LaToya Ruby Frazier believes life is not to be "belittled or squandered"— both one's own life and the lives of others. The first work of Frazier's I encountered was "The Notion of Family," I felt this commitment then (the same is true for her body of work at large), as I did again with intense and moving clarity when I was lucky enough to attend her talk organized by the Tanner Humanities Center. I invoke the word luck because it is not every day that you meet an artist who means and owns all her utterances, imbued with both intention and care.

David Wallace-Wells is not a writer known for his optimism; his book, after all, is called, “The Uninhabitable Earth.” He is known for a bluntness sometimes read as alarmist, a direct engagement with the definite and potential harms climate change will impose that often feels pessimistic, almost antagonistic, if not towards us as readers than at least towards our shared wishful delusions about climate change as it is and will be.

Frazier is a multimedia artist and 2015 MacArthur Fellow whose work spans genres and disciplines but often includes themes touching on environmental racism, industrial, family, personal narrative, and interdisciplinary connections. Her work has been featured in many prestigious museums, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Bronx Museum of New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, among many others