Kathy Sirico (b. 1990, Philadelphia, she/her) is a Brooklyn-based artist and poet creating abstract artwork that spans collage-based paintings, stained-glass sculptures, and mixed-media installation. Her work focuses on cultivating human connection with the more-than-human world in a time of climate crisis. Sirico’s current practice focuses on climate change in the high Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, where she is committed to continued artistic research within the community and landscape at large.

Sirico’s artistic process is one of labor and transformation—painting, cutting, collaging, weaving, and soldering are how she creates empathetic, devotional works of art that tell vital stories about the environment. The physical surface of her artwork is a layered tapestry of acrylic on canvas collage with upcycled textile elements, which reimagines the material language of painting to include craft and feminist legacies. Similarly, Sirico’s stained and fused glass works use light, color, form, and symbolism to explore both the haptic and spiritual experience of being immersed in the natural world.

Sirico’s current work chronicles her experiences in Svalbard, an epicenter for accelerated climate change. Her research has led her to weeks living off-grid on a boat in the Arctic Ocean, a month of living in the twenty-four-hour darkness and cold of the Polar Nights, expeditions into glacial ice caves, conversations with hundred-year-old bones in the field, meetings in scientific laboratories, and a committed engagement with Svalbard’s human community. Sirico’s deep connection to Svalbard and immersive experiences in the wilderness allow her to express an emotional core that is vital to artistic work around climate advocacy. Sirico has had the support of numerous national and international residency programs, fellowships, and exhibitions in her pursuit of climate activism through art.