GREEN ICE is extremely rare. Like blue ice it is very old and dates back from a time when the planet was still pristine. Green ice includes microscopic algae and is a metaphor for the delicate composition of the ocean’s waters and the balance of the elements on the planet.

TRANSPARENT ICE represents the final stage in the metamorphosis of disintegration from solid to liquid state. As it dissolves oxygen seeps between the cracks and it turns white and then transparent. Transparent ice is a metaphor for the final stages of destruction, for the dissolution of the natural order.

BLUE ICE is the most ancient ice. Flushed out from the innermost core of a glacier, the bluer the ice – the older it is – it may be hundreds or even thousands of years old. Blue ice was formed at a time when the poles had not yet been reached by man, and the world was still uncontaminated. Thus, blue ice is a metaphor for the purity lost.

BLACK ICE, tainted by volcanic ash and rock, is a metaphor for pollution. As it slowly flows from the glacier it reminds us of filthy rivers and black clouds of toxic fumes emanating from chimneystacks in China or the former Soviet Union, where the sun never shines and nature is has been destroyed. Black is the future if we continue the reckless exploitation of our natural resources.

Photography - Fine Art Giclee pigment prints on bamboo paper

SALT follows Rossi’s ICE series. The artist ponders what would happen after the glaciers have melted, if global temperatures continue to increase? As water evaporates and lakes disappear…. Salt flats - massive evaporative basins that extend for miles – will appear as they already have in other times in the planet’s history.

Salt has played a vital part in religious ritual in many cultures, symbolizing immutable, incorruptible purity, but if CO2 levels increase and global warming intensifies it will eventually cause our demise.

.The Puna is one of the few places in the world that man has not been able to modify, but instead has modified man. This desert plateau amidst the Andean range between Argentina, Chile and Bolivia has an average height of 4000 meters (13000 feet) above seal level, and the word Puna is also synonymous in this region for altitude sickness.

The Spanish conquistadores called it “el despoblado” - the uninhabited place. Yet the volcanoes of the Puna harbor some of the most important Inca sanctuaries in the world such as the Llullaillaco volcano where three perfectly mummified children were found by a National Geographic expedition in 1999.

During the mid 19th century “caravans of death” carried supplies from Argentina to the Chilean saltpeter mines in the Atacama Desert known as the most arid place on earth. The cold, the lack of water, and food, made this a grueling journey for man and beast alike, and the desert is littered with the remains of those animals that didn’t make it.

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