Scripps College seniors Julia Ruedig and Ellie Cross are not just battling senior thesis. They’re battling climate change.
One weekend in October, Ruedig and Cross picked up their paint brushes and with the help of a few friends expressed their view on global warming and personal responsibility. Their mural turned a long stretch of Pomona College’s Walker Wall into an intersection of art, science, social critique, and activism. Since the 1970s, Walker Wall has been a public forum for ideas and artistic expression for students of The Claremont Colleges.
“That’s Hot!”
Ruedig and Cross united pop-culture references and scientific data to trigger discussions about the unprecedented upsurge in the carbon dioxide concentrations and an increase in global temperatures. An invitation to “Check yourselves before we wreck ourselves,” is scrawled next to a long expanse of jagged red and blue spikes. The sizable graph correlates the changes in the Earth’s temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations over the past 400,000 years.
Sam Tanenbaum, a professor of physics with the Joint Science Department of The Claremont Colleges, lead the discussion in his “Energy and the Environment” class which became the inspiration for the students.
“I love Julia and Ellie’s mural. I think it serves as an icon for global warming,” said Professor Tanenbaum.
Ellie Cross is a studio art major using activist art to engage the community about public policy issues. Her senior thesis “Making Art Work on Global Warming,” will focus on the process of creating the mural on Walker Wall among other projects. Julia Ruedig, a political science major, is exploring the topic of corporate and government roles serving and protecting public interests.