Agents of Change

By Emily Hung ’23, March 22, 2022

Students from Ithaca College’s Art Department, Graphic Design program respond to climate change.

The exhibit “the climate will determine the green of the future forests” features work from more than a dozen Ithaca College students

(Photo courtesy of Patty Capaldi)

Global warming is one of the pressing issues of our current generation and Ithaca College graphic design students are trying to address it. The Community School of Music and Arts on East State Street in downtown Ithaca hosted an exhibition of posters addressing the effects of global warming.

Titled “the climate will determine the green of the future forests,” the exhibit showcased posters created by the 13 students in assistant professor of art and design Patti Capaldi’s Graphic Design II course during the Fall 2021 semester.

Jaelyn Hershberger '21 created a poster highlighting coral bleaching. (Photo courtesy of Patti Capaldi.)

While the students were working on the project, the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (Cop 26) was in session, which Capaldi said only made the issue of climate change more urgent and relevant.

"An advocacy poster project is a great way to have students think conceptually, with image strategies, so they have a visual impact to make people think,” Capaldi said. “Students have to come up with a very bold image to compel people to look at it, and to get up closer.”

With the theme of the exhibit centered around global warming, students chose to portray issues they were passionate in learning more about or that directly affected them.

Art major Dylan Zink ’23 worked on a piece about the detriment of salmon farms to the environment on a local and global scale. His poster, “Fishing Around,” shows two moving pieces of overlapping salmon, and includes a short explanation of the farms’ impact on ecosystems through pollution, parasites, and high mortality rates.

“The salmon have a screenprint-esque look to it,” Zink said. “I put numbers on the two pieces of salmon to show that they’re no longer animals in the wild—they’re just for human consumption and an item at that point.”

A poster depicting an orange, half in water

Sophia Toledo ’22 created a poster addressing how rising sea levels will impact her home state of Florida. (Photo courtesy of Patti Capaldi.)

He said the idea for his project came after watching the Netflix documentary “Seaspiracy” about the environmental impact of the fishing industry, prompting him to combine his passion for art with environmental advocacy.

“I think it’s very beneficial to have that interdisciplinary crossover,” he said. “These exhibits give me the opportunity to discuss my work with people who aren’t really familiar with creating and developing artwork.”

Hanging just a few feet away from Zink’s poster was one depicting Florida a state at great risk from increasing floods due to rising sea levels. The piece, titled “The Sunken State,” was created by Sophia Toledo ’22, an integrated marketing communications major and graphic design minor from Miami.

Toledo said splitting the poster in half with an orange and a buoy submerged in water on either side highlighted the contrast between Florida’s nickname of the Sunshine State and the fact that it is sinking from rising sea levels, which gave her the idea for the name of her piece.

“The orange is typically a symbol of Florida, and sort of the opposite would be the buoy sinking in the water,” she said. “It’s a piece more personal to myself. I was thinking, ‘What’s a local issue affecting the Miami area or Florida in general?’”

Both Zink and Toledo went through multiple drafts of their work over the course of several weeks, receiving feedback from Capaldi and their classmates.

“Posters are very powerful tools for social justice and creating a sense of shared ideologies. With this exhibit, my students are giving to the community, sharing their voice and sharing something they made that has a powerful impact.”

Assistant professor of art and design Patti Capaldi

“Professor Capaldi really challenged us to make our artwork more conceptual of an idea and less of the typical sort of images that you would see surrounding environmental awareness,” Toledo said.

Since the exhibit’s opening night on February 11, Capaldi said she has received tremendous positive response from faculty and the public on her students’ work.

“Posters are very powerful tools for social justice and creating a sense of shared ideologies,” Capaldi said. “With this exhibit, my students are giving to the community, sharing their voice and sharing something they made that has a powerful impact.”