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

featured artists David Paul Bayles Philomath, OR Frederick J Swanson Philomath, OR David Paul Bayles currently lives and photographs in western Oregon, where highly efficient industrialized tree farms supplanted the massive old growth forests many decades ago. He is currently working on a long term project with disturbance ecologist Frederick J Swanson, documenting the forest recovery after the massive 2020 Holiday Farm Fire in the McKenzie River watershed. His photographs have been published in numerous magazines including Orion, Nature, Terrain, Audubon, Harpers, Outside, The L.A. Times Sunday Magazine and others. Public collections include The Portland Art Museum, Santa Barbara Art Museum, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, The Baldwin Collection MTSU, The Harry Ransom Center, Wildling Museum and others. His first monograph Urban Forest, Images of Trees in the Human Landscape was published in 2003. His next book, Sap In Their Veins , will be published in fall 2023. The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley created the David Paul Bayles Photographic Archive in 2016 as a permanent home for his entire life’s work. Frederick J Swanson is a retired Research Geologist with the Pacific Northwest Research Station of the US Forest Service; a Senior Fellow with the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word; and the lead scientist in the Long-Term Ecological Reflections program. This Spring Creek-Andrews Forest collaboration facilitates engagement of writers and artists with the ancient forest of Andrews Forest and the volcanic eruption landscape of Mount St. Helens. Included among these activities have been 110+ writer and artist residencies at Andrews Forest since 2004. Trained as a geologist and specializing in the study of disturbance agents in forest ecosystems, watersheds (fire, flood, landslide, volcanic eruptions, clearcutting, forest roads), and society, it has been natural to connect with human disturbance agents, such as poets and artists. Relevant publications include Forest Under Story: Creative Inquiry in an Old-Growth Forest (2016, Brodie et al., U Washington Press) and In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens (2008, Goodrich et al., Oregon State U Press). featured artwork Triptych from Typologies: Charred Abstractions series Triptych from Typologies: Canopy series from Typologies: Charred Abstractions series from the Chronosequences Series: left: Photopoint FFR 2 , right: Photopoint FFR 17 . For this project, Bayles & Swanson selected 42 distinct photopoints that represent different forest conditions. During the first two years they photographed each photopoint twelve times in order to record the changing landscape following the fire. responding to Ground Truths Seeking truth involves boots on the ground while looking for clues in the clouds. That’s what trees do. When Fred and I stood in the charred skeletal forest after the fire, our hearts and minds were full of ideas, questions and curiosity. After two and a half years of climbing over burned trees and falling into stump ghosts, we’re asking better questions. And we’re still curious. Truth may be lodged in the tread of our boots. Learn more about their Following Fire project. more from their perspective Frederick J Swanson at work Photopoint FRR 2 Notebook. Review more HERE. In the mid-seventies David Paul Bayles worked as a logger to earn tuition for photography school. His current studio/gallery was built from our trees that blew down after a neighbor clear cut their land. Read January 17, 2023 LENSCRATCH article "David Paul Bayles and Frederick J Swanson: Following Fire: A Resilent Forest, an Uncertain Future" Chat back to exhibition Chat

2022 was an exciting year for the Confluence Lab. In Moscow, Leah Hampton thrived in her role as Fellow In Residence, continuing her work on the narrative backbone of the Pacific Northwest Climate Justice Atlas project and bringing a team of Lab members to Oregon for a community workshop. LAB report 2022 directors' statement: 2022 was an exciting year for the Confluence Lab. In Moscow, Leah Hampton thrived in her role as Fellow In Residence, continuing her work on the narrative backbone of the Pacific Northwest Climate Justice Atlas project and bringing a team of Lab members to Oregon for a community workshop (details below). We were thrilled to welcome Sasha White into the Lab as our two-year Mellon Predoctoral Fellow! Sasha will pursue a PhD in Environmental Science while serving as project coordinator for the Atlas. Together with Megan Davis and other Lab interns, and CDIL’s Evan Williamson, Sasha helped create the “Where There Is Smoke” project , a crowd-sourced digital map that documents experiences of wildfire smoke in the Pacific Northwest and further afield. A companion postcard project invites people to share their experiences of wildfire smoke by mail. Lab Co-founder and Co-director Teresa Cavazos Cohn started her new job as Associate Professor in the Department of Natural Resources & the Environment at the University of New Hampshire, expanding the Lab into a trans-regional network and leading a new NSF grant proposal to build on our previous pilot project. Lab members Kristin Haltinner and Dilshani Sarathchandra also submitted a proposal to NSF, which is under review. The Lab celebrated the graduation of our first PhD student, Kayla Bordelon, as we successfully wrapped up a two-year NSF Stories of Fire project. Kayla was awarded Outstanding PhD Student in the Environmental Science Program! In 2023, our core team will continue building the Atlas of Fire projects and developing novel approaches to science communication that center narrative and emotion in all aspects of the scientific process. Lab member Stacy Isenbarger created a beautiful new website for the Lab. member news Lab Co-founder and Co-director Erin James published a new book, Narrative in the Anthropocene (Ohio State University Press). You can hear her speak about this work on two podcasts: New Books in Literary Studies and Narrative for Social Justice . Lab Co-founder and Co-director Jenn Ladino, along with Leda Kobziar, Jack Kredell, and Teresa Cohn, co-authored an article, “How Nostalgia Drives and Derails Living with Wildland Fire in the American West,” for a special issue of the journal Fire dedicated to Rethinking Wildland Fire Governance. It is a free, open-access publication found HERE . A firefighter reaches to connect with a giant sequoia wrapped in protective fire shelter “blankets” in Sequoia National Park during the CA wildfires of September 2021. Image Credit: Gary Kazanjian, Getty Images. Stacy Isenbarger ’s artwork was featured in various exhibitions throughout the US and Broadsided Press’s Anthology Fifteen Years of Poetic and Artistic Collaboration, 2005-2020 published in April. Isenbarger also had three solo exhibitions including Detachment Sweet Detachment (Betty Foy Sanders Visual Arts Gallery, Georgia Southern University, Armstrong Campus, Savannah, GA), Edged Means: Threshold (College of Western Idaho, Nampa, ID) and Erosion of Air (Gardiner Gallery of Art, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK). Isenbarger installing Porch Song in Savannah, GA. Kristin Haltinner and Dilshani Sarathchandra’s forthcoming book Inside the Lives of Climate Change Skeptics (University of Washington Press) features survey and interview data with climate skeptics in the pacific northwest to offer insight into the ways that identity, trust, and ideology shape the complexity of skepticism. Recently they talked about their book in an episode of The Vandal Theory Podcast . Kayla Bordelon completed her PhD and started a new job as Assistant Professor of Practice and Regional Fire Specialist, Western Region, in Oregon State University’s Natural Resources Extension Program. Sasha White exhibited artworks and a collaborative performance piece in the inaugural event for the Fuel Ladder art research group, hosted by the University of Oregon’s Center For Art Research in Eugene, Oregon. The exhibition served as the culminating event for the Pacific Northwest Just Futures Institute’s “Futures of Work” Symposium, in which Erin James presented on the Stories of Fire Atlas Project. events In November 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 will be completed and digitized by a Confluence graphic designer at the University of Idaho and given back to local Rogue Valley organizations to help with their future fire resiliency planning and messaging. Teresa Cohn, Erin James, and Jenn Ladino co-led a workshop at Colorado College in February to pilot their Narrative Science framework. Images from Confluence Community Workshop: Mapping Fire Recovery in Oregon's Rogue Valley Kayla Bordelon, in her role with the NASA-sponsored Earth to Sky Idaho Regional Hub for Climate Communication, co-coordinated a multi-day professional development workshop for Idaho educators in February: “Recharge: Connecting Educators and Scientists to Explore Water Issues in Idaho.” Jenn Ladino joined her for a session on “Engaging Emotions in Climate Change Education.” In May, Erin James traveled to Boise to participate in that city’s first ever Youth Climate Summit. The event, planned and coordinated by local high school students, asked “How can students use storytelling, arts, and civic engagement to promote climate action?” Erin ran a workshop with over sixty students and high school teachers on how stories can help communicate climate change. The Lab hosted Dr. Peter Kalmus , NASA climate scientist, activist, and author of Being The Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution, for a Zoom lecture and conversation on Earth Day, April 22: “Facts Aren’t Enough: Communicating Earth Breakdown.” We are grateful for the co-sponsorship of ENVS, ENGL, JAMM, the Sustainability Center, and the Citizens Climate Lobby. Boise Youth Climate Summit. Photo credit: Jenny Wolf Dr. Peter Kalmus Jenn Ladino and Kayla Bordelon completed the final two community workshops in their IHC-sponsored series, “Our Changing Climate: Finding Common Ground Through Climate Fiction,” in Lewiston and Grangeville in May. Erin was thrilled to receive an invitation to participate in the American Fisheries Society conference in Spokane in August. Organizers of the “Advances in Endogenous Records with Connections to Indigenous Knowledge, Lands, and Waterways” panel sought out the Lab’s expertise in the uses of storytelling in science communication and practice. We featured the research of ENVS PhD students at two working lunches in the fall. In September, Sasha White introduced her creative project, First Aid Kit for the Fire-Prone, which investigates slippages of art, medicine and ecology in Oregon’s fire-prone landscapes; Phin Lampman shared his work in Leda Kobziar’s lab piloting drones equipped with various air samplers, meteorological sensors, and cameras for remote sensing over wildland fires. He even brought in a drone to show us! In November, Jack Kredell and Grace Pevin shared research projects on fire and water at the Taylor Wilderness Research Station, focusing on how environmental change and disturbance plays a critical role in determining scientific as well as personal attachments to landscape. upcoming 2023 events: In conjunction with the Prichard Art Gallery of the University of Idaho, we will host a three-part, juried online art exhibition series called Stories of Fire . This series is organized by Stacy Isenbarger, Sasha White, Megan Davis & North Bennett. Part one, Ground Truths , is scheduled to open online in early April 2023. past reports: 2021 2020 2019

featured artist Asante Riverwind Eugene, OR Asante Riverwind was taught by his artist mother and studied art at four different universities and an art institute for a decade. He has been creating and showing art for over 60 years, both nationally and internationally. "Spirit & Nature - Dreams & Visions" are the inspirations for much of his art, which includes, paintings, murals, installations, stone and wood sculpture, pen & inks, and other mediums. Mountain Bluebird and Waldo Wilderness, featured in Ground Truths, depicts a forested landscape recovering from fires, with a bluebird, a resilient species well adapted to fire ecology making its home amidst the many fire killed standing snags, reminding us that life truly is resilient, as are we all. featured artwork "Waldo Wilderness and Mountain Bluebird" acrylic on canvas, 8in x 10in responding to Ground Truths In 1996 my home and over two thousand artworks were burned to ash and stone relics by the Wheeler Point Fire in Eastern- Central Oregon, ignited accidentally by a logging company above the John Day River…I arrived home in the midst of the fire, fighting it by myself for five days, inhaling a lot of smoke, as visibility was very limited. In the process I saved two structures and a good section of our forest from burning, drawing on skills I learned working for the USFS as a Sawyer and firefighter a decade earlier. Fire is an intrinsic part of Pacific Northwest forests. Ultimately it cannot and will not be avoided. It is an indomitable force of nature that we all need to learn to live with. Mountain Bluebird and Waldo Wilderness depicts a forested landscape recovering from fires, with a bluebird, a resilient species well adapted to fire ecology making its home amidst the many fire-killed standing snags, reminding us that life truly is resilient, as are we all. more from Asante's perspective Asante in his art studio, among various paintings Asante Riverwind on the trail from Todd Lake to Broken Top Mountain in Oregon’s Three Sisters Cascades Wilderness. Waldo Lake Wilderness area trail, the setting that inspired Waldo Wilderness and Mountain Bluebird . Mountain Blue birds are among the first to return to burned areas, part of the resilience of forests, wildlife and nature to recurrent fires in our fire ecology forest ecosystems. Chat back to exhibition Chat

featured artist Eric Ondina Tampa, FL Eric Ondina received his BFA from Florida State University in 2013 and his MFA from the University of South Florida in 2019. Eric’s practice is based out of his studio in Ybor City, a lively historic section of Tampa, Florida. His approach to craft harkens back to early traditions of painting while his subject matter engages the contemporary moment. Eric exhibits locally and nationally, including most recently at The Ringling for the 2021 Skyway Exhibition and at the UCF and Rollins Art Museums for the 2022 Pathways Exhibition. He teaches art and design at Hillsborough Community College and the University of Tampa. featured artwork "Check," emulsion on canvas, 2021 "Nearer My God to Thee," 2021 "Hot Leather 3," emulsion on board, 2020 "Inferno," 2020 responding to Fuel Loading Fire and water are primary motifs of my work. These elemental forces fueled the industrial revolution through steam and now threaten to consume us on both ends as fires rage in the West and sea levels threaten low-lying communities in the East. The works included here draw conceptually and literally from the fires consuming the Pacific Northwest by using the imagery to represent our social malaise as we grapple with the forces of unyielding natural and political environments. I create paintings from snapshots captured in spaces where social forces collide. I seek out the moments where contrasting visual elements and human values intersect, drawing inspiration from the reality I document and the media we consume. I strive to 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. In an era characterized by skepticism and doubt, I aim to challenge our shared understanding of truth through my art. I paint with a unique recipe of egg tempera. Blending a viscous balsam, fossilized hard resins, egg yolk and water ingredients that are incompatible, but with pressure and patience, merge and form a harmonious whole. While my technique pays homage to traditional painting methods, my intention is to connect with the present moment, speaking directly to the soul of our current experiences through an organic style and topical subject matter. more from Eric's perspective Eric working in his studio. My paintings are an invitation to contemplate the cycles of history framed by the lens of our time; a time of pervasive frustration, mistrust, and fear, but also boundless advancement, change, and opportunity. I compose my paintings from snapshots collected from spaces experiencing a convergence of social forces. Often my paintings contain interpolations presenting an obvious pastiche, yet much of the most absurdist subject matter directly quotes from documented reality. Chat back to exhibition Chat

Emily Schlickman Davis, CA Brett Milligan Davis, CA featured artists Emily Schlickman is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Design at the University of California, Davis, whose research explores design techniques for accelerated climate change. Schlickman received a BA from Washington University in St. Louis and an MLA from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Brett Milligan is an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Design at the University of California, Davis. There he is the director of the Metamorphic Landscapes Lab, dedicated to prototyping landscape-based adaptations to conditions of accelerated climatic and environmental change, through extensive fieldwork and transdisciplinary design research. Much of his work is based in California, undoing and reworking colonial legacies of land reclamation, water infrastructure, flood control, and fire suppression. Emily and Brett recently published Design by Fire: Resistance, Co-Creation and Retreat in the Pyrocene. featured artwork Pyro Postcard Series help pick a new mascot Interested in exploring other creatures to to rival Smokey Bear's impact on America's take on fire suppression, Emily & Brett are surveying other options. Cast your vote for a mascot (many featured in the Pyro Postcard series) fitting of our pyro future on their website . responding to SIGHTLINES While we are based in Northern California and most of our work centers on the Sierra Nevada and Coastal Ranges, the questions and considerations we pose transcend political and geographic boundaries, as many places are facing similar wildfire conditions. Pyro Postcards is part of a larger futuring project about wildfire. The project invites collective speculation on the transformative nature of fire and the ways it can change the landscapes of the American West. For one certainty we have is that our fire-prone landscapes will be different from what they are today, and we don’t know exactly what they will become. But, by looking at a few horizons, we can imagine a multitude of futures. In presenting Pyro Postcards , we hope participants can feel their way into possible fiery futures and our potential role in making them. Some are bleak. Some are exciting. Some are just fucking weird and stick in your mind. more from their perspective Image of a prescribed burn Brett helped with to try to restore native grassland and Oak Woodland habitat on the UC McLaughlin Natural Reserve. He likes to assist with intentional burns where and when he can. Yolo County recently launched a prescribed burn association (PBA), a community-based network focused on educating and training residents about intentional fire practices. This is an image of their first burn just north of Capay, California. Emily likes to spend time in burn scars to observe how landscapes respond to wildfire events. This is an ash sample that she collected from the footprint of the LNU Lightning Complex Fires. above: LNU Berryessa left: Quail Ridge Reserve These images are part of photographic documentation Brett takes of landscapes to see how they change and regenerate after wildlife. These locations feature chaparral habitats in California after burning in LNU complex fire in 2020. This is an image of an indigenous-led cooperative burn in Cobb, California. Emily is part of TERA’s on-call ecocultural fire crew for the 2023-2024 season. This is a sample of design work by landscape architecture students Madison Main, Yining Li, Xinyi Gao for the Field Guide to Transformation studio Brett recently taught. In this studio students worked together to re-envision how the UC McLaughlin reserve might become a place for more proactive fire research, offer hands-on experiential learning for students, and foster greater ties to surrounding communities. Chat back to exhibition Chat

featured artist Karin Bolender / Rural Alchemy Workshop Philomath, OR The Rural Alchemy Workshop (R.A.W.) is a station for collaborative, experimental art-research practices that root in ecologies (all the faunal, floral, mineral, and chemical forms that comprise them), rural-urban cultural frictions, and specific acts of un/naming and imaginative, responsive, and respectful more-than-human storying and habitation. Founded in Carnesville, Georgia in 2008, the R.A.W. has worked at the edges of Philomath, Oregon’s patchwork forests and pastures since 2013. The prime investigator and main anarchivist of the R.A.W. is artist-researcher Karin Bolender, aka K-Haw Hart. The R.A.W.’s transdisciplinary projects hold space for ‘untold’ more-than-human stories and experimental anarchives within meshes of landflows and waterways, domestic and wild mammals, plants, microbes, and many others. featured artwork "RQP Card," Traditional rodeo queens, when making public appearances as ambassadors for the Western Way of Life, are armed with "autograph cards," which they sign for admirers. The Rodeo Queen of the Pyrocene, being a fugitive of sorts, does not proffer public appearances or signatures. Yet investigations have nevertheless turned up what seems to be an autograph card, one of few existing pictures of them. Authorities suspect it may serve as some kind of coded communique to those on their trail. responding to Fuel Loading Through pursuit of an elusive and radical figure known as the “Rodeo Queen of the Pyrocene,” the R.A.W. investigates a flammable mare’s nest of rural-urban frictions grounded in 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. As an official “ambassador for the Western Way of Life” (the job description of most every rodeo queen), the RQP 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. But hounding the hot trail of the RQP, as she makes her rounds from the Arctic Circle to Down Under, is a posse of undercover agents and herbivorous grazers, mounting a widespread back-burn operation against her unchecked reign. This underground network is known to have cells in places known as “Oregon,” “California,” “Scandinavia,” and “Australia” (though those might well be code names). In cahoots with a globally dispersed posse, the R.A.W.’s investigation seeks to track and catalog actions and methods involved in efforts to predict and assuage the ever-shifting paths and cycles of the Pyrocene Queen’s wild rides. The R.A.W. is rooted in Philomath, OR, in the thick of western forests and their industries, management practices, conservation aims, and related conflicts. Philomath is also home for 50+ years to a major node of PNW rodeo culture, the Philomath Frolic and Rodeo. The RQP grows directly out of this vortex of storied and submerged western “pulp frictions”: too-slow reckonings with questions of climate crisis within rural-urban cracks, and even longer, deeper, pricklier engagements with domestic herds and flocks and the ways they and their feral cousins inhabit and graze the grasses, shrubs, and forest edges of precarious earthly places. Regionally, the RQP is also linked to hotspots in California, including burning deserts and a specific plot of former pine forest in Paradise, to which the R.A.W. has familial connections across five fast and furious generations of settler enterprise. more from R.A.W.'s perspective Rodeo Mystery Clues #11 and #5: From the anarchives of the R.A.W.'s ongoing investigation, these images show the Philomath Rodeo Grounds in the Great Rodeo Gap Year of 2020, in early summertime when the activities of the RQP were smoldering underground. Rodeo Mystery Clue #7: A fire broke out at the Philomath Frolic and Rodeo Grounds in early summer 2022, two weeks before the rodeo was to take place. The fire consumed roughly a third of the historic grandstands before it could be contained. No perpetrator has been identified. Perhaps it was an accident; these things happen. Chat back to exhibition Chat

featured artist Sasha Michelle White Moscow, ID Sasha Michelle White is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work is informed by art, herbalism, field ecology and prescribed fire practice. Her creative investigations center the coloristic and medicinal properties of fire-adapted plants as a way of understanding human and other-than-human relationships with fire and fire-prone landscapes. Sasha studied printmaking and book arts at Bowdoin College, Maine College of Art and Cranbrook Academy of Art, has held fellowships at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy and the Lloyd Library and Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio, and earned a master’s degree in Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon in 2021. She is a member of the Fuel Ladder art research group and a Mellon Foundation Predoctoral Fellow with the University of Idaho’s Confluence Lab. Although she still calls western Oregon home, she is enjoying creating new friendships with the flora and fauna of the Palouse. featured artwork "The Containment" Installation View SMW Poem TINCTURE/TINGERE—THROUGH KIDNEYS, THROUGH LUNGS YARROW (Achillea millefolium) in early-summer, count flowers, count leaves. a thousand flowers, a thousand leaves, a thousand wheres to grow. wetland and woodland, roadside and ditch, open pine forest, the lowest sage desert, the highest wet meadow, the mulch-laden pathway. white-green fades to ivory-yellow, fades to palest brown. seek early. seek fields, clusters, leaves with their thousand cuts. black resin on your fingers, hopeful closing of your wounds. ask bees, ask flies. (whose lands are you on?) pass by where others picked before you. pass by more flowers than you pick. stay still. cranes fly overhead. ARNICA (Arnica amplexicaulis) in mid-summer, seek circles of ash. circles where no grass grows, no polemonium, no cinquefoil, no penstemon. in mid-summer, by the creek crossing. ash as evidence. no grass, no cinquefoil. seek brilliant yellow flowers. seek some. seek many. follow the rough stems into ash, follow the pale runners. follow scent, follow color, follow the way they grow. test trauma, test the way they grasp the earth. capillaries breaking. your hands will be black with char. ask the sapsucker. (whose lands are you on?) ask ash and char. ask trauma. ask arnica, reaching in from the edge and holding on. BALSAM ROOT (Balsamorhiza sagitatta) in late-summer, when the leaves are crisp and insect-eaten, scatter seeds and wait. probing crevices of pine, closer than your arm will reach, ask the brown creeper. (startle to the gunshots in the night—whose lands are you on?) dig a hole. dig carefully. dig with shovel or trowel or hands. watch for side roots. dig deeper than your arm will reach. move gravels. pry pebbles. ask the brown creeper. dig deeper. carefully. gently. ask patience. smell resin, smell wounds. the old-man perfume surrounds you. you are sweating and thirsty. your head hurts. you are breathing smoke. dig deeper. move gravels. pry pebbles. wrap the plant’s body in your shirt. strap the plant’s body to your pack. smell resin, smell wounds. the old-man perfume surrounds you. hike the root out. keep it cool. wet the linen. keep it cool. drive the long hours home. use pruners, loppers, handsaw. crack the outer bark. chop the inner pith. cut the pieces as small as you are able. fill a jar. pour alcohol. stained, grateful. the old-man perfume surrounds you. steep three weeks in darkness. scatter seeds and wait. TALL OREGON GRAPE (Berberis aquifolium) in autumn, in winter, walk where the woodpeckers cache their acorns in the tall poles of powerlines. here in oak woodland, in thickets of poison oak, ask how to ask the black bear. (roots torn from soil, tops scattered—who decides whose lands you are on?) choose somewhere else. harvest from gardens in town, from stems reaching for light and in need of pruning. towhee, scrub jay, hummingbird. the ever-present weaver finch. ask who. ask land. cut, the stems show yellow. the wound is an opening. open the mouth, open the skin. enter bodies, exit bodies. through the Other’s hold. through gut, through kidneys, through lungs. "The Containment" installation view Burn Salve from "The Containment" Charcoal Powder from "The Containment" Tinctures from "The Containment" responding to Ground Truths Within the fire-prone landscapes of the Pacific Northwest, many plants that thrive with the recurring disturbance of fire are also useful for the injuries and illnesses acquired in proximity to fire. Many native and non-native species can rebound quickly in the post-fire landscape, including arnica who invades heavily burned soils, snowbrush ceanothus who collaborates with soil bacteria to fix nitrogen and return fertility to the land and that lover of disturbance, St Johns wort. My project FIRST-AID KIT FOR THE FIRE-PRONE engages these and other fire-adapted plants from Oregon landscapes as medicines and dyes. The Containment, the most “kit-like” work of this project, utilizes plants gathered from areas in the southern Willamette Valley and The Nature Conservancy’s Sycan Marsh Preserve and builds from historical, cosmopolitan interchangeabilities of aesthetic and medicinal substances. The work centers an “image” of the landscape that is less about visual apprehension and more about material, sensual and processual relationships, and how those relationships eschew rigid boundaries and property lines. By emphasizing the relationships between fire, tending and healing, The Containment seeks a “ground truth” that both allies with Indigenous fire sovereignty and promotes a pro-active, cross-cultural attending to our fire-prone landscapes. more from Sasha's perspective The seed of snowbrush ceanothus (Ceanothus velutinus) requires fire scarification to germinate. Without fire or other disturbance, its seeds can persist in the soil for centuries. Where prescribed fire burned a hillside on TNC’s Sycan Marsh preserve, though no mature shrubs had been observed, ceanothus germinated in great numbers. The shrub has a symbiotic relationship with Frankia bacteria to fix nitrogen, improving post-fire soil fertility. The stem and root bark of ceanothus, also known as red root, can be used as medicine and as a dye; using various soils in which the shrub was growing as mordants changed the color acheived. Fuel Ladder is an interdisciplinary research collective of artists, designers, and thinkers in and around Eugene, Oregon, who are exploring climate crisis through the social and ecological complexities of wildfire. Chat back to exhibition Chat

featured artist Julie Mortimer Bellingham, WA Julie Mortimer lives in Bellingham, Washington. With an ever-increasing passion to learn and grow, she has been exploring non-traditional watercolor techniques (such as avoiding dry cakes of color) for several years, and is amazed at what the medium can do. Julie spends hours exploring local wooded areas on a daily basis. This is where she feels most at home. featured artwork "Crow Memories" watercolor, 12in x 16in responding to Ground Truths The air was thick with smoke though the fires were not visible to us. Every night I thought about the myriad animals, escaping if they could. Our area went from having pure cedar fragrances, fog misted air to having the worst air quality in the world. I wondered how the birds could even breathe to escape. more from Julie's perspective Julie out exploring the Pacific Northwest. Julie Mortimer at work in her studio. Chat back to exhibition Chat

featured artists Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscapes: Overlook Field School Eugene, OR The Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscapes (FIPL) is an internationally recognized center for research-based design and design as research, focused on the role of place in cultural sustainability, and grounded in the arts and humanities. Guided by a team of scholars, students use fieldwork and art methods to investigate the ongoing stewardship of landscapes and culture. featured artwork RECOVERY Overlook Field School 2021 Highlights of this five week project can be reviewed in this digital booklet . featuring works by: William Booner, Hanna Chapin, Celia Hensey, Abby Pierce, Kennedy Rauh, Audrey Rycewizc, Massayo Simon, Ian Vierck, Nancy Silver & David Buckly Borden responding to Ground Truths In the western United States, wildfires are becoming bigger, hotter, and more frequent due to the effects of climate change. During the summer of 2021, as smoke from western fires stretched across the country, the Oregon-based session of the Overlook Field School explored the theme of “Recovery” as it relates to wildfire burns. Analogous to resilience, restoration, and regeneration, recovery is a return to some previous state - perhaps a new normal - and ever more complicated when applied to a medium as dynamic as landscape in the time of rapid climate change. Over the course of five weeks, we visited post-fire sites in the Willamette National Forest, most of which occurred within the last 30 years. The projects shared in the Recovery booklet are the outcome of these forest explorations and creative interactions led by educator, Michael Geffel, and artist-in-residence, David Buckley Borden. We were also strongly influenced by concurrent environmental events: a record heat wave which coincided with the first day of the field school, and the explosion of wildfires as we entered our final design phase. Despite the prevailing narrative of catastrophe and destruction, the recovery we observed was incredibly inspirational. The Field School culminated in a public exhibition of temporary landscape installations that centered the dynamism of post-fire landscapes and what they can teach us about resiliency, as we aspired to communicate the beneficial impacts of fire in the face of increasingly longer fire seasons. more from FIPL's projects Despite the prevailing narrative of catastrophe and destruction, the recovery observed by the group was inspiring. We aspired to communicate these experiences through landscape installations in order to express as well as document the beneficial impacts of fire, as we are experiencing increasingly longer fire seasons. The work draws extensively from field visits to post-fire sites within the Willamette National Forest. We were also strongly influenced by concurrent environmental events: a record heat wave and the explosion of wildfires bookended the Field School. Chat back to exhibition Chat

featured artist Allison McClay Portland, OR Allison McClay is a painter, illustrator and mural artist from Portland, Oregon. Her paintings examine historical figures and landscapes through a magical realism filter, creating rich, detailed images that tell a fragment of a story and invite a close look. featured artwork "Olallie Burns" Acrylic on Wood, 20"x16" 2022 "Sucia Saves Us" Acrylic on Wood, 20"x16" 2022 responding to SIGHTLINES These two pieces are part of a new series I am working on that explores the experiences children have with life in a world that is inundated with crisis and climate disaster. In these pieces, the subjects are aware of the fiery landscapes, and though their reactions are not clear, they are definitely not alarmed. I am interested in how they navigate being children within this and what a healthy relationship to destruction and to existential doom could look like. Both of these paintings are inspired by real places that have been affected by fires: Olallie Lake is in Oregon near Mount Jefferson and those burned forests are very real; Sucia Island is in the San Juan Islands in Washington and the fire in the distance is an interpretation of real wildfires that have become more and more common in the area. more from Allison's perspective View of Oneonta Gorge in the Columbia River Gorge area, where there was a massive fire in 2017. Allison's been hiking there her entire life, though many trails are still closed due to damage. View of Olallie Butte, part of the Warm Springs Reservation, in the Jefferson Wilderness. Allison isn't sure when this burn happened, as there seem to be fires in the area often. Row boating in Olallie Lake. My family has been camping around here for the past decade or so, since our previous favorite spot near Mt. Adams was destroyed by fire. View toward the crater of Mt. St. Helens. 43 years after the eruption, signs of life are everywhere. Mountain goat fur caught on a bush blows in the wind. Chat back to exhibition Chat

Stories of Fire: online exhibition series spring 2023 As part of our Pacific Northwest Stories of Fire Atlas Project , working with the University of Idaho's Prichard Art Gallery , we showcased works by visual artists and designers in the online exhibition series, Stories of Fire . These exhibitions will highlight the manifold ways artists and designers are marking, mapping, engaging and articulating personal and community experiences of wildfire in the region. Organized into three parts, GROUND TRUTHS (Spring 2023), FUEL LOADING (Fall 2023) and SIGHTLINES (Winter 2024), each exhibition is loosely framed by a particular disciplinary lens— cartography, fire management and urban planning—and the range of ways artists express and explore parallel concerns. fall 2023 winter 2024 Stories of Fire Participating Artists Laura Ahola-Young Jean Arnold Anne Acker-Mathieu Jackie Barry David Paul Bayles & Frederick J Swanson Karin Bolender / Rural Alchemy Workshop Lisa Cristinzo Megan Davis Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscapes: Overlook Field School Margo Geddes Kelsey Grafton Megan Hatch Alice, Maggie & Rob Keffe Katie Kehoe Kate Lund Amiko Matsu + Brad Monsma aj miccio Miriam H Morrill Julie Mortimer Allison McClay Meredith Ojala Eric Ondina Oregon Episcopal School & Sophia Hatzikos Asante Riverwind Andreas Rutkauskas Gerard Sarnat Martina Shenal Enid Smith Becker Sonia Sobrino Ralston Siri Stensberg Liz Toohey-Wiese Mary Vanek Smith Doug Tolman & Alec Bang Justin Webb Sasha Michelle White Suze Woolf exhibitions presented in collaboration of: and made possible by the generous support of: Next