From Georgetown Art Center:

"About the Exhibit-  Holdfast is an elegy and homage to the giant kelp forests -- or ‘cathedrals of the sea’. These kelp forests – which can reach 175 feet high -- are one of three ecosystems that feed much of young marine life around the world. Over the last eight years, a high percentage of these forests have collapsed in cascade, or extinction events, after decades of global warming. Tasmania and northern and central California have been especially hard hit, and other varieties of kelp forests around the world have been decimated, not to return.

Madeline Irvine is a multidisciplinary artist whose focus is the natural world, past,  present, and future. Using an open range of media, she works on abstract installations that focus on the beauty and individuality of ecosystems of the world, especially those affected by the world’s climate crisis. Irvine works in series and has produced paintings made of sea salt crystals and other water-based solutions, floating light sculptures, collages, time-based videos, and photography. Based in Austin since 1993, Irvine was born in Manhattan and raised in the New York countryside. She received her MFA in painting/printmaking from the Rhode Island  School of Design, and a BFA in painting from the Maryland Institute, College of Art.