Oh, thanks. So if you somebody could put it in the chat that would be used to do that ring. Yeah, I was looking, I was actually looking this last week at some of the reports that I looked at the one for Maine and one for Massachusetts that they put out like these kind of climate reports to show like this is what our plan is. Oh, like a lot of them will say like this is our plan through 2050 they have their goals and things and so I was actually looking because I really want to make my two new pieces I'm going to make soon I really want them to have more, more messages of action that people are thinking and are planning to take and have more messages of hope and so that was one thing I was seeing with some of that kind of like economics like you mentioned where some of this had been done some of this hasn't but like showing, you know how much money and jobs we're making from renewables now and how that growth is it yeah showing that growth and a lot of those kind of yeah really cool exciting things and I really enjoyed reading it. It was called that you go to the main climate council and it's like main won't wait is there 2021 that they came out with and it's long so I just kind of look through certain pieces of it but I really enjoyed looking at it. Great. Ryan, you're next. Hi, thanks. Thanks so much. This is fascinating. I'm a social scientist and so I'm particularly curious to hear about, you know, because I think one of the big challenges that academics faces is making our information and data kind of digestible to, you know, a non academic audience and I'm really curious to hear about your current project with the research team that you're working about and you know if there's been any kind of, you know, pushback or what the conversation is like between you and the scientists because I know, you know, sometimes you know, we get really down into the weeds about the data. And obviously you are trying to convey the data in a way that also makes an emotional impact with people to perhaps make it resonate a little bit more than, you know, a usual slide that you might put up and so I just be interested in a little bit more about what those conversations are like, if there's any sort of tension between you and others. Obviously you have a science background too so you know this but just curious to hear a little bit more about how that's going. Yeah, it's going good. I, I feel like I learned a lot from this first one that I can that I'm going to take with me I, I wrote in kind of sections on two more grants that we'll see if they get funded this year to work with. And I'm just on the section of the grant again to get funding. But this first one overall was good it was a topic that I didn't know very much about like, especially when you got down to like the how they did the research part and so I think the big one of the biggest things was just figuring out what to paint for them and and them being like oh well it's up to you it's like okay I need background I need to know, you know what data might be good I need like to make that kind of conversation clear going like the next round and, and I could only, you know focus on so many things and one thing that actually happened, as I wrap as I have recently talked with them as they said, oh I wish like you done a painting on this one thing and it was like well, you know, you know, I don't know your topic. So that need to be clearly communicated so that's something that I've learned a lot after is, you know, if they don't know my process and I don't know theirs and making those, you know things really clear for both of us from the beginning. But overall it has been has been really great. And it's nice because they can send me all this information and all these photos and data. And it's fun for me to get to just like learn from them a bit and they are they despite that comment there they are really happy with the paintings that I have made and you know they'll get they'll get to own them and use them in different ways and we're talking about how, you know how they might be used to reach more people than, than if they're just hanging in their science building kind of so. It's yeah it's off to a good start but I had a lot to learn definitely from this first time. Other questions that folks may have either. I can come off you and put them in the chat. So my name is Morgan I have a question for you so I'm also an artist, and I noticed that you just said that when you're working on the grant that they would own the artwork. And so I was just curious about that because it sounds like you're not licensing the images to them you're actually selling the original painting to them. I mean I guess it's just like a commission where you're making a painting for someone to own. And so, like we will both be doing. We'll both be doing things with the imagery like how what how I choose to communicate it, you know online and we're planning to show it physically in different spaces, but I guess the money that they pay you was was to work for them to own as a as a research group and show at their university. But I'd be curious to hear, I guess like this is fairly new to me I've mainly done work non like not kind of commission style. I've done work and then sold it like work that I choose to do I guess and so yeah did you have any what what have been your experiences I guess. Luckily as an artist you want to retain ownership of the work period because you might have other opportunities to license it in the future. And if you sell the work outright you no longer have the right to do anything with it, and they can make money off of it in perpetuity. So I think it's great that you're getting all these commissions like that's completely fabulous. I was just concerned that you were losing your opportunity to make money off of those in the future. Yeah, I guess I, I am retaining the right to like I still own the image itself and can make prints and sell prints and things like that, or you know use it online, but it's a good thing to think about, and make sure that you're compensated fairly you know as an artist. Right, definitely. Happy writer something. Any other questions. I had a question which was when you're talking about your process and you mentioned like the research time time that it takes before you go in and like actually get started on, you know, the different the next pieces of putting together the art. How long does the actual research typically take in each of your pieces. Yeah, it's, it's a lot of work for me, depending on the topic of course but especially because I tend to be working on a few projects at once I tend to do a lot of this kind of K through 12 stuff I kind of have a lot of different pieces going on as an art, you know from my career and so it can take me a while to just do that research because I'm just in the midst of time and, and to think like the longest part of my process is definitely thinking about or figuring out how the painting is actually going to look and doing that brainstorming part of the process and so I feel like the research will usually take me. I mean it depends it could just be a few hours but it could be something that I kind of do over a few weeks as well because I'm kind of coming back to it when I can. And then especially if I'm contacting someone and trying to stop a meeting to learn about their work or some things and of course that will that will add to it as well so yeah it's usually it usually takes me a while. And especially because I also am trying to learn a little bit of a light background about the topic. Great. Any other questions. Right. So, we have lots of kudos for you in the chat Jill if you want to take a look at those before, before you hop off. I'm going to share my, oh Lorraine did, oh I think it's clapping so I thought it was a hand raised at first. I want to share my screen one more time just so I can tell folks about our next community conversation next week. So next week we'll be having Nikki Sikara of Community Water Justice she'll be joining us Tuesday at noon. She will discuss the concerns of the recent acquisition of Nestle waters North America in the Poland spring brand to address its implications for our groundwater in Maine. And she's Nestle's infiltration into our state house and the hurdles of modernizing our legal infrastructure to protect our water sources. So if you're interested in signing up for that community conversation you can go to our website which is sierra club dot org forward slash main and register there. All right. So, thank you again so much Jill for joining us we really appreciate it. Thank you so much thanks everyone for joining in your questions. Have a great day. Thank you. Bye.