Signs of the Times: SEED Lab Artist Justin Guariglia Works in Words and Dialogue

Aug. 6 SEED Lab public event during Lunch on the Lawn

August 01, 2019

Artist Justin Guariglia likes to spur conversations about contemporary issues. If you read the press his work generates, you’ll discover he envisions a definite role for art in drawing attention to the global environment.

Guariglia is particularly interested in the role language plays in understanding climate change geographically, socially and politically. He likes to work in a format he believes triggers a heightened sense of alert: signage.

Dialogue in Alaska
Guariglia last came to Alaska in 2018. He visited the Alaska tundra with a team of scientists who were investigating the Arctic’s rapidly thawing permafrost. The permafrost holds as much as much as 1,500 gigatons of carbon, twice the amount of carbon found in our atmosphere today. As the carbon-rich frozen soil thaws, it releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, accelerating global warming, causing more polar ice to melt, and hastening the rise in sea level.

This month Guariglia is again in Alaska and will join Arctic Youth Ambassadors to host Baked Alaska? A Community Response from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 6, during the museum’s Lunch on the Lawn event. Baked Alaska? is a community dialogue and sign-making activity about climate change.

This program is presented in conjunction with SEED Lab.