Same Skies
2021-2025
Creative Direction/ Participatory Art
Parsons School of Design
Same Skies exists in the space between the individual and the expansive.
The relationship between self, sky, and collective rules the Same Skies project. Same Skies aims to make the abstract issue of greenhouse gas emissions tangible by creating an Earth community through the sharing of memory. We ask individuals to share stories of sky, an element that binds together all life on Earth. Connecting people to the blue blanket that encompasses us all. To combat climate change through love. The inspiration for the project came from the phrase: “memory pools in strange ways.”
Pools Posters were the initial inception of the Same Skies Project. On one of my frequent hikes I saw water pooling on the ground, reflecting the image of a sky. The pool looked like a portal into another dimension. Pools Posters were born.
Conceptualized in Integrated Design Studio I & III with Ross Tibbles and Laura Nova
Each poster features a sky stamped with its location, date, and time, as well as a “Sprite.” Each Sprite is a guide through the pools of memory. Each has a significance to my memory associated with the sky.
A mockup of the Pools Posters hanging from a museum:
Later I would realize my vision of a portal was similar to the Alchemists of old divining the future and reflecting on the past in their vats of mercury. Mercury, in ancient Rome, was the messenger of the gods. Mercury or quicksilver was deemed to be the liquid soul. A meeting of water and air. A pool of memory. This project searches for that soul in contemporary life.
After this realization I became obsessed with the idea of a portable pool, bringing the shape of the Pools Posters into the physical world. The result of this obsession was a polished steel mirror that could reflect any sky. Pools_IRL (Pools In Real Life).
Models: Nate Reese and Sofia Hernandez
Photography: Owen Mosley
Pools_IRL Reflecting a sky at Little Island, NYC:
The Same Skies Film is the culmination of all of the thinking around the Same Skies project to date. Human-caused climate change, specifically greenhouse gas emissions, is a major concern for everyone that lives on this planet. The issue feels so large and systemic, almost unreachable. Systems change through small ideological shifts, often fueled by strong, deeply held, collective emotions. Memories carry these kinds of emotions.
The film asked community members via social media to respond to the prompt: “Tell us about a sky you remember.”
Same Skies Film, 2023