Victoria Orolfo enjoys her job as a background painter—currently on We Baby Bears—but her artistic heart has also led her down a more unusual path to the Solar Punk movement. Anchored at the intersection of environmental, social, and economic sustainability, this science fiction sub-genre “feels like a refreshing perspective on humanity and the Earth’s future,” she says. “With current world events unfolding every day, it’s good to have a genre of media that tackles multiple issues while remaining both optimistic and realistic.”
Painted in Photoshop, Aloe Bot reflects Orolfo’s love of the way vegetation contrasts against minimalistic hard-surface design. It is the first of her many terrarium-bot pieces using robots as incubators for vegetation while collecting the oxygen they release. “If at some point the air quality becomes unbreathable and the soil becomes infertile, we will need to find other means of supplying oxygen and growing food,” she explains.
While Orolfo wanted Aloe Bot to be funny-cute, it is also a serious personal commentary. Growing up as the child of immigrants of limited means—shopping in second-hand stores, fixing things rather than replacing them—she finds that her own life experiences inform her Solar Punk pieces. Along with exploring solutions, she loves that she can use her art to educate others about environmental issues and various forms of sustainability, and their impact on different economic classes.
More of Orolfo’s work can be found at her website, victoriaorolfo.wixsite.com/portfolio.
