About

Welcome to the California Art & Climate Archive

Dear friends,

To know a place well, you have to pay attention to it over time: the way fog moves through a valley, the way a river changes after fire, the way people who live somewhere learn to care for it. We started the California Art & Climate Archive to gather the work of artists who have paid that kind of attention, from decades of pioneering art and ecology practice to the climate work being made right now. We think of it as a teaching and research archive, a place to learn from that work.

We began with what was closest to us. Across the University of California’s ten campuses, students and faculty have made a remarkable body of work, which we’ve gathered here through the UC Climate Action Arts Network (UC CAAN). I’ve watched that work for years, and it has never stayed inside the university. It grows from collaborations with neighbors, tribal partners, scientists, and community groups. When our students graduate, they carry what they’ve learned into the towns they return to and the places they make home.

California holds many landscapes, each with its own history of care and harm. That’s why the archive keeps every project tied to the place and people it comes from: each record is mapped, and each names the collaborators, communities, and partners who made the work possible to the best of our ability.

We want this archive to be used. It holds artworks in every form, from sculpture and performance to public actions, along with the labs, collectives, and organizations that make them possible, so that others can learn from them and build on them.

We’re just beginning, and the archive will grow as this work does, with help from many people. If you’re making work about climate and ecology in California, whether or not you’re connected to UC, I hope you’ll contribute.

We’ll care for what you share. Every submission is read by a person, you decide how you’re credited and who can see your work, and nothing is published without your agreement. Your work stays yours, and you can ask us to change or remove it at any time. [Work involving Indigenous knowledge is handled following the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance, in consultation with the communities it comes from.] We see this as an exchange: you share your work, and we look after it and keep it connected to its place and people.

If you know more about something in the archive, such as a date, a name, a collaborator, or a story behind the work, or if you’d just like to reach out, we’d love to hear from you through our

Please browse the archive and share the work you make or support.

With gratitude,

Jennifer Parker
Professor of Art, UC Santa Cruz