Jill Pelto

Climate change artist and science communicator

Jill Pelto is a climate artist whose work focuses on communicating human-environment connections. By incorporating scientific data into watercolor paintings, she weaves visual narratives that reveal the benefits and costs of human impacts on this planet. Jill is the Art Director of the North Cascade Glacier Climate Project, led also by her father, Mauri Pelto, the Science Director and a fellow POW member. She has been working on this project since 2009. 

Her body of work is inspired by her fieldwork in places like the alpine glaciers in Washington, in Antarctica, and by communities around the world who are working hard to mitigate climate change. From the impossible blues of a single glacier to the concentric secrets held across nature, Jill shares many stories of change.

Jill’s work has been featured on the cover of TIME, at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, and as a cover for the North Cascade Conservation Council journal. She uses artwork extensively in education and outreach, and has worked with over 150 K-12 classrooms to bring her data-art curriculum to students. Most recently she has exhibited in Washington, and Massachusetts.

Jill is based in Washington state, she attended the University of Maine from 2011-2018 during which time she completed two B.A. degrees in Studio Art and Earth Science, and a Masters of Science focused on studying the sensitivity of the Antarctic Ice Sheet to changes in our Earth-Climate system.