Knee deep in the realities of climate change, I know that a little humor along the way is a huge relief from all of the doom and gloom that we are bombarded with on a daily basis. Of course, it is important to understand the consequences of climate change, but my god, if you are going to instill hope in humanity, stop with all of the fatalistic outcomes–I can hardly stand to look at the news these days!
So, I have a proposal…why don’t we waltz into spring with the knowledge of our already altered water cycle–and therefore weather patterns that we are all experiencing around the globe–and work towards some adaptive goals. Let us realize the current state for what it is, smile here and there, and continue on a path of optimism where you will meet people like Jarryd Lowder.
Hailing from Iowa, Jarryd Lowder now resides in Switzerland after having lived in New York City for nearly two decades. Lowder is an talented artist of many forms–he is a photographer, journalist, teacher, videographer, designer, tech-based artist, musician, and A/V technician. His new project, Monstercast, is an ongoing series of images that employ the phenomenon of pareidolia, or the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern (think, the Man in the Moon or the Moon Rabbit). With his work, Lowder’s creates “monsters” from Doppler weather radar maps.
“It’s a universal human perceptual ability, an example of which would be a child identifying clouds as being shaped like animals. When viewing weather radar maps, I see how the shapes and colors of the precipitation take on figurative forms,” stated Lowder. With his phone, he snags screen shots and then draws on top of them using very limited drawing tools. In the beginning, his renderings depicted the local Alpine weather in Switzerland, but he has since branched out, looking for interesting radar images from around the world.
