Interview with Marysia Kosacka
Amazonian Firepit
Honorary Mention 2023
The Amazon Rainforest is the largest and most bio-diverse tropical rainforest in the world. It stretches nearly 4.7 million square miles, is home to over 3 million animal species, and houses over 2,500 types of trees—which also make it home to one-third of all tropical trees that exist on Earth. However, despite its importance to our ecosystem, deforestation is pushing the Amazon Rainforest dangerously close to its tipping point. In the past fifty years, 17 percent of the Amazon Rainforest has been deforested via burning, and scientists predict that if this trend continues, 27 percent of the rainforest will be without trees in the year 2030. As of today, the Amazon stores around 123 billion tons of carbon, and as these fires continue, more and more of that said carbon is being released into the air causing climate change to reach all-time highs. Amazonian Firepit urges audiences to fully understand the self-destructive nature of the Amazon’s rapid deforestation by fire.
This project’s forty-five visuals focus on leaf ridges from different species in the Amazon to showcase both how many plant genuses populate the lush rainforest and how delicate and fragile these plant varieties are. Each leaf ridge has been burned to create a contrast between the delicate symbols and the harsh flames that have been destroying the rainforest. The leaves’ ridges were created first. However, the project’s biggest challenge was to illustrate the flames and the damage that is being done to the rainforest. At first, the leaves were edited to appear burned in Photoshop, but this did not give the visuals the desired impactful effect. In order to emphasize how destructive and sporadic fire is, each symbol was printed and physically burned with a lighter, cigarettes, or matches. Manually burning the paper leaves created irregular and interesting shapes for each visual. The act of actually burning the visuals was an effective thesis statement for the project that also made the symbols appear dynamic and eye-catching.
Amazonian Firepit was transformed into both the forty-five symbols seen here and a book documenting the project’s process titled Slash and Burn. The physical book does not only highlight the plight of the Amazon Rainforest, but deforestation in general by drawing attention to the fact 1.3 percent of a tree was used to create its pages. This further challenges audiences to think critically about how their product consumption affects the environment, namely trees.
Marysia Kosacka
Marysia Kosacka is a first-generation Polish American designer with a focus in web, editorial, and experimental design. She currently works at Rottet Studio as a graphic designer.
Process
