Extreme weather and storms are intensifying while hurricanes are forming faster, starting earlier, lasting longer and becoming less predictable and more dangerous. In April 2025, while in conversation with Issue No. 6 contributor Benjamin Ogrodnik about art pedagogy and Hurricane Helene, a widespread, destructive storm system raced across western and central PA. Described as a “perfect storm of storms,” what began as a small core of thunderstorms intensified as the conditions needed to produce a big storm kept building. Our current moment feels similar. Climate crisis, right-wing authoritarianism, American funded atrocities, “post-truth” propaganda, deregulation, and extreme wealth concentration compound as each season brings yet another “unprecedented” weather event. What future storms – climatic, social, and political – are we seeding?

Issue No. 6 explores living in, responding, and adapting to interconnected environmental and sociopolitical crises. First, “Trees Down: Photographing the Post-Hurricane Landscape,” an essay by Benjamin Ogrodnik (Assistant Professor, Art History, Augusta University) discusses his undergraduate course, Art and the Environment, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Ogrodnik explores pedagogy and student photo essays in the context of human caused climate crisis and eco-disaster imagery in the post-truth era.

Following Pittsburgh’s April 29 storm, Tree News invited community members to share their experiences of the storm through images and text, including additional photography by Alexis Oltmer. Submissions are incorporated following Ogrodnik’s essay and on the issue’s poster insert.

On the poster’s reverse is “Some Water,” a prose poem by Pittsburgh-based poet Ed Steck, on Hurricane Irma and recent severe storms in the Pittsburgh region.

The issue concludes with an interview with Sahrawi artist Mohamed Sleiman Labat (Motif Art Studio, Sahrawi Refugee Camp Samara, Southwest Algeria) and introduction by Ann Holt (Assistant Professor of Art Education, Penn State University). Sleiman Labat talked with Tree News about Sahrawi community gardens, tree planting, archiving and building on traditional knowledge to adapt to increasing storms, rising heat, and challenges of life in exile.

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Thank you, Issue contributors and partners: Paper Buck, Ann Holt, Alexis Oltmer, Benjamin Ogrodnik, Mohamed Sleiman Labat and Ed Steck. Thank you, Pittsburgh community members for sharing your images and experiences: Alex Abrahams, Sobia Ahmad, Teresa Audet, Julia and Jackie Betts, Tricia Burmeister, Stephanie Garrison, Alli Lemon, Brent Nakamoto, Paul Oehler, Alexis Oltmer, Afrooz Partovi, Nick Sardo, Benny Shaffer, Kathryn Shriver, Michael Shteyn, and Rambod Vala.

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Contents

Trees Down: Photographing the Post-Hurricane Landscape by Benjamin Ogrodnik, Assistant Professor of Art History at Augusta University, GA.

Some Water, a prose-poem by Ed Steck

Pittsburgh Community Images and Text from the April, 29 2025 storm

Interview with Mohamed Sleiman Labat with introduction by Ann Holt, Assistant Professor of Art Education, Penn State University, PA

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Credits

Issue Editors: Erin Mallea with support from Paper Buck

Issue Graphic Design: Erin Mallea

Issue Photography: Alexis Oltmer

Printed by: K-B Offset Printing and Mixam

–A.R.