As the second part of the Stories of Fire online exhibition series, FUEL LOADING showcases creative works that reckon with the accumulations of fuels in the Pacific Northwest and surrounding regions. Stories of Fire On line Exhibition Ser ies Part II: Anne Acker-Mathieu Ignition Casino acrylic collage, 17in x 20in, 2023 Fire depends on the fuels that feed it. Together with topography and weather, fuels determine a wildfire’s behavior: where it burns, how quickly it spreads, how hot it gets. Fire managers use the term “fuel loading” to categorize the amounts and types of vegetative fuels in a given area. But whether dry grasses, shrubs, dense stands of conifers or logging slash, the accumulation of fuels on the landscape reflects both the ecological processes and the cultural and social imperatives that shape land management. Fire suppression and industrialized land use, structural racial and economic disparities, residential development, roads and recreation, the support or hindrance of ecological stewardship and Indigenous fire sovereignty: all these “fuels” load onto the landscape as uneven densities, distributions and renewals. As the second part of the Stories of Fire online exhibition series, FUEL LOADING showcases creative works that reckon with the accumulations of fuels in the Pacific Northwest and surrounding regions. These works engage a broad conception of fuel loading to measure the weights, densities and arrangements of fuels across ecological, social and material landscapes. They celebrate the dynamic potential of fire, while also pressing on the build-ups, sparks and residues that contribute to flammability. They attend to the fuels themselves and ask how fire and justice converge. “The whole earth is fuel-loaded; there is nowhere apart and smoke drifts easily across borders ...” Amiko Matsuo + Brad Monsma Amiko Matsuo + Brad Monsma Bat Cone Burn, pyrometric project ritual firing. final form: clay, terra sigillata, underglazes, 2014 Suze Woolf Splintered varnished watercolor on torn paper mounted on laser-cut polycarbonate & shaped matboard, 52in x 25in, 2023. An ancient burned juniper from the new BLM wilderness area Oregon Badlands. This work is presented in collaboration by: And made possible by the generous support of: Martina Shenal clockwise from left: Slash Piles 06, Slash Piles, Slash Piles 07, La Pine, Oregon, archival pigment prints, 28.25in x 22.25in, 2022 aj miccio Davis Burn Scar (w/detail) ink on bristol, 11in x 14in, 2023 Lisa Cristinzo How to write a painting acrylic on wood panel, 36in x 48in, 2022 Eric Ondina Nearer My God to Thee 2021 Kate Lund Brush Fit rip-stop nylon, wool, flannel, fleece, 2023 Lisa Cristinzo Marked Trail acrylic on linen, 60in x 82in, 2023 Kelsey Grafton Morphosis ceramic & organic found object, 16in x 4in x 2.5in, 2019 Anne Acker-Mathieu Fields of Fuel acrylic collage, 45in x 42in, 2022 Karin Bolender / Rural Alchemy Workshop (R.A.W.) RQP Card seemingly an autograph card, one of few existing pictures of the Rodeo Queen of the Pyrocene. “Fuel” is a designation inherently concerned with material and materiality. But, of course, fuel also signifies energy. Erin James read more on how artists are "Feeling Fuel" Amiko Matsuo + Brad Monsma Pyrometric Whirl Ink, ash, medium, Phos-Chek flame retardant on paper, 84in x 40in, 2017 photo credit: Larry Lytle Amiko Matsuo + Brad Monsma Pyrometric Landscape ash, medium, Phos-Chek flame retardant on paper; 84in x 40in, 2017 photo credit: Kevin Boland Lisa Cristinzo Birch Bark is like Snake Skin acrylic on wood panel, 36in x 48in, 2021 Suze Woolf Core Values fabric installation of knit/felted tree cores, woven ice cores, dyed and quilted sediment cores, dimensions variable, up to approx. 18 sq ft, 2023 Kelsey Grafton Remnant (two views of wall piece) ceramic, 14.5in x 11.5in x 6.5in, 2020 Kelsey Grafton Becoming ceramic, organic materials, found objects, and conviction, 8.3ft x 3ft x 5ft, 2021 Eric Ondina Check emulsion on canvas, 2021 Eric Ondina Inferno 2020 Eric Ondina Hot Leather 3 emulsion on board, 2020 " The planet, like many of us, is experiencing the build up, the burn, and the burn out ." Lisa Cristinzo read more about Fuel Loading's impacts through Erin James' reflective essay Lisa Cristinzo Fraternal Fire acrylic on wood panel, 77in x 60in, 2023 Suze Woolf Carved Out with Fire Pit tree: Varnished watercolor on torn paper mounted on shaped Gatorboard with wood hanging cradle. fire pit: black paper, rocks, spray-painted gas pump handle, empty propane tank, coal, insulator, corn cobs, 2022 barbed wire, model airplane, model semi-truck and model oil tanker railroad car added 2023. Suze Woolf Logged, Drifted and Burned varnished watercolor on torn paper mounted on shaped foam core with wood hanging cradle, 52in x 25in, 2023. washed-up log found on Newskowin Beach, Oregon. Anne Acker-Mathieu The Hand that Feeds You acrylic collage, 22in x 22in, 2023 Amiko Matsuo Zuihitsu video of site-specific, temporary public art project, Seattle, WA, 2023 video credit: Tom Reese further considerations FL Burn Out "The Build Up, the Burn, and the Burn Out" Eric Onida’s Nearer My God to Thee depicts a marching band on fire, or perhaps a marching band emerging from fire; the bright reds of the band’s uniform, coupled with the yellows of their instruments, blend into the fire behind them, such that it’s difficult to tell where music becomes flame and flame becomes music. Onida explains that his paintings, produced with a unique recipe of egg tempera that blends viscous balsam, fossilized hard resins, egg yolk and water, depict “a society in the midst of its discontent, desperately trying to make sense of a destiny that often feels elusive, slipping beyond control and comprehension.” He also notes that paintings such as this one and Check , which similarly depicts an urban gas station emerging from (or perhaps about to be consumed by) threatening red flames that lurk in the background, draw conceptually from the fires depicted by the news media to be consuming the Pacific Northwest to represent “our social malaise as we grapple with the forces of unyielding natural and political environments.” These paintings certainly pose a stark question to me: what is the relationship between marching bands and wildfire? What about the city corner gas station–what role does it play in today’s firescape? Indeed, how, exactly, are ecological and social environments intertwined? Lisa Cristinzo’s Marked Trail poses a similar set of questions. As a Canadian myself, I easily recognize the symbols of Canuck patriotism in her work: the wheat and the geese that frame the painting, the pine cones and snowy, cloudy fields that root us in the North, and the cottage core kitsch of the colored mailboxes, flags, and place signs. These images combine to evoke a knee-jerk sense of national pride–for me, they drudge up an overly simplistic and idealistic idea of Canada that typically lives in a land of maple leaves and syrup. Yet the red brush strokes on the left side of the painting niggle me. These strokes could echo the most iconic of Canadian images: the red leaf, standing brightly against a white background. But they also disturbingly look aflame. Once again, I ask myself: what are the connections between these tokens of national pride–geese, snow, red foliage–and the fires that increasingly appear where we think they should not? And how do these artifacts of culture in and of themselves fuel these fires? Cristinzo’s artist’s statement gives us some answers to these questions. She notes that her current work, including Marked Trail and Birch Bark is like Snakeskin , came to her during a stay in a stone cabin. She began each morning collecting fuel for the wood stove, and “soon came to see the pieces of wood, newspaper, burnable objects, and ash as triangular compositions suitable for painting.” She quickly found herself delaying the fire each morning, pausing first to sketch her fuels before burning them. “Building a fire is a means of building a painting,” she states. Yet her process of accumulation-to-burn also speaks to a problem that she extends to the human species. “Our obsession with possession has caused a warming planet,” she writes, “leading to intense weather systems and catastrophic events. The planet, like many of us, is experiencing the build up, the burn, and the burn out.” This emphasis on the build up, the burn, and the burn out is fitting for an exhibition on Fuel Loading . As the introduction to the exhibition explains, fire managers use this titular term to account for amounts and types of vegetative fuels in a given area. In the Pacific Northwest, these fuels include dry grasses, shrubs, and dense stands of conifers. But Onida and Cristinzo’s work helps us take a much broader view of fuel, not just as materials that accumulate on a forest floor but also as social and cultural practices that facilitate a build up and subsequent burn. Work like Nearer My God to Thee and Marked Trail helps me realize how the everyday practices of my life, including attending the local football game, filling my car with gas, and taking a quick break at a cottage up north, are all part of the complicated network of values, attitudes, and behaviors that shape the world in which I live. Fuel loads, not just via ecological accumulation, but also via social tradition and routine. Eric Ondina, Nearer My God to Thee Lisa Cristinzo, Marked Trail Shenal's Slash Piles 06 & 07 Karin Bolender’s work with the Rural Alchemy Workshop also emphasizes the link between fire and our region’s cultural traditions. Her playful Rodeo Queen of the Pyrocene autograph card presses on, as she explains, “generic myths of the ‘Western Way of Life’ as they manifest in Pacific Northwest forestry, ranching, conservation, and other land-management practices, in both obvious and less visible ways.” The Rodeo Queen’s ghostly face and crown of flames task viewers with the question: How do iconic (and beloved) cultural practices of the North American West respond to an epoch increasingly determined by fire?" She also demands that we rethink the role of cultural ambassadors of this region right now. Bolender explains that the Rodeo Queen “thunders in and out of arena spotlights, waving a spectacular, distracting red flag amidst the more hidden dimensions of cultural, capital, and fossil flows and legacies that shape the land as we (don’t) know it and fuel its range of conflagrations.” What are the Rodeo Queen’s responsibilities to this region and its legacies, both positive and negative, overt and hidden? And what responsibilities do we, as viewers and potential fans, have in protecting the cultural and ecological heritages that she symbolizes before they–and she–burn out? Finally, Marina Shenal’s photographs give a forward-looking spin on the entanglement of ecological and social fuels. Her portraits of slash piles gathered in La Pine, Oregon, in late November 2022, are a much more literal take on fuel loading: they depict the vegetative fuels that have been cleared and piled as part of forest fuels reduction work. In Slash Piles , the scale and size of the accumulated material might appear as a warning. The brown slash piles frame and center the green, living trees as if to highlight the violence and destruction of the clearing that has taken place. What was once living, green, and standing tall is now dead, brown, and on the ground. Yet upon a closer look I also see two additional timelines in Shenal’s photos. One looks backwards to grapple with the accumulation of ecological fuels, due in no small part to the cultural suppression inherent in fire suppression policies. In this timeline, accumulation goes hand-in-hand with erasure: the build up of vegetation in the Pacific Northwest is intimately linked to the nullification of indigenous fire practices that center around the regular implementation of “cultural burns”--controlled fires used to renew the land and culturally important plants and animals. The other timeline looks forward. These slash piles have been staged in colder, wetter months for an upcoming prescribed burn to reduce fuel loads in the forest. Viewing them with a longer, future-facing timeline, I understand them not as symbols of a healthy forest that once was, but as the fuel of the more fire-resilient forest that will be. As Shenal explains, her photographs inspired her to learn more about “efforts to create healthy forest ecosystems” in the Pacific Northwest including “reducing fuel loads during the winter season” to “reverse the decades-long fire suppression strategies that . . . have left the forests vulnerable to intense wildfires.” The intimate, close view of Slash Piles 06 and Slash Piles 07 encourages me to appreciate the intricate beauty of these fuels and reconfigures my understanding of the dead materials as emblems of destruction to those of creation. They signify land management practices that are moving beyond suppression-at-all-costs to embrace the implementation of fire for both ecological and cultural purposes. They thus stand as potent images of a different kind of fuel loading which can support different kinds of fire, renewing social and ecological landscapes. "Feeling Fuel" Kelsey Grafton's Becoming Suze Woolf's Splintered As the introductory statement of the Fuel Loading exhibit makes clear, fire practitioners and managers tend to classify fuels by type: dry grasses, shrubs, dense stands of conifers, logging slash piles, etc. These categories emphasize that “fuel” is a designation inherently concerned with material and materiality. But, of course, fuel also signifies energy, in that fires burn differently depending on the type of material that feeds them: grasses are quick and hot, while slash piles tend to burn slow and steady. It thus makes sense that much of the artwork in the Fuel Loading exhibit foregrounds the energetic presence—and emotional valences—of specific materials. Take, for example, the pieces that make up Kelsey Grafton’s Trees of Morrow series. These sculptures are directly composed of the raw materials of fire’s fuel. As she explains in her artist statement, Grafton draws from her family homestead in Colville, Washington to “hand-harvest earthenware clay, pull textures from fallen structures, and gather artifacts left behind by my ancestors as a way of preserving our fading family history through art-making.” As structures like Becoming and Morphosis illustrate, this material engagement increasingly concerns itself with fire—as the homestead has become vulnerable to wildfire and the family busies themselves with tree thinning and slash pile burning, the fuel that provides the energy to Grafton’s artistic practice becomes the same fuel driving fire prevention measures on the site. For Grafton, this material fuel lends her creative practice an optimistic energy; Becoming clearly juxtaposes preventative burning with new life, as it depicts fresh berries growing from charred wood. Suze Woolf’s work shares this fuel and energy. She was formerly an artist who painted “beautiful intact landscapes,” yet works like Splintered and Logged, Drifted, and Burned provide us with intimate portraits of individual burned trees. This focus and its detailed representation of the fuel’s transformation by fire is a means of mediating Woolf’s anxieties about human impacts on the climate. As she suggests, the carbonized, “eaten away” snags of her paintings task us with finding “unusual beauty” in what is all too easy to dismiss as used up. right: Kate Lund's Brush Fit left: aj miccio's Davis Burn Scar Feeling Fuel Amiko Matsuo + Brad Monsma, Pyrometric Whirl The Northwest Fire Science Consortium’s informational pamphlet “What is Fuel?” tells us that “fuel is the only component of the fire triangle that land owners and managers can influence.” In this declaration, they confidently position fuel as within our control. Yet several of the pieces in Fuel Loading call this confidence into question. Kate Lund’s imposing Brush Fit , which she composed of rip-stop nylon, wool, flannel, and fleece, evokes the emotional experience of being caught in too much fuel—of not being able to influence this particular corner of the fire triangle, no matter the equipment that you have on hand. Lund explains that a “brushfit” is a temper tantrum that you throw “when you succumb to the challenges of walking in an overgrown forest.” The particular brushfit that inspires Lund’s sculpture took place as she and a crew were hiking 50 lb bladder bags into a small fire in the steep terrain of Northern Idaho. Lund and the crew begin their hike with positive attitudes, buoyed in part by their gear and saws. Yet the density of the forest quickly defeated them. She explains: “I remember stopping, grabbing a hold of a tree so that I didn’t roll down the hill, and thinking, What am I doing here? Why do I do this to myself? Why are we even putting this fire out when this whole hillside needs to burn anyway?” Brush Fit powerfully visualizes this transition from idealized expectations to frustrated realities, progressing from clean lines to a frazzled mass that looms over us. The piece is dominated by a literal increase in the density of materials and poses a vital question: how much control over fuels do we have, really? aj miccio’s drawing of the Davis Burn Scar and Anne Acker-Mathieu’s acrylic collages—especially Ignition Casino and Fields of Fuel —replicate the affective tension of Lund’s brushfit. Like Lund’s sculpture, miccio’s drawing and Acker-Mathieu’s paintings relish in the density of visual information to provoke emotional responses from viewers. In their packedness and abundance of detail and color, respectively, they too suggest that we may not be as in control of fuel and/or our emotions as we might assume. The airier pieces in Fuel Loading offer me some relief, albeit fleetingly. Amiko Matsuo and Brad Monsma’s Pyrometric Whirl initially provokes in me the opposite emotional and affective experience of Brush Fit . Whereas my anxiety increases as my eye travels upward in the latter, I feel a sense of calm as I scroll from bottom to top of Matsuo and Monsma’s image. A dense red clump lifts into ethereal black and white whisps, providing me with a sense of upward relief and evaporation. I am released from the brushfit of the painting’s bottom half, finding solace in a dance of vapors. But, fitting to form, this respite is as transitory as the swirling air that evokes it—the longer that I look, the more that bottom half and top half intermesh such that I’m confronted with the process of one becoming the other. The whisps are not relief from the red clump but its latest iteration; as I learn that the red pigment of the painting stems from the fire retardant Phos-chek, I am once again thinking about fuel, feelings, and control. Matsuo and Monsma explain that their work, especially the “wound-like” Phos-check marks on paper, expresses “the ironies of fire suppression rhetoric while also suggesting the rage of a combustion and intolerant political landscape.” “The whole earth is fuel-loaded,” they continue, and their work demands that we grapple with the full extent of our desire to influence any (or all?) parts of the fire triangle. I now see the painting as depicting the transformation of material from a site-specific measure of prevention into a traveling vector of toxicity waiting for our inhale, and become aware of how we, literally, become and embody the very fuels that we add to today’s firescapes. The artists’ connection of the physical and cultural fires that dominate contemporary life in the American West broadens the scope and urgency of this tension: how do our suppression efforts—suppression of fire, but also of political debates and schisms—become fuels in and of themselves? And to what sort of energy do these fuels give rise? further considerations contributed by Confluence Lab member Erin James, December 2023. Next

AIF crew 2024 Jason Rhodes /the 181 Bend, OR ( and elsewhere ) Artist collective the 181 is based in Bend, Oregon; Eugene, Oregon; and Old Fort, North Carolina. As far as they can tell, the 181 has been working together since 2007 when they found themselves gathered by the Pacific Ocean with a glim glam golden Q, roughly 10 yards of transparent lavender vinyl, and a broken hold on the sea’s reflection. The 181 is interested in composing situations that generate experiential spaces which expand, contract, or reassemble as information sloshes about. Imperfect approximations of the universe as a whole. Artists, a physicist/electronic engineer/musician, a mushroom forager/rockhound, and a former linotype operator—any attempts to formalize their practice are viewed with distress. Jason Rhodes Tom Hughes Abby Donovan Brandon Boan the 181 TREX report fast from afar his friends hurried heavily gazing The 181 Report Refrain for Confluence Lab June 2024 ____________________________________ KET IO> slurred A star, or the like of a star, that is hurled down by the night. And the work, like the wind, has direction. (Any parameter that is specified is a function of an array) Within “the” fire woke the thirst• thickening radiance from all physical being instrumentation noted increased in degree by proximities to flickering shoreline for the quench of flame Smoke also has direction. But smoke has direction within direction within direction...so the work is more like smoke than like wind. courtings of erasure a longing for the burning lick the promise of things beyond these SOUND CARRIES open :end finding the position of a distant object the 181: Brandon Boan, Abby Donovan, Tom Hughes, & Jason Rhodes we were standing on the shore |non-planetary twilight> the 181: Brandon Boan, Abby Donovan, Tom Hughes, & Jason Rhodes

featured workshop Fire Resilience Design Collaboration In November of 2022, The Confluence Lab had the opportunity to lead a Fire Resilience Workshop in Talent, Oregon, hosted in tandem with Coalición Fortaleza and Our Family Farms. Marking two years since the Almeda Fire of 2020, community leaders from local Rogue Valley organizations started by sharing their stories from the fire, recalling the emotional and physical impacts they experienced. This reflective and connective sharing created a space which moved us into the second half of the workshop. Participants were grouped into teams, given large sheets of poster board and a variety of materials (markers, colored pencils, scissors, tape, yarn, etc.), and asked to map their vision of what it would look like to move forward as a resilient community. There were no parameters given outside of this prompt. Engaged discussion and making took over the room, as just the right language and images were developed for each of the teams’ visions. For some this required the braiding of yarn to capture a sense of interwoven community, while others used layered paper, creating an interactive door to further emphasize a feeling of welcome. The Confluence Lab team’s job was to be attentive to these creative choices as they happened, asking what the goal was of each signifier in relation to the desired message. Once their posters were complete and had been presented, it was shared that as a final step, Megan Davis would transpose their works into unified digital designs. To ensure the integrity of the original concepts and messages was maintained, Megan interviewed team members at the end of the workshop and held review sessions with participants and her team throughout the design process. While both the original and digital works are equally valuable, this final step produces deliverables that can serve the community as shareable files, adaptable to multiple locations and contexts. Whether printed and displayed in shared spaces or sent within a digital platform, the voices of community members can serve as a touchstone as they continue to grow as a resilient Jackson County. results from workshop participants workshop deliverables, designer: Megan Davis featured text: 1. May our needs propel us to break and rebuild the very systems that left us in need in the first place. 2. There is no "wrong door" for service needs. All lead to a connected, resourceful community. 3. Towards a resilient Jackson County, Oregon: We build for the future. We build trust. We honor the lessons. We strive for well-being. We care for each other. We ask what you need. We share best practices. We collaborate. We are inclusive. 4. We open the door to community healing. Megan Davis sharing her experience during the Confluence Lab's presentation "Ground Truths & Grapplings: Apprehending Fire through the Fire Humanities" at the Malcom M. Renfrew Interdisciplinary Colloquium in Moscow, ID in October 2023 featured designer Megan Davis is a graphic designer passionate about the roles of art and design as key players in social change. She seeks to use design as not only a medium for spreading awareness but as an active agent. As a result, her work has become increasingly oriented around community practice, audience engagement, and in some cases, utilization. Davis has earned her bachelor’s degree in graphic design, worked professionally as a designer in Seattle for 5 years, has held a variety of design volunteer and intern positions ranging from nonprofits in Colorado to Kenya, and is now earning her MFA at The University of Idaho while also teaching undergraduate art courses as the instructor of record. Chat back to exhibition Chat

featured artist Meredith Ojala Kenmore, WA Meredith Ojala is a multi-media artist and activist from Seattle. Her artwork often delves into the emotional landscapes of environmental and social-justice issues. She worked on environmental campaigns while studying sociology and studio art at Princeton University. She is currently splitting time between Seattle and the Arctic of Sweden. featured artwork "All I See is Red" oil on canvas, 18in x 24in, 2018 responding to Ground Truths After being evacuated from the Erskine fire in 2016, I moved back to the Pacific Northwest hoping the heavier precipitation would ease the wildfire risk. After managing a meditation retreat in Southern Idaho 2018, I had great difficulty driving back to Seattle through all the wildfires in Eastern Oregon and Washington. This painting is part of a set of paintings made at a time when wildfires felt all-encompassing, when the world felt like it was on fire, and my dreams were turning red.These paintings are about sleeping with fire and how wildfires spread into our dreams and subconsciously color our perception of the world. They take us into feelings of falling asleep with wildfire in clear view from our home window; to feelings of being woken up by water-bombers. Wildfires are one of the most beautiful and simultaneously terrifying landscapes I have ever seen. They have taken over many of paintings even when I had no plans to incorporate them. more from Meredith's perspective ... This image was taken near Meredith’s old studio, which was situated on traditional Nehelam, Clatsop, and Chinook territory. Inspiring autumn landscape on traditional sdukʷalbixʷ (Snoqualmie) territory. Meredith’s studio in Haida Gwaii. A collection of political and wildfire landscapes-in-progress fill the space. Chat back to exhibition Chat

Internship Program Our internship offers students professional development opportunities in using the tools of the arts and humanities-–especially those related to storytelling, representation, and emotions-–to study culturally- and ideologically-divisive issues in rural communities. The internship for the Spring 2026 semester will focus on our Narrative Science project; interns will receive training in narrative theory and the science of emotions before collaborating with a science practitioner to help them use narrative and emotions effectively in the communication of their work. Interested in joining? Contact ejames@uidaho.edu and jladino@uidaho.edu .

Stories of Fire is a community-sourced project that hopes to reimagine our shared wildfire story and future fire resilience. Stories of Fire: A Pacific Northwest Climate Justice Atlas Erin James, Jenn Ladino, Teresa Cavazos Cohn, Stacy Isenbarger, Sasha Michelle White & Leah Hampton funded by Mellon Foundation Just Futures Inititative 2021 - present Laura Ahola-Young's Mapping Oxygen featured in GROUND TRUTHS . Every word, every image, every memory of wildfire carries a story. A story of fire can engages deep emotions with place, community, and home. In the Pacific Northwest, wildfire experiences can overlap or contradict each other, complicating how we relate to our neighbors and to our changing landscape. Faced with so much complexity, we often simplify or suppress important stories. Traditional maps, media coverage, and even our personal conversations about wildfire can be limited or miss key connections. Stories of Fire is a community-sourced project that hopes to reimagine our shared wildfire story and future fire resilience. This project includes: Online Art & Design Exhibitions Artists-in-Fire immersive prescribed fire residency Community Workshops Using storytelling, visual art, and unique, nontraditional maps from across the region, the Confluence Lab will seek a wide variety of voices as contributors to each part of the project, foregrounding social and environmental justice and traditionally underrepresented rural perspectives. Confluence Lab members Erin James (English), Jennifer Ladino (English), Stacy Isenbarger (Art + Design), and Teresa Cohn (Human Geography), in partnership with local communities, are the primary leads on Stories of Fire. Research fellow Sasha Michelle White (Environmental Science) and our in-residence fellow, Leah Hampton also have key roles in this project. Stories of Fire is one of a suite of projects under the umbrella of the University of Oregon’s Pacific Northwest Just Futures Institute for Racial and Climate Justice (Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, $4.52 million). The Institute is creating a regional network that works toward racial and climate justice through pedagogical and community engagement initiatives. Learn more about this project. Funding for this project made possible from generous grant from the Mellon Foundation’s “Just Futures ” Initiative for the Pacific Northwest Just Futures Institute for Racial and Climate Justice , University of Oregon. Lisa Cristinzo Birch Bark is like Snake Skin acrylic on wood panel, 36in x 48in, 2021 Stories of Fire Online Exhibition Series Learn More Organized into three parts, GROUND TRUTHS (Spring 2023), FUEL LOADING (Fall 2023) and SIGHTLINES (Winter 2024), these online exhibitions were loosely framed by a particular disciplinary lens— cartography, fire management and urban planning—and the range of ways artists express and explore parallel concerns. Confluence Community Workshop: Mapping Fire Recovery in Oregon's Rogue Valley In November 2022 the Confluence Lab partnered with Coalicion Fortaleza and Our Family Farms to lead a fire resiliency and map-making workshop in Oregon’s Rogue Valley. The 2020 Almeda Fire impacted the Rogue Valley/Jackson County area profoundly, and local nonprofit organizers invited a Confluence team to the area for an afternoon of inter-organizational reflection, information sharing, and map making. The resulting maps of organizations and county resources were completed and digitized by a Confluence lab designer Megan Davis at the University of Idaho and given back to local Rogue Valley organizations to help with their future fire resiliency planning and messaging. Read more news from this event. Next

Storying Extinction Responding to the Loss of North Idaho’s Mountain Caribou Jack Kredell, Chris Lamb w/ Devin Becker Summer 2020 to present funded by the CDIL Graduate Student Summer Fellowship Program, Summer 2020 The Lab partnered with the University of Idaho Library’s Center for Digital Inquiry and Learning (CDIL) to support “Storying Extinction ,” a digital humanities project spearheaded by graduate students Jack Kredell and Chris Lamb, which officially launched by CDIL on February 1, 2022. Supported by CDIL’s Graduate Student Fellowships, Kredell and Lamb produced a GIS-based “deep map” consisting of oral histories, trail camera footage, nonfiction essays, and historical documents related to mountain caribou and their 2019 Idaho extirpation. Kredell, Lamb, and CDIL director Devin Becker will co-author an analysis of the project and its methodology for publication later this year. Learn more about this project. July 2021 The Spokesman Review Article special thanks to project partner: explore the Storying Extinction website: Next

featured artist Jean Arnold Pullman, WA Jean Arnold is a professional visual artist residing in Pullman, WA. She has exhibited her artwork in numerous solo and group shows, regionally and nationally. Her work isfound in many public, corporate, and private collections. She was included in a 2021 exhibit at the Missoula Art Museum, EDGE OF THE ABYSS: ARTISTS PICTURING THE BERKELEY PIT. In 2022, Arnold had a two-person show with Ellen Vieth at Moscow Contemporary in Moscow, ID. Arnold earned her MFA in 1999 from Northern Vermont University (previously Johnson State College), in conjunction with the Vermont Studio Center, where she received guidance from numerous artistic luminaries. After graduate school, she worked with the urban landscape (while moving through it via mass transit) for almost a decade. Then, her growing concerns about human impacts on the planet (while also living near one of the largest pit mines in the world in Salt Lake City) led her to work with large-scale mining imagery and the issues of extraction. In her various explorations, Jean Arnold is visually engaged with how humans impact the land. Her recent series featured in Ground Truths depicts the burned-out town of Malden, WA to bear witness to the destruction unfolding all around us, due to the ravages of global warming and other ecological imbalances. featured artwork Malden 2: Gutted acrylic on canvas, 20in x 26in, 2022 "Malden 8: Shreds" ink and gouache on paper, 11in x 14in, 2022 "Malden 1: After the Inferno" acrylic on canvas, 20in x 26in, 2020 "Malden 5: Phase Change" gouache on paper, 12in x 14in, 2022 "Malden 3: Remnants" acrylic on canvas, 20in x 22in, 2020 responding to Ground Truths Within a month after a wildfire destroyed nearly all of the town of Malden, WA in 2020, I journeyed there to document the destruction beginning an artistic project of bearing witness to what is unfolding now in many places all around us. I think a lot about the systemic, “Earth Systems” big-picture – about how humans are altering the very basis of existence, and how this is now affecting our very lives. Many people are experiencing devastating losses, the burned-out town of Malden being a prime example. Increasingly we are confronted with scenes of wreckage, whether from fire, flooding, or storms. This is becoming a part of our experienced landscape, as-it-now-is. I so often take an eagle-eye, distant approach to contemplating humanity’s impact upon the land; rendering these scenes of destruction was sobering and humbling, literally bringing me down to earth to consider the impacts of fires and other destructive forces upon peoples’ lives. I consider this series to be an act of bearing witness to challenging subjects which we want to turn away from, an homage or tribute to those who have suffered. Beauty and horror often intermingle in unexpected ways. more from Jean's perspective Steptoe View (study) , watercolor on paper, 7in x 10in, 2022 Malden, WA is set in the Palouse Region in the Pacific Northwest. Here, a sweeping scene from nearby Steptoe Butte captures the rolling contoured farmland that is characteristic of the area. Malden 10: Dissolution , ink and gouache on paper, 14in x 21in, 2023 What was once a beloved home dissolves into chaos and entropy. Malden 9: Resurgence , oil on canvas, 8in x 10in, 2022 The human impulse to look for signs of hope runs deep. New growth appears to arise from the ashes of complete destruction. The artist’s studio may look cluttered, but it is organized chaos. Malden 4: Loss , oil on canvas, 18in x 20in, 2022 How might such a scene of devastation be experienced by those whom have lost everything? The effects of breakdown are captured by the qualities of the paint itself. Chat back to exhibition Chat

AIF crew 2024 Laura Ahola-Young Pocatello, ID Laura Ahola-Young received her MFA from San Jose State University and her BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She currently resides in Pocatello, Idaho where she is an Associate Professor of Art at Idaho State University. Originally from the Iron Range and Boundary Waters Canoe Area of Northern Minnesota, Laura is influenced by landscape, winters, ice and resilience. She is currently developing work that incorporates scientific research, plant physiology, critical plant studies, geology and personal narrative. TREX involvement More on her story in Fall 2024... but for now, Laura is thrilled to work with the Confluence Lab and other selected artists and writers. She excited for the training as she can already see that she will be able to learn the importance of training, organization and policy when it comes to fire, a very different way of approach fire than that of an artist. Chat back to AIF residency Chat

featured artist Liz Toohey-Wiese Vancouver BC Liz Toohey-Wiese is a settler artist residing on the homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and sə̓lílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. She is a graduate from the MFA program at NSCAD University. She completed her undergraduate degree in painting at Emily Carr University, also undertaking coursework at the University of Victoria and the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. She has taken part in solo and group shows across Canada, and recently was the artist in residence at the Sointula Art Shed (2019), the Caetani Cultural Center (2020/21), Island Mountain Arts (2021) and upcoming Similkameen Artist Residency (2022). Deeply interested in the history of landscape painting, her paintings explore contemporary relationships between identity and place. Her most recent work explores the complicated topic of wildfires and their connections to tourism, economy, grief, and renewal. She is a full time Fine Arts faculty member at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, BC. featured artwork Billboard installed outside of Vernon, BC from August 2020 - March 2021 responding to Ground Truths Landscape art has long been used as a form of truth-making, influenced by the stories humans are telling themselves at that particular moment about the environment around them. My practice has remained curious about the history I find myself in conversation with as a Canadian landscape painter, and has attempted to look at ways to undermine the myth of the Canadian landscape as a site of vast, untouched wilderness. My wildfire paintings attempt to grapple with the repercussions of our direct influence on our forest landscapes: the increased prevalence and severity of fire on the landscape is happening because of decades of colonial forest management practices, and the warming of the planet through climate change. What if, instead of looking away from this reality, we stare directly at the changes that are happening right now, accept and grieve the losses we are experiencing, and find the renewal that is happening amidst the destruction? more from Liz's perspective ... Liz Toohey-Wiese walking around the White Rock Lake fire in 2022, not far from where her billboard was installed the year prior. Chat back to exhibition Chat

Stories of Fire is an interdisciplinary project that explores personal narratives of wildland fire and informal STEM learning in rural Idaho.  Stories of Fire Integrative Informal STEM Learning Through Participatory Narratives Teresa Cavazos Cohn, Erin James, Leda Kobziar, Jennifer Ladino, Kayla Bordelon, Jack Kredell, Jenny Wolf funded by the National Science Foundation Constructing fire board models of wildfire scenarios with students in the Stories of Fire project. Stories of Fire is an interdisciplinary project that explores personal narratives of wildland fire and informal STEM learning in rural Idaho. The American West is rife with personal narratives of evacuation, smoke, disaster. Yet alongside these dramatic events and the deep, powerful emotions that come with them, fire scientists carry a quieter but no less important message: fire has always been a part of the western landscape, many wildland fires play natural and beneficial roles, and in a warming world we must learn to live with more fire. Indeed, prescribed burns — set intentionally by fire managers — are a critical management tactic. Rather than dichotomizing “fire as terror” and “fire as tool,” we explore narrative as a means of integrating the deep emotion of lived experience with fire science to support a better, more holistic, understanding of wildfire in Idaho. Bringing together a science communicator, a narratologist, a fire ecologist, and a specialist on emotions and public lands, our interdisciplinary research team explores: 1. What characteristics of narrative inform fire science communication, and 2. What audience-centered approaches best support participant narratives in informal STEM learning? Our team works collaboratively with informal educators based in rural areas of Idaho, including the Sawtooth Interpretive Center, Ponderosa State Park, Celebration Park, the McCall Outdooor Science School, and Craters of the Moon National Monument. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2006101. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Learn more about the project . Next

featured artist Anne Acker-Mathieu Seattle, WA Anne Acker-Mathieu has a background in Fiber Art, Graphics, and Painting. Her work is an assimilation of her experience and involves a mixed media approach that utilizes a blend of painting and collage. The employment of mixed media has yielded a body of work that is explosively colorful, movement-oriented, and emotionally thoughtful. As a woman, and a mother of daughters, Anne’s work focuses on justice issues that deeply concern her: women’s rights and social inequality feature prominently in her art. Anne holds a BFA from the Burnley School of Graphic Design at the University of Washington and currently lives with her family in Seattle. featured artwork "Ignition Casino," acrylic collage, 17in x 20in, 2023 "Fields of Fuel," acrylic collage, 45in x 42in, 2022 responding to Fuel Loading As a Seattle native, I have witnessed the Pacific Northwest grow from a sleepy, rainy area to a large metropolitan region with a bustling economy and exploding population that is encroaching the wilderness areas. Growth has brought all the accompanying problems of pollution, overcrowding, loss of habitat, and strains on the natural ecosystems. As a child, I remember having frogs and garter snakes in the woods, because the swamps were not drained, and housing developments were not (yet) in their domain. Today, my children’s summers are void of frogs and snakes, and include checking the wildfire smoke forecast to see if they can safely go for a bike ride. My work is a response to these realities and concerns, to the growing issues of climate change and to the apprehension with which I watch the rises in temperature, drought, and wildfires across the globe. It is becoming difficult to look away. I witness the fear of changing our habits, consumption, and economy–but we are all dependent species who rely on our planet for existence. more from Anne's perspective Anne’s studio: The space where the work is made, and the ideas are examined. City Hell strip at summer’s end: This is the picture of resiliency. This inner-city strip endures drought, excessive heat, dog walkers, and discarded human litter. And yet it survives. It is inspiration every day. The space underneath the grape arbor is my favorite place to think. The junk store assemblage of tin fish and human hands is representative of the endangered PNW salmon, and the hands of humanity that can hopefully work towards the betterment of our world. City Woodland Garden: Living in a highly urban environment, much work has been done to have the garden echo the PNW native forests. The garden is filled with PNW Firs, Cedars, and Hemlocks that will outlive us and hopefully survive future Seattle’s urban sprawl. Chat back to exhibition Chat