Jane Winchell, The Sarah Fraser Robbins Director of The Dotty Brown Art & Nature Center, said she reached out to the artist about creating a mural as the entry experience for Climate Action after seeing her amazing work on East Boston's waterfront. "I wanted to welcome people into our climate exhibition with the vibrancy and energizing spirit that Silvia's artworks express."

Addressing the global climate crisis is daunting work, and she acknowledged that the collected scientific data grows more alarming with each released report. One can quickly feel defeated. “As an artist, I go to the personal, the individual, that’s my approach. It makes me feel a little more hopeful and less overwhelmed. I want people to say, ‘It does start with me.”’

Her 5-by-10-foot vertical mural at PEM is centered around an oversized hand cradling ocean animals and plant life with visible signs of pollution in the composition, including a discarded — and now ubiquitous — face mask.

Born in the Dominican Republic, López Chavez came to Boston to continue her studies at MassArt and settled in the area to build her career as an artist. Her work, she says, is shaped by her identities as an Afro-Caribbean woman living in the diaspora, and intends to celebrate, inform and inspire connection on multiple levels: personally, culturally and with the environment. She said she sees art making as a tool for community building and is motivated by the power of the creative process as an agent for positive change.

A previous public art project Fresh Air: Portrait of Chelsea explored the environmental and political causes and ramifications of air quality issues in the city of Chelsea, such as a higher incidence of asthma in its residents. López Chavez invited community members to share their own stories and serve as models for portraits in which she asked individuals to hold their breaths. Last year she joined other artists to create large-scale murals in East Boston for a project initiated by the Boston-based nonprofit Bow Seat to raise awareness about rising sea levels. (Student artworks recognized as part of a competition organized by Bow Seat Ocean Awareness Programs are included in PEM’s Climate Action exhibition.)

“There is so much more awareness now about what is best for humans and the environment. I continue to learn as much as possible and move toward more sustainable practices,” she says. “I think everything we do has this ripple effect, and that’s true from the very minute action you can take in daily life, all the way to making policies and systems change to protect the environment. It’s all about action. It doesn’t matter whether you are a kid, or the president of a country, every single person has this capacity.”

Follow the artist and her future projects on Instagram: @silvialopezchavez.