EAC commissioned Colorado-based artist Jane McMahan to create work inspired by climate change. In response, she developed artwork for Hard Rain Revelations, in collaboration with the UCAR Science Education Center and exhibited at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Through photography, she chose to explore the changing hydrologic cycle, which is affecting cities, coastlines, rivers, agriculture, wildlife and aquifers at home and abroad, focusing where water cycle changes are already highly visible.

She began thinking about making rain into art when the floods in Boulder, Colorado, damaged her house, barn and land in September of 2013. Her first-hand experience, along with readings of science articles, books, and the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Fifth Assessment inspired her to think about how local rain patterns are changing.

This quote from NASA’s Earth Observatory website was particularly influential for her: “Among the most serious Earth science and environmental policy issues confronting society are the potential changes in the Earth’s water cycle due to climate change…”

McMahan’s goal for her exhibit, Hard Rain Revelations, was to create images that capture a moment of the water and location and draw attention to the changing nature of the water cycle and the effect on our planet. Her images are close-up photographs of water that she and friends took in locations around the world where water cycle changes due to climate change are significantly pronounced. She then layered rice paper on top of the photos, and sprinkled water, snow, or ice on top of the rice paper. The resulting images, with wet and dry areas, show fragments of the land and water under the rice paper, which were then printed and embellished.

As part of the project, EAC and the UCAR Science Center also collaborated to co-present a panel discussion about the intersection of art and science with McMahan and Jeffrey Kiehl, a climate scientist, Jungian analyst, and then head of the Climate Change Research Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.