Original hand-carved linoleum prints on archival cotton paper. Printed by hand pressing with water-soluble oil inks, 14in x 11in. Print comes packaged with a cardboard backing and a vellum protection sleeve.

Story behind the print

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping. '” - Fred Rogers

I contracted COVID-19 in June of 2022 and made this print during isolation. When I contracted the virus, I was disappointed and scared. But that feeling faded into a very strange sense of gratitude. I had made it 2.5 years into the pandemic, buoyed by the choices of safety and care by my community. Lucky and alive. And suddenly, the helpers of the last 2.5 years came stark into profile; all the people wearing masks, testing, inconveniencing themselves so that I had been protected. Thank you.

In climate change, we also look for the helpers - the people, places, practices, or tools that are important in our progress towards decarbonization. Kelp and macroalgae are some such organisms. They fix vast amounts of inorganic carbon in seawater into biological tissues. Those tissues then move through a lifecycle, where they decay and fall out of the surface ocean and into intermediary and deep waters. Kelp export carbon into the deep sea, moving carbon out of the atmosphere and into long-term geologic storage. They are the helpers, the climate engineers, we need.

The print is of Macrocytis pyrifer, Giant Kelp.