TetraPAKMAN’s 'Wake Up!' Art Installation Brings Data into Focus on the Windows of Madison Public Library's Central Library now through Earth Day, April 22, 2025.
“For me it was important to bring back this project … and to put it around [the library] so that we can say ‘libraries are a safe space for science, libraries are a safe space for the community to have these types of conversations’ [even when the rest of the world] is still trying to deny the science facts or trying to distract us from the actions that we need to take.”
— TetraPAKMAN, on Wake Up!
The Residency:
Bubbler Room, Central Library
September 2024 - March 2025
As part of his residency at Central Library, TetraPAKMAN has worked with the public over the last seven months to paint an additional 21 climate sheets during open studio hours, workshops, and other special events, while discussing personal responsibility, privilege, and collective climate action with patrons of all ages. Visit TetraPAKMAN’s residency page.
Our Result of ‘Doing Something’:
Diane Endres-Ballweg Gallery, 3rd Floor of Central Library
Exhibition displayed March 31, 2025 - April 24, 2025*
This exhibition, Our Result of ‘Doing Something’, brings together 10+ years of work by TetraPAKMAN, including paintings, prints, collages, repurposed artifacts, and community-generated social sculptures. These pieces are displayed alongside the creative works of library patrons and local community members made during his 7-month artist residency at Central Library. The exhibition deeply engages with our climate crisis, blending factual data with visionary thinking about the future and collective action in the present.
The diverse layers of this exhibition underscore the urgency of our current environmental challenges, both through message and material. From TetraPAKMAN's poignant paintings of Methane - The Monster Across the Street to the junk mail collages and mixed media mobiles envisioned by youth who responded to the prompt ‘How Do You Envision Our Landscapes of Tomorrow?’, visitors can experience the exhibition up close through the details or more holistically through different vantage point. True to his artistic approach, TetraPAKMAN fosters dialogue through Our Result of ‘Doing Something’ by encouraging conversations among everyday people about the environmental issues that affect us all.
This exhibition will be on view in it’s entirety through April 24, 2025, with a portion of the exhibition continuing through April 28, 2025.
Wake Up! is a community-generated, multi-year project focusing on the climate crisis. TetraPAKMAN says his aim is to merge social commentary, carbon emissions data, and collective action. Utilizing the monthly data provided by The Keeling Curve, a daily record of global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration maintained by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, TetraPAKMAN invites community members to paint the month, year, and the coinciding CO2 emissions in parts per million (ppm) directly onto climate sheets (repurposed bed sheets). He says these unique canvases have generated dynamic conversations about privilege and its place within the climate crisis.
The Data:
The Keeling Curve data
The History of the ‘Wake Up!’ Project:
TetraPAKMAN began working the CO2 emission data into his art practice in 2015 and later began capturing the numbers and dates in this format in 2019, in alignment with the Global Climate Strike. Previous iterations of Wake Up! include temporary installations at locations such as the Madison Capitol lawn, Communication Madison exterior, UW–Madison School of Education Gallery, Dark Star Bar, and most recently as an exhibition at the Social Justice Center.
Thank you:
Thank you to the dedicated Madison Public Library staff and Central Library patrons who helped make this possible!
A special thank you to those who assisted in the three-floor installation of ‘Wake Up!’ at Central Library including: Pablo Baxter, Lars Koch, Samuel Johnson, Mitch Johnson, Stephen Balsley, Emily Balsley, Christine Holm, Maria Schirmer, Kathy Walker, Lauren Scanlon, Nate Smith, Ali Loker, Shloka Mohanty, Yasmin Trammel, Elee Sharpe, Aaron Gavney, Isabel Chiriboga-Pineda, and our special artist-in-residence Giacomo.
TetraPAKMAN’s residency is made possible thanks to The Friends of Madison Public Library.
