After 20 years living in the Mojave Desert and producing work based on that environment, I have been seeking out the ice deserts of the Arctic and Antarctic: specifically Iceland, Greenland, the Falkland Islands, South Georgia Islands, and Antarctica.

I see a commonality between the hot deserts of the American Southwest and the cold deserts of the polar regions. These are both harsh environments with vast, empty spaces and small human populations. I discovered that both landscapes affect me in a similar manner - the expansive space found in each allows room for creative thought and actions, and the overwhelming (sometimes frightening) beauty in these places is my source for strong emotional landscape work.

 

“When Ice Burns” is the name of my ongoing project exploring these (literally) polar opposite,landscapes.

 

While this was my motivation when I started this project, it has become very obvious that I have been documenting 2 environments that are ground zero for extreme change.