This project aims to spread awareness about the ice laden parts of the planet through stories and art. And it is my goal to embed my experience as a student of marine science and the Arctic environment into my work as a ceramic artist, to communicate the story of the Cryosphere to a non-scientific audience.
I trained as a marine scientist in Scotland, at the wonderful Scottish Association for Marine Science. It was never really my plan. I didn’t ever have a plan, but as a young adult I was drawn into the pulse of the ocean system – its vast rhythms, its vulnerabilities. It became clear early on that the oceans are incredibly complex systems that we really don’t understand as much as we perhaps think we do. From drifting seaweed to singing whales, from the parasites clinging to fish farms to the slow churn of deepwater currents, the fingerprint of human activity is everywhere. We’ve altered the currents, frayed food webs, scattered plastic into every layer, and even changed the chemistry of the sea itself.
My path eventually led me north, to the Arctic. I studied the physics of ocean circulation – how water moves, carries heat and salt, and shapes the climate. I traced retreating tidewater glaciers by satellite and traveled into fjords each melt season to observe them firsthand. Beneath the icy surface, we launched submarines to follow the plumes of freshwater unraveling the glacier fronts. I watched as colossal slabs of ice calved into the sea and as a starving, mud-soaked polar bear wandered into town, desperate and out of place. The Arctic was heartbreakingly beautiful – and deeply unsettling.
Over time, it became difficult to reconcile the urgency of the data with the inaction it so often met. And so I turned to clay. At first, it was simply a quiet refuge – a way to get out of my head and into my hands. But slowly, inevitably, the Arctic seeped into my art. I found I couldn’t make anything else.
This blog is the next step in that journey. The Cryosphere Project is where I’ll share stories from the science, reflections from the studio, and the quiet, persistent wonder of the high latitudes. It’s for anyone who’s curious about the Arctic, who wants to understand what’s happening and why it matters. I hope to offer a perspective shaped by both data and feeling, and to make space for conversations about what we’re losing, what we still have, and how art might help keep that in sight.
