About This Item
Newtok is a remote Alaska Native village situated on the Ningliq River, near the west coast of Alaska. Although a very remote and quiet place, Newtok has come face-to-face with climate change. Due to a combination of thawing permafrost, low levels of sea ice, and strong storms, the coastal land of Newtok is eroding dramatically. The village is currently in the process of relocating to a new site called Mertarvik, which will be safer from this climate change-caused erosion. In 2016, Chicago visual artist Jennifer Cronin embarked on a trip to Newtok to document this changing environment. Upon returning, she spent the next several years developing a series of paintings and screen prints titled Seen and Unseen that captured this eroding landscape. Known for her large-scale realistic paintings, Cronin brought an eye for detail to her renderings of Newtok. Meticulously painted landscapes unravel as they disappear into a wispy haze of white paint. InchThese paintings were my attempt to capture this disappearing landscape, and give viewers a space to connect with this landscape and contemplate it's loss,Inch says Cronin. In 2019, Cronin and musical Artist Patrick Mitchell (a/k/a Dusty Patches) began discussing the project after Cronin asked him to perform at the Gallery opening for the series. As a result, Mitchell created this album, Newtok- inspired by Cronin's Seen and Unseen series and the story of Newtok, Alaska. Mitchell is a multi-instrumentalist songwriter and producer from Chicago who has led numerous past projects in the Chicago DIY community including de Triomphe, New Color, and Whiskey Wise. He dove headfirst into synths in 2017 and adopted the electronic alias Dusty Patches. Dusty Patches released his debut project Filthy Four Track Machine Volumes I & II (2018, Sooper Records), largely made with the Teenage Engineering Pocket Operators and OP-1. In 2020, he rel
