Polar Ice Caps – Diptych

Short listed for Monkton Arts Prize 24/25

Polar ice cap is part of a pair of embroidered artworks illustrating the importance of the cooling effects of the planet’s ice. The cap top is thick embroidered ice with the mirrors standing for its qualities of reflecting the sun’s heat away from Earth and back out into space. The stitched oceans around the circumference show the balance and richness of life dependent on a world with only gentle fluctuations in temperature change. The myriads of thousands and thousands of connecting, but equally important eco systems support every living thing and not just those in the sea.

Melting ice cap is the second of a pair of embroidered artworks. This embroidered cylinder illustrates the damage caused by human induced rapid warming leading to melting of the Polar icecaps. Ice has shrunk and lost its ability to reflect the Sun’s heating rays away from the planet. Heat is absorbed into the oceans, which become darker which further accelerate the warming effects. Eco systems are unable to adapt or evolve to cope with the speed of these changes, they reduce, break down and die. Flecks of fluorescent represent the plastic impact on our oceans.