I’d like to start off with your idea of the “Monoseason,” which is a core concept behind the works in this show. Could you explain this idea in a little more detail?

Weather patterns , as we all have experienced, are difficult to predict. In a chaotic troposphere, wind and temperature are part of a complex atmospheric system. As stated by Edward Lorenz in the 1970′s, “the butterfly effect describes how very small changes in conditions can lead to major disturbances.” While weather forecasting has its limits, we are now in a period of transnational weather disturbances, mainly due to disruptions in the carbon cycle. Clear cut seasons meld into one another; they are no longer discreet. During one day we can experience more than one season. It can be like spring in the morning turning into summer by the afternoon and then very chilly in the evening. Such erratic systems disturb the growth cycle of many plants. Most recently, during the hot humid summer, hailstones the size of baseballs, rained down in Texas. Seasonal shifts are occurring everywhere on Earth.

The term monoseason describes this phenomenon as an accumulation or constriction of unexpected seasonal shifts. It might be employed as another word for climate change, but both local and global in character. In my text “After Eden: The Double Identity of Carbon” I talk about how the seasons are out of sync due to global warming. In November 2022, NYC had many days when the temperature reached 70 degrees and my Sassafras trees in East Hampton sprouted buds. At the same time, a deluge of snow engulfed the city of Buffalo. In the Arctic Valley, strawberries are thriving for the first time in Greenland. In the United States, the unusually warm weather is threatening the state’s of Georgia’s iconic peach. And there are many other examples of how weather conditions are threatening the balance of nature.

Your statement for the exhibition mentions the five great mass extinctions that have happened throughout Earth’s history, but the collages on display deal more directly with the annual cycle of the seasons. How are the two connected in your mind, and in this body of work?

Drifting back in time, five mass extinctions have marked Earth’s history. Such catastrophic events are unexceptional. Rather, they are intrinsic to the rotating cycle of the planet’s elements. Although it is generally known that dinosaurs were exterminated by the dust storms from an asteroid that impacted Earth, there have also been other equally devastating extinctions. Orbital cycles of creation and destruction continue their time-based rounds. Elizabeth Kolbert in her text “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History” talks about the possibility of a sixth extinction brought about by humankind’s post-industrialized follies. An ecological balance out of sync causes seasonal changes which disrupt habitats for life forms. Writer Daniel A. Gross has commented that “the Arctic was once a tropical paradise. It used to be as warm as Italy.” We can deduce these facts by looking at ice core samples and fossil remains. It is now a frozen continent which is once again thawing. While polar bears rely on icebergs to fish for food, they too are disappearing. Changes in seasons are microcosms of the foreboding possibility for extinction of life on earth.

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