Carbon Portraits, originally commissioned for the exhibition “Weather Report: Art and Climate Change” and curated by Lucy R. Lippard for the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art,  is an interactive art project that highlights how our personal behavior and consumption patterns contribute to global warming.

Large quantities of carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere which are a direct result of fossil fuel consumption, are the driving factor in worldwide climate change. In this installation, local participants were asked to calculate their partial CO2 footprint resulting from their household energy use, and airplane and car travel. Six participants were then interviewed and asked to reflect upon their personal energy consumption patterns. These six individual portraits were then configured with current carbon research, as well as with various global warming celebrity portraits (Julia Roberts, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Leonardo DiCaprio, Wangari Maathai and others) to form a broader portrait of CO2 emission patterns and possible solutions to this dangerous problem.

To calculate your own partial carbon footprint go to: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/ind_calculator.html