featured artist Siri Stensberg Milwaukee, WI Siri Stensberg grew up in Appleton, WI and received her BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Born into a musical family, Siri pursued dual paths in classical music and visual art. While in Eau Claire she balanced orchestra and chamber music performances while developing a language in abstract painting. Siri completed her MFA at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. Her practice is increasingly experimental; her interest in the intersection of images, sound, and time led her to video work and installation. featured artwork From the Smoke, For the Birds , video and audio. 2020 responding to Ground Truths From the Smoke, For the Birds was filmed on September 7, 2020 from my car during a dust and smoke storm that tore through Eastern Washington. The audio came two weeks later; my grandma left a voicemail after hearing that birds fleeing the fires had died from smoke inhalation. In the video, perching birds are absent from the swaying telephone lines, and within the layered, lyrical vocals, space is created for the viewer to mourn the wildlife and ecosystems lost in forest fires of the Pacific Northwest. more from Siri's perspective ... Siri's studio space and a work in progress: Her practice moves between video, sound, painting, and installation. Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where Siri now resides since July 2022. She works right by the lakefront, watching the surface of the water change each day depending on the weather. A summer sunset in the Inland Pacific Northwest. While living there, Siri particularly enjoyed floating in the Snake River during heat waves. On the date of this photo in 2021, it was particularly hazy from the heat and residual wildfire smoke. Siri leading a workshop exploring color in found materials at Spokane Falls Community College in Spokane, WA in January 2023. Chat back to exhibition 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

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

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 artists Amiko Matsuo + Brad Monsma Seattle, WA Amiko Matsuo is an artist and educator whose work focuses on transmigration, cultural exchange, and translation. Brad Monsma is a writer and educator tracing models of kinship and resilience and the author of "The Sespe Wild: Southern California’s Last Free River". His essays have appeared in High Country News, The Surfer’s Journal, Kyoto Journal, as well as various anthologies and academic journals. Together, they are co-translators of Art Place Japan (Princeton Architectural Press, 2015), a book by the founder of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, focused on community and environmental resilience. featured artwork Installation view of "Zuihitsu," temporary public art project, Seattle, WA, 2023 detail view of "Zuihitsu," temporary public art project, Seattle, WA, 2023 "Bat Cone Burn," pyrometric project final form: clay, terra sigillata, underglazes, 2014 "Bat Cone Burn" pyrometric project ritual firing "Pyrometric Whirl," Ink, ash, medium, Phos-Chek flame retardant on paper, 84in x 40in, 2017 "Pyrometric Landscape," ash, medium, Phos-Chek flame retardant on paper; 84in x 40in, 2017 "Pyrometric Landscape" side view responding to Fuel Loading Our Pyrometric project, a series of installations using ceramics, ash, and Phos-chek flame retardant, explores place, identity and materiality in fire-prone landscapes. We began the project in 2010 with site-specific clay bodies and glazes as a way to give materials voice in our collaborative research and creation. We limned historical and active maps of vegetative fuel loads in California’s fire-prone landscapes of forest and chaparral. With local firefighters we devised a ritual brush firing where the ceramic cones revealed the thermal shocks to objects and to emotions: the cones helped us see both flame and our responses more clearly. In 2016, the Pyrometric project expanded to include red Phos-chek, wound-like marks on paper. These expressed the ironies of fire suppression rhetoric while also suggesting the rage of a combustible and intolerant political landscape. The whole earth is fuel-loaded; there is nowhere apart and smoke drifts easily across borders hardened against people. Now that we are residents of Seattle, our work with fire, materiality and climate continues to be relevant. Amiko’s most recent installation offers a cooling space for reflection on climate, migrations, and community. Zuihitsu: Memories and Stories of Migration , under the International Pavilion at the Seattle Center, gathers over 200 fuurin ceramic bells threaded with stories of journeys and connections between students, family, and friends. As these stories catch the wind, the chimes ring with cooling sounds, calling us together to contemplate the changes to come. more from their perspective Resting at Sourdough Gap, enjoying some of the last clear air for weeks, southern Cascades burn scars in the distance. Inspiring Landscape: A hibaku persimmon sapling, grown from a seed from a tree that survived the Hiroshima blast. Fuurin drying underneath the sweetpeas and garlic. Chat back to exhibition Chat

featured artist Miriam H Morrill Vancouver, WA Miriam Morrill is a retired biologist and wildland fire management specialist. She spent most of her career working with communities and fire management agencies across the western United States helping them plan, prepare, and adapt to wildfires. In retirement, she developed an education program and guidebook about observing, journaling, and sketching the fire environment called Pyrosketchology . She lives full-time in a fifth-wheel trailer with her husband and two dogs, traveling and journaling about nature and fire. featured work Pyrosketchology is an approach for building awareness of the fire environment through observations, sketching and nature journaling practices. The book is intended as a guide to create deeper awareness and educational support for fire-adapted living. Miriam defines the fire environment as the mix of elements that influence fire combustion and behavior in the “natural” landscape. Weather, topography and fuels (vegetation) are the primary elements of the fire behavior triangle which is a large focus of her book, but she also includes broader topics of fire seasons, ignitions, mitigation, effects and regimes as a means to unfold the complexities and deeper understanding of fire. Each chapter of the book is available in a free PDF format that can be printed only for individual educational use. check out the full guide responding to SIGHTLINES I use artwork to express my feelings and connections to the world, while I create illustrations to understand and communicate information. Most importantly, I use a nature journaling practice to develop better observation skills, awareness, and understanding of the natural world around me. Weather, topography, and fuels are key focus areas for most of my journaling practices. explore pyrosketchology Various observational exercises, visual journaling prompts and sketching tips are available through Miriam's downloadable illustrated guide. Below are two found in found in Chapter 4: Fire Fuels. Leaf Flammability Burn Test An exercise you can use to compare moisture levels and flammability of live and dead fine fuels and or a mix of dead fine fuels in shaded and sunny areas is to gather several different leaves and do a flammability test. Make sure to do this exercise in an area cleared of all vegetation, on pavement, or in a classroom or laboratory setting. You should also have a bucket or container of water to drop the flaming leaves. I recommend using wooden matches and not a lighter or paper matches to provide a reasonable ignition source and test period. You should also have a stop watch and may want to have a a video camera on a tripod to record and observe the flame-lengths after you have observed and timed the ignition. The intent of the exercise is not burn the entire leaf, but to observe the differences between them. Step 1: Trace or sketch the outline of the leaf shape in your journal, but do not color it in. Step 2: Start the timer and video camera. Hold a match to the side of the leaf, until it ignites or for the extent that the match lasts. Observe how well each ignites and burns. Step 3: Record the timing it takes to ignite and burn and add the data next to the leaf outline in your journal. Add any other notes about flames and smoke. Step 4: Review the video and add any more observations missed during the test. Step 5: Sketch the approximate flames onto the leaf shape in your journal and color in the remaining leaf with any charred or unburned areas, showing color and texture differences. Tree Canopy Cover Observations For this observation, you need to look straight up between a group of trees that best represents the overall canopy cover in the area. In a tall forest, you may be able to use an empty toilet paper or paper towel roll to help focus your perspective. You could also create a stencil cutout from a piece of paper or put a circle on a clear piece of plastic. You should ideally take several measurements and obtain an average for the area. Use the canopy cover percentage and or associated descriptive term from the graphic. Sketch a small circle in your journal and use dots to represent the concentration of canopy cover. You can sketch the canopy cover by filling in the leaves, branches and tree trunks, if you’d like something more detailed. Don’t forget to add the percentage and descriptive term on or next to your diagram or sketch. Add additional notes and or measurements about the distance between tree canopies to build a sense of how a fire could move from one tree to another. Chat back to exhibition Chat

featured artists Alice, Maggie, & Rob Keefe Potlatch, ID Alice, Maggie, and Rob Keefe live together in Potlatch, Idaho. Together, they study fire from a variety of disciplines and perspectives. Maggie Keefe is a self-taught watercolor artist in Potlatch, Idaho. Her art is inspired by local landscapes. Rob Keefe is an Associate Professor in the College of Natural Resources and Director of the University of Idaho Experimental Forest (UIEF). Alice is 9 years old. When she’s not doing art with her mom in her studio, she likes to play with her 11 month-old goats (Coconut and Cream), make meals for her chickens (Buffy, Suns, Peach, and Spot), compose music, and go hiking, biking, and skiing in the forest. featured artwork Maggie Keefe's "Upper Hatter Rx" watercolor Maggie Keefe's "West of Cabin Rx" watercolor responding to Ground Truths The painting Upper Hatter Rx shows a prescribed burn on the West Hatter Unit of the University of Idaho Experimental Forest in Princeton, Idaho in Fall 2017. Fire was used as a silvicultural tool to prepare the site for regeneration of a new forest stand following harvesting. The burn simulates the effects of stand-replacing fire on the landscape: Fire behavior was aggressive and most woody fuels accumulated over the preceding decades were consumed. Competing vegetation was removed. Following the burn, seedlings were planted in conditions similar to those they would experience following wildfire. West of Cabin Rx shows the use of low-intensity fire at the Flat Creek Unit of the University of Idaho Experimental Forest in Fall 2019. We burned in the understory midway through the development of a ponderosa pine stand adjacent to the Flat Creek Cabin in Harvard, Idaho. Our objectives were to reduce grass and shrub fuels, reduce accumulated woody debris, kill the lower branches of trees to raise the base height of their crowns, and to increase the chances that firefighters can successfully suppress wildfires that occur on the Experimental Forest in the future. Coupled with managing stand density, prescribed fire is one our most effective tools for reducing wildfire in the Pacific Northwest; these paintings show the use of good fire in forests on the Palouse Range. Alice Keefe collage responding to Ground Truths My piece of art is an abstract collage of what wildfire means to my soul. My imagination decided to put its own spin on it. I have gone to the forest before when my dad was doing prescribed burns and seeing the flames for myself disappearing into the air as they burn down the pile inspired my imagination. more from their perspective Maggie painting outside Rob Keefe at work UIEF night burn Sammi Schendel-Melen, student staff, responding to 17-acre Basalt Hill lightning ignited wildfire in the University of Idaho Experimental Forest on July 7, 2021. UIEF Hatter Burn 2021 UIEF East Hatter slash piles 2020 UIEF South Flat RX 2017: large-scale fuel treatment to reduce hazard near Hatter Creek in Princeton, ID on the north side of the mountain. Chat back to exhibition Chat

featured artist Sonia Sobrino Ralston Somerville, MA Sonia Sobrino Ralston is a designer and researcher from Vancouver, Canada. She is currently the Research and Teaching Fellow in Art + Design at the Northeastern College of Media, Art, and Design. She is interested in the intersections between landscape, architecture, and the history of technology, and her current design and writing projects center on the potential of plants to be understood as sensors, the organization and datafication of living collections, and the biopolitical history of bioindicators. Sonia recently graduated with distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design with a Master of Landscape Architecture where she was awarded the Landscape Architecture Thesis Prize and the Digital Design Prize for her thesis, “Uncommon Knowledge.” She also holds a Master of Architecture from Princeton University where she received a certificate in Media + Modernity. She was the assistant curator for the 2022 Tallinn Architecture Biennale on the theme “Edible: Or, the Architecture of Metabolism,” and recently assisted with the design and organization of a symposium on landscape pedagogy at the Harvard GSD and supported a science communication project at the metaLAB at Harvard. Her writing has been published in the Avery Review and Cartha Magazine, she co-authored a chapter in Urban Transformations, and her collaborative work has been exhibited in Tallinn, Cambridge, and Sao Paulo. featured artwork Forests as Data Governance digital animation, digital Collage, 1920x1080px, various digital collage sizes, 2023 responding to SIGHTLINES Forests as Data Governance is a fragment of a larger work focused on the design of a speculative future for environmental data governance. We don't usually think of the landscape itself--its plants, trees, and soils--as a form of data or informational tool, and yet they operate as a form of responsive wetware that responds to the site and environmental cycles. This speculative vision for a physical database for information, a forest made of binary code grafted to the genetic code of plants, imagines a future where plants are understood as a critical data infrastructure to be collectively stewarded. In the summer of 2022, a wildfire burned across the Columbia River valley, 200 meters away from Google’s first hyperscale data center in The Dalles, Oregon, near Taylor Lake. While fire-resistant plants such as Oregon oaks and Ponderosa pines survived, the fragility of information infrastructure became urgent. Systems to protect critical infrastructure along the river involve high-fidelity LIDAR scans of the area to simulate systems of flood protection and damage. But in a future where plants become critical infrastructure, a form of long-term information storage, the fluctuations of the environment become embedded in its management. The future envisions a nursery and genetic laboratory where environmental information is grafted into the genetic information of ponderosa pines, Oregon oaks, and incense cedars. Through the collective management of the landscape, the future of a fire-prone site relies on the sensitive management and care for the land, rather than the black boxes of water-hungry data centers. Rendering plants alongside the pointclouds of a LIDAR dataset of the site, plants are elevated to the level of infrastructure through high-fidelity botanical models in the submitted animations. As plants live and grow on the site, over time, they too become integrated into the abstracted pointcloud as a form of landscape data. more on Data Governance Sonia's thesis Uncommon Knowledge: Practices and Protocols for Environmental Information responding to the contemporary environmental information economy at the site of Google's first hyperscale data center in water stressed The Dalles, Oregon on display at Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2023. Data visualization of various sites including the site featured in SIGHTLINES where on view. Read and view more about her work HERE . A video introduction to her research is also below. more from Sonia's perspective Since moving to Boston as part of my landscape architecture education, I spent many summer afternoons walking in the Arnold Arboretum. Here, pictured with a smoke bush (Cotinus coggygria), I became fascinated with the way that botanical collections organize and collect plants as part of an informational system. I grew up in a suburb of Vancouver, BC, where I was used to situating myself by looking at the mountains. Since my childhood, however, wildfires have been creeping closer and closer, and increasingly over the summer the city is enveloped in a blanket of smoke. As areas all over the west coast become increasingly known as centres for technology and information services, this spurred questions for me about how the city’s technological infrastructure is entangled with ecological assemblages. In recent years, the landscapes close to home are increasingly affected by the growing number of fires. Taken on a lake just an hour away, the mountains and trees disappear into the smoke. Faced with these scenes, I wondered how I might rethink my own relationship with the landscapes around me; how might they be considered critical infrastructures to protect? This image, taken in a glacier lake not far from the smokey scene above a few days earlier, is important to me as a landscape designer who considers fire in this work. Landscapes here are full of plants, sensitively adapted to harsh environments and rich in information, ready to adapt under the existential threat of fire. How might we learn from, and pay attention to, the intelligence of plants and natural systems? Chat back to exhibition Chat

Doug Tolman Salt Lake City, UT Alec Bang Salt Lake City, UT featured artists Doug Tolman is an interdisciplinary artist and place-learner practicing in Great Salt Lake and Colorado River Watersheds. He believes inquiry and dialectic are our strongest tools for solving the West’s socio-ecological problems. He is a recent graduate of the University of Utah MFA program where he received the Frankenthaler Climate Art Award, a Global Change and Sustainability Center Fellowship, and a College of Fine Arts Research Excellence Fellowship. Residing in the space between sculpture, image, and community work, his practice is informed by place-based youth education, ecological science, and biomechanical travel. The materials and imagery he works with come from burn scars, floodplains, lakebeds, and lava flows, places where geologic and anthropogenic time are in constant dialogue. His collecting process is rooted in multi-generational rockhounding and wood carving, which he now employs to deepen and reflect on a complex relationship with the land he calls home. By facilitating generative spaces of inquiry, he attempts to deepen his community’s sense of place in pursuit of solutions to climate and land-use challenges. Alec Bang is an artist, designer and musician living and working on unceded Ute, Paiute, Goshute and Western Shoshone land. He graduated from the University of Utah with a BFA in Sculpture Intermedia and has lived in Panama City, New York, Seattle and Salt Lake City. Alec recently decided to return home to Utah to be closer to family and this has allowed him a resurgence of place-based art, performance and community event production. Through art and performance he seeks to deepen connections with the Utah landscape, historically taken through broken treaties and treated as a landfill for the military/industrial complex. Alec works to find a bridge between heritage and history to understand the politics and environmental impacts of land use in the American West. featured artwork Doug Tolman & Alec Bang Response and Responsibility film and resulting barbed wire & dining set, 2019 Doug Tolman Serotiny coniferous log, splitting maul, 2023 responding to SIGHTLINES Doug is a descendant of LDS Pioneers on land stolen from Ute, Goshute, Shoshone, and Paiute people, just downwind from Pacific Northwest firesheds. His ancestors migrated here fleeing persecution and poverty, but in their self-righteous belief that they were the “chosen people”, displaced and killed many people who belong to this land. He has an immense amount of guilt in being here, but simultaneously feels a deep connection to this place that has grown over seven generations of living close to the land. His childhood memories are rich with camping trips, wood carving, hiking, gardening and rockhounding with his family, experiences that have allowed his relationship with his home bioregion to grow deep. His practice lies within the nuances of a complicated multi-generational land relationship, attempting to learn how his presence can benefit the land, water, air, and community that sustain him. Doug's sculptural work, Serotiny , features a refurbished family maul splitting through a conifer log that was cut down after a prescribed burn in the headwaters of Bear River, the largest tributary of my home watershed. While prescribed burns here in the high desert typically just manage ladder fuels, this burn sectioned off 913 acres in which all the conifers were incinerated. The stands of trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides, a species claiming world’s heaviest organism) left behind are now abundant with new growth. The maul head, manufactured in 1910 was inherited from his great-grandparents the next basin over. It sat as a handle-less antique for decades before it was refurbished and heat-treated much like neighboring forests. A Dictionary of Ecology defines serotiny as “the retention of seeds in pods or cones on the tree, often for many years, until a disaster, most commonly the heat of a fire, causes their release. After fire, the seeds fall on ground fertilized by ash in a site cleared of competitors” (Allaby, 2010). In Western industrial society, we are just learning to burn forests by prescription, something Indigenous cultures have been doing for millennia. This work asks what processes, such as serotiny, are being stunted by industrialization, are being left out of land care? A tool of bifurcation and colonization, barbed wire has segmented land into pasture in the West for several centuries. The Canyon Mountains, located in Sevier River Watershed, are primarily public land, and leased for (over)grazing to several local ranchers. Like many areas of public land in the West, management agencies segment grazing allotments with barbed wire fencing that stretches for miles. A dry, high-desert biome, the Canyon Mountains are dotted with Utah Juniper (Juniperus osteosperma) trees, which seem to burst into flame every 20 years. In a particularly large wildfire, 107,000 acres, the whole mountain range was set aflame, with hundreds of miles of barbed-wire fencing along with it. Doug's & Alec's collaborative Response and Responsibility is a performative response to that wildfire, a response to the barbed wire that colonized the West, and a responsibility as settler-descendants to find our roles in unsettling. By sitting at the burning table, Alec acknowledges how his ancestry is deeply tied to colonization and settler ideology of the American West. This work tries to humanize the experience of being complicit in land theft and attempts to show the lack of dialogue with the indigenous populations who have been displaced. more from their perspective A temporary weather station sits near the top of Halfway Hill burn scar to warn downstream residents of flash flood danger. Coastal wildfire smoke drifts into Great Salt Lake basin, mingling with dust particles from a dry lake bed. We are downwind and upstream, with an economy reliant on poor land-use practices that cause ancestral forests to burn and ancient seas to evaporate. A wooden dining set rests in the Clay Hill Burn Scar before being wrapped in barbed wire and incinerated. A Ponderosa Pine, (Pinus ponderosa) scarred by prescription burn. The self-masting limbs and flaking bark are an adaptation that keeps these trees healthy through low-severity fires. Chat back to exhibition Chat

featured artist featured artist Kate Lund Silverton, ID Kate Lund is originally from the small town of Challis, located in Central Idaho. She received a BFA from Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington and earned an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Montana. During her time as a student, Kate spent eight summers working as a wildland firefighter with the Forest Service. Through this job she spent a great deal of time immersed in the outdoors and traveling through obscure towns in the rural western United States. Today, Kate does not spend her summers on the fireline, but she still finds inspiration in the outdoors be it gardening, swimming, or hiking. Kate is currently an artist and teacher; she teaches high school and college level art classes at Wallace Jr/Sr High School. Kate exhibits her work locally and regionally. In 2018 she was part of a three person exhibition, Three Generations, at the SFCC Fine Art Gallery. In November of 2019, Kate held a solo exhibition at the Cawein Gallery at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon. featured artwork in Ground Truths "Are You Sure We are Going the Right Way?" cattle marker and graphite on panel, 3ft x 4ft, 2016 "Downdraft" Installation View left: "Downdraft," graphite and cattle marker on paper, right: "Build Up," 2016 "Downdraft" 5ft x 23ft, graphite and cattle marker on paper "Downdraft" detail "Microburst" wire fencing, rip-stop nylon, flannel, deer fencing, tent poles, 9ft x 9ft x4ft, 2016 photo credit: Sarah Moore "Microburst" (detail) photo credit: Sarah Moore responding to Ground Truths I believe the general public has a romanticized idea of what wildland firefighters actually do, thinking that people (firefighters) can always overcome the challenges and complexities that fire brings. There are many instances that arise such as terrain, weather, and fuel loading that make it impossible to stop a fire even if it is with a helicopter or a retardant drop from the biggest air tanker there is. My ground truth is that as a firefighter I often felt conflicted: conflicted about whether or not I could actually handle the job, conflicted about whether we were helping or harming the environment, conflicted about when to feel distressed, and conflicted about when to take a deep breath and enjoy the beauty of the landscape. The artworks in this exhibition share this internal and external turmoil. The body of work featured in Ground Truths is rooted in appreciation for the quietude within the landscape interrupted by a sense of urgency and distress, discovered after spending eight summers as a wildland firefighter. I used firefighting to fuel my artistic practice by collecting images, objects, and sensations over the course of each summer in the landscape. The renderings, gestural drawings, and sculptural work are the result of allowing my studio process to mimic my analytical decision making and sensory observation as a wildland firefighter. In Microburst , I gathered the expired and cast-off tents and outdoor equipment of firefighting and created a form that is reminiscent of the way wind moves during a microburst weather event—short, sharp bursts of air strong enough to mow down 200 foot-tall trees in a matter of seconds. In Downdraft , I used aggressive marks and a pink color-palette to create a psychological awareness of urgency in response to stimuli in the natural environment such as logs rolling down the hill at you and expanding smoke columns. These urgent movements in drawing are balanced with quietude created through rendering, which I relate to the time spent observing swaying trees and the formation of cumulonimbus clouds. featured artwork in Fuel Loading "Brush Fit," rip-stop nylon, wool, flannel, fleece, 2023 details of "Brush Fit" responding to Fuel Loading This body of work is based in an appreciation for the quietude within the landscape interrupted by a sense of urgency and distress. I discovered this awareness after spending eight summers as a wildland firefighter. As an artist, I used firefighting to fuel my practice by collecting images, objects, and sensations over the course of each summer in the landscape. The renderings, gestural drawings, and sculptural work are the result of allowing my studio process to mimic my analytical decision making and sensory observation as a wildland firefighter. Brush Fit was inspired by an experience I had while working on a small wildland fire on the Idaho Panhandle National Forest. The fire was named the Delta fire, it was less than half an acre and I was the incident commander in charge of managing the crew and the fire itself. We completed the hand line around the fire the first day and needed to get water to the fire next. With remote, small fires, bladder bags are the typical way to get water into a fire. A bladder bag is essentially a backpack that holds water; when full it's about 50 pounds. The bladder bag is not exactly an exquisite design; it leaks and sloshes around on your back, on top of your fire pack. Luckily I had a crew with a positive attitude. We loaded up our gear, saws, fuel, and the bladder bags, and started on our hike. The hike wasn’t terribly long or steep, which should have made the trek doable. To our dismay, the area we were working was unforgiving in that is was completely overgrown with brush and downed trees. If you were watching us hike from above, you would have seen us all split ways in an effort to find easier paths, quickly discovering that there is no good way to get through the nasty thicket we were up against. I could feel the brushfit building inside of me when my pack and bladder bag kept getting caught on the low branches. A brushfit is when you succumb to the challenges of walking in an overgrown forest and throw a temper tantrum. 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? I caught my breath, and hoofed the rest of the way to fire to get the crew started for the day. In Brush Fit , I use wool, flannel and contemporary outdoor materials to signify a human relationship that is familiar with the natural world. This material references the gear that assists backpackers, hunters, and bikers alike in being outdoors. Initially, the materials are arranged in a neat, clean manner to reference the idealizations and expectations that are often projected onto the landscape. The sculpture progresses into a wrangled mass of shredded material in order to show the trepidation and frustration that sometimes accompany an interaction with nature. more from Kate's perspective This image illuminates some of the visual qualities in Kate’s work, particularly in Are You Sure We are Going the Right Way . Kate is the small figure in the center; her team was holding the line as the fire approached, but it overran their line, so they had to pull out and try again. Here is a rare photo of Kate in her fire gear. She is standing next to her husband; the two of them were on day 14 of a two week fire assignment in Wyoming. They met in 2009 while working together on the fire crew. This image is one of Kate’s favorite representing the landscape where she lives in Silverton, outside of Wallace, Idaho. It was taken a few summers ago, when Kate took an evening hike to one of her favorite lakes, which happens to be just a fifteen minute drive from her house. Spending summers on the fireline meant spending time in places where it was unusual to see water. We are lucky in the Pacific Northwest to be surrounded by bodies of water. Kate took this photo on Lake Pend Oreille in mid-August, Summer 2023. Kate also engages with the landscape by maintaining a backyard garden. She sees it as an extension of her studio practice and an important part of her daily life. 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

The Confluence Lab’s inaugural “Artists-In-Fire” (AIF) Residency will support a group of artists and creative writers in the Pacific Northwest and adjacent regions as boots-on-the-ground participants in prescribed fire. ARTISTS-IN-FIRE an inaugural, immersive residency for artists and writers Fire operations at a Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (TREX) outside Ashland, OR. photo cred it: Sasha Michelle White As the Pacific Northwest and other regions grapple with the increasing reality of wildfire, the Confluence Lab is working to reimagine shared fire stories. The Confluence Lab’s inaugural Artists-In-Fire (AIF) residency is supporting 10 artists and writers from the Pacific Northwest and adjacent regions as boots-on-the-ground participants in prescribed fire. boots-on-the-ground Prescribed fire is the intentional burning of fire-prone landscapes for ecological and cultural benefit, conducted by experienced firefighters during appropriate weather conditions. AIF awardees are training to qualify as Wildland Firefighters Type 2 (FFT2 ) by completing 40 hours of asynchronous, online training, along with an arduous pack test and practice fire shelter deployment, prior to their prescribed-fire immersion experience. Over the course of 2024, each AIF artist and writer will travel individually to participate in a Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (TREX ) or other immersive, prescribed fire experience. These immersions will take place across California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Nebraska, led variously by The Nature Conservancy, the US Forest Service, the Yurok Cultural Fire Management Council, and the Watershed Research and Training Center. Returning home, AIF artists and writers will reflect upon their experiences through their creative practices and share those reflections with their home communities. creative reflection & community engagement Alongside the Confluence Lab’s Stories of Fire online exhibitions , the AIF residency seeks to generate a greater public familiarity with landscape fire, one that is not catastrophic, but intentional, proactive, and participatory. It seeks to demonstrate the possibility that non-professionals can and do participate in prescribed fire, and that community fire-preparedness can encompass more than fuels reduction and home hardening. Within one month of completing their immersive, prescribed fire experience, the AIF artists and writers will submit a blog post to the Confluence Lab about that experience. Within six months, the AIF participants will share creative work resulting from this experience with their home communities. Whether this is an exhibition, a reading, a community conversation, a podcast, a published piece of writing, or some other creative, public outreach, will be determined by each participant. Each AIF awardee is receiving a one-time $4000 (USD) stipend to support the time, travel, and material costs associated with the training, prescribed fire immersion, and subsequent creative work development. introducing our 2024 AIF crew Laura Ahola-Young Pocatello, ID Sam Chadwick Moscow, ID Adam Huggins Galiano Island, BC, Canada Erica Meryl Thomas Portland, OR Kylie Mohr Missoula, MT Jason Rhodes/the 181 Bend, OR Rachel Richardson Berkeley, CA Doug Tolman Salt Lake City, UT Jennifer Yu Moscow, ID This residency is in collaboration with: And made possible by the generous support of: For more information, please contact theconfluencelab@gmail.com Next