2025 Michael Miller Scholarship Fund Winner

Cara Jaye

Cara Jaye is a multi-faceted artist combining conventional drawing, traditional and alternative photographic processes, and various printmaking techniques together with painting and collage. She considers drawing her first and primary medium - she loves drawing for its immediacy and intimacy of marks placed directly on the page.

Jaye is interested in examining ideas of process, classification, reproduction and perfection. Treading the line between the apparent and the ambiguous, visible and invisible, sweet and repulsive, Jaye enjoys working with re-occurring dichotomies. 

You are Drinking Plastic looks at the proliferation of plastics, especially single use plastic such as shopping bags and food packaging. A recent study found that 94% of sampled municipal water in the US contained microplastics, and 1 dump truck work of plastic waste enters the ocean every minute.

 Sea levels are expected to rise and coastal areas will change dramatically in the coming decades. This will require increased risk management and planning. Washington State has already seen a rise of about 8 inches in the last century, and most projections give a 50/50 chance that we could see at least another foot by 2070 – about 50 years from now. And of course, sea level rise won’t stop in 2070, but is instead projected to accelerate through 2100 and beyond.

The work in general work focuses on landscape and seascape in the era of global climate change and widespread plastic pollution. We live in a time when our world is changing rapidly and many people do not know what they can do to address the many environmental challenges we have to face. This work seeks to investigate these problems and scenarios being played out by human impact on the natural environment. Witnessing these events in person and in the media brings with it a sense of individual guilt and culpability.

While I have been working on these issues from the vantage point of my home in Washington State, these are global issues and can be seen everywhere, with changing place names. These large-scale multi-panel pieces investigate issues such as flooding, sea level rise, storm surge and plastic pollution.

All of the work is made of a combination of cyanotype, screenprint, monoprint, relief print and/ or painting and each piece is a unique work. Cyanotype is a light sensitive photographic emulsion that was developed in 1842 during the early stages of photographic history.