Artist: Kyan Shlipak
From: San Francisco, CA | Lick-Wilmerding High School
About Kyan’s Piece: “These are “fraternal twinned” rings I originally designed and hand made out of sheet metal. One is made of 18 gauge brass and the other 18 gauge nickel. Both were cut, filed, textured, annealed, formed, soldered, and patinated to achieve the silhouetted tree and root aesthetic.
The relationship between a tree and its roots can be seen as a metaphor for nature-based solutions to climate change. For every bright, gold, shiny, successful solution, there must be a network of planning, hard work, and dedicated behind-the-scenes activists. In addition, trees are arguably our planet’s oldest, simplest, and most effective solution to climate change. Sometimes, you don’t need to invent a high-tech carbon sequestering device; you just need to plant a tree. The forests in and around the Bay Area are already over-tasked with providing habitats to refugee animal populations and offsetting the greenhouse gas emissions of a major urban population center. The least we can do is protect them.”