featured artist Kasia Ozga Greensboro, NC Kasia Ozga is a Polish-French-American sculptor and installation artist most recently based between Greensboro, NC and Saint-Étienne, France. She reuses, revalues, and reanimates mass-produced materials into unique artworks and inverts the associations made with different types of waste. Ozga is a former Kosciuszko Foundation Fellowship recipient, a Harriet Hale Woolley grantee from the Fondation des Etats-Unis, a Jerome Fellowship recipient at Franconia Sculpture Park, and a Paul-Louis Weiller award recipient from the French Académie des Beaux-Arts. Her work has been exhibited in over 15 different countries and she has participated widely in residencies in Europe and North America, including Shakers, Nekatoenea, Pépinières Européennes de Création, ACRE, and KHN. Currently an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at UNCG, Ozga holds a PhD from the University of Paris 8, an MFA from the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, and a BFA from the SMFA at Tufts University, Boston. featured artwork "RE_MOVE N.22" batik, ink, and watercolor pencil on handmade paper, 2020 "RE_MOVE N.24" batik, ink, and watercolor pencil on handmade paper, 2020 responding to SIGHTLINES My work begins and ends in the human body. Our remnants (what we cast off and leave behind in the form of waste, trash, memory etc.) ground and connect us to the earth. My work asks where the things in our lives come from and where they go once we’ve used them. By representing and re-animating remains, I explore the potential of materials to ask questions and to evoke larger environmental relationships. I reuse and revalue ordinary and mass produced materials into something one-of-a-kind. The RE_MOVE series is the product of a transatlantic dialogue in image and text from 2019-2020 between myself and poet Dan Rosenberg. The images engage a batik process with materials reclaimed from multiple former and ongoing projects including handmade paper, architectural drawing templates, thread, and found pigments. Fire, and its effects on the built and natural environments from the Notre Dame Cathedral in France to forests in North America, is a recurring theme in the series. I have visited the Pacific Northwest several times over the past few years, primarily during the summer months. These trips have been marked by moments of wonder at the immense scale of the region's trees and open spaces and exhaustion from the intense thick smoke that blankets the region when forest fires are in abundance. From the stark rocky beaches of the Pacific Coast to primordial tree trunks at Olympic National Park to mountain meadows blooming for brief windows of opportunity near Mount Rainier to hazy orange skies at Glacier National Park, I am drawn to these places that reify the natural and invite me to question how we as a species shape our landscapes in the context of the Anthropocene. more from Kasia's perspective Photos taken by Kasia from a moving train in Glacier National Park in Montana during an extensive fire episode on the West Coast in 2021. Hazy skies have begun to appear earlier and earlier in the region, from year to year, as heat and particulate pollution increase. The acrid taste of warm thick air affects our lungs, but also our eyes, changing how we perceive the natural environment even in sites associated with pristine beauty and fresh, reinvigorating experiences for the body and mind. Chat back to exhibition Chat

our story Like many good stories, the story of The Confluence Lab starts with a road trip. In September of 2018, Jenn Ladino and Erin James travelled from Moscow, Idaho, to the Taft-Nicholson Center for the Environmental Humanities to share research and institutional strategies with a regional network of environmental humanities scholars. The Center, a branch campus of the University of Utah located in the Centennial Valley in Southern Montana, part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, is a place of tensions. The campus is situated atop an abandoned ghost town that the university benefactors had exhumed and restored some years earlier. (We stayed in the cabin called “Jail,” with metal bars on the windows, which had been fully buried underground just a few years before.) It’s a wild enough location that grizzly protocol meant always walking in pairs, but where the closest neighbors, 8 miles down the road, are the powerful political activists the Koch brothers. Before we left, our geography colleague, Teresa Cavazos Cohn, had enigmatically warned us to “look out for the polar bear.” Now, this valley is home to elk, moose, and pronghorn, among other land-dwellers, and over 260 species of birds, including peregrine falcons, sand hill cranes, and trumpeter swans. But try as we might, we couldn’t spot any polar bears. That is, until we came across a pristine taxidermied full-sized adult polar bear in the living room of the house of the Center’s benefactor during a reception. We sipped cocktails as the bear loomed over us, chatting with the benefactor about wilderness and the changing nature of the American West while this preserved hypercarnivore stood frozen by our side. During the nine-hour car ride back to Moscow, our conversation kept coming back to the bear. For the benefactor, having the bear in her house made total sense—it was a symbol of what is disappearing from the pristine wilderness that she hopes the Center is protecting, a symbol of the emotions that she feels for this place. For Jenn and Erin, the bear helped us unpack the narratives of wilderness and “untouched” nature that still have sociopolitical impacts in the West and elsewhere in our increasingly divided country. Beyond our excitement at having solved Teresa’s treasure hunt, the polar bear was a powerful reminder of how a symbol can travel and stand in for emotions and stories that are often buried or unacknowledged. The whole experience got us thinking about the surprising yet productive ideas and occasions that get scholars collaborating outside of their comfortable disciplinary silos and outside of our institutions. We left the valley fired up to make things happen on our campus. In the car, we took turns driving and typing, drafting a mission statement (and an embarrassingly bad acronym) and an application for office space for what would soon become The Confluence Lab. We met with Teresa the week we got home, and the three of us excitedly hashed out ideas for public-facing, interdisciplinary work that would study, respond to, and potentially help to mitigate the divisive environmental and cultural issues of our home state of Idaho. The idea for The Confluence Lab was born.

LAB publications "I Was Born!": Personal Experience Narratives and Tree-Ring Marker Years Nick Koenig and Erin James. Philosophies 9 (6): 166 (2024) open access link Unsettling Fire: Recognizing Narrative Compassion Erin James, Jack Kredell, Jennifer Ladino, Teresa Cavazos Cohn, Kayla Bordelon, and Michael Decker. Narrative 32.3 (October 2024). PDF available Building a Geospatial Archive of Species Loss as a Response to Local Caribou Extinction Jack Kredell, Chris Lamb, and Devin Becker. Environmental Humanities 17.1 (March 1, 2025). PDF available Why Worry? The Utility of Fear for Climate Justice Jennifer Ladino. Climate Justice Educators Toolkit. Jennifer Atkinson and Sarah Jaquette Ray, eds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2024. link to projejct Telling Climate Truths: Harnessing Storytelling for Rural Communities Jennifer Ladino. Love Your Mother: 50 States, 50 Stories, and 50 Women United for Climate Justice . Mallory McDuff, ed. Broadleaf Books, 2023. link to book Fiction, Belief, and Climate Change Erin James. The Routledge Handbook of Fiction and Belief . Alison James , Akihiro Kubo , Françoise Lavocat , eds. Routledge, 2023. link to book The Potential for Changing Public Perception on Climate Change Through Narratives Kristin Haltinner, Dilshani Sarathchandra, Jennifer K. Ladino, Erin James, John W. Anderson, Matt Grindal, and Markie McBrayer. Sociology Compass , 19: e70046. open access link Fuels and Ladders: Catalizing the "Fire Humanities" for Fire Adaptation Sasha Michelle White. FAC Net , November 2, 2023. open access link The Power of Prescribed Fire: A Wildfire Journalist Steps Behind the Drip Torch Kylie Mohr. High Country News , February 1, 2025. open access link How Nostalgia Drives and Derails Living with Wildland Fire in the American West Jennifer Ladino, Leda N. Kobziar, Jack Kredell, & Teresa Cavazos Cohn, editor: Natasha Ribeiro Fire, 2022 open access link Feeling skeptical: Worry, dread, and support for environmental policy among climate change skeptics Kristin Haltinner, Jennifer Ladino, & Dilshani Sarathchandra Emotion, Space & Society, v.39, 2021 PDF available LAB reports: 2019 - 25 2022 2021 2020 2019

Experience with Fire as a Writer: Why It's Necessary to Go Outside a profile of Jennifer Yu by Bailey Lowe As a fiction author who likes to write about wilderness, nature, and the environment, second-year MFA student Jennifer Yu couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get out into the field and engage with these topics in a physical, embodied way. When she learned about the Artists-in-Fire Residency Program through the University of Idaho’s Confluence Lab, she knew she had to apply. Yu says, “I think it's really important, really helpful, really valuable, and perhaps even necessary, to go outside” to gain a more authentic experience of how humans actually engage with nature. Before moving to Idaho, Yu lived in Colorado and Los Angeles—places that that are especially impacted by fire—and the Artists-in-Fire Residency Program allowed her to get up close and personal with fire and experience it in an entirely new way. As part of the program, Yu spent two weeks in the northeastern Washington wilderness where she participated in a Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (TREX ). For these exchanges, people who have varying levels of experience regarding fire (such as firefighters with different backgrounds or even fiction authors, as in Yu’s case) come together to learn about prescribed fire and participate in prescribed fire experiences where they use specialized equipment to safely burn multiple predetermined sections of land. To prepare for the TREX, Yu and the other embedded artists first had to complete the Firefighter Type 2 certification (FFT2), which qualifies them to fight and prevent wildfires. This certification included 40 hours of online training as well as a pack test, which required the participants to complete a three mile walk while carrying a 45-pound pack in 45 minutes. Yu joked that the pack test was perhaps the most stressful part of this experience. During the Training Exchange, which took place in late September to early October, Yu and the other TREX participants worked together to scout the area, plan and prepare to burn, burn numerous acres, and finally do “mop up,” which entails both ensuring that the fire is completely out and doing any necessary restorative work. Yu explained that before the exchange, the TREX organizers coordinated with private landowners and state and federal agencies to research, document, and plan which units are candidates for prescribed burns—immense prework goes into this process before any fires are lit. The TREX participants also had ample training on site with the equipment needed to burn the land. The first few days of the exchange involved physical training with equipment such as a drip torch, the different parts of a fire engine, hose lines, rakes, and portable water bladders. Throughout this experience, Yu learned to respect fire as not just a monolithic, destructive force, but as something that is beneficial to the ecosystem and the environment. She also learned that, if used properly, prescribed and controlled fire can reduce the likelihood of an out-of-control wildfire in the future. Yu also expressed how this concept is not at all a new realization; a few members of the TREX were from the Spokane tribe, and they have been doing preventative burning for generations. However, Yu explained that this healthy, symbiotic relationship with fire still must include deep respect, because fire is a powerful natural force that we cannot always control. Being near something so powerful gave Yu an emotionally intense experience, and she expressed that she felt almost a euphoria after burning land for hours at a time. Yu also said that, as a writer, this experience “was at least as much about the people as it was about fire.” Because this group of people lived so closely for 12 days in high stress situations, they quickly developed a tight bond. One evening during the exchange, Yu had the opportunity to give a presentation to the team members about the role of fictionality in telling stories about fire. She explained how fictionality is a double-edged sword that can be used to create emotion and excitement in readers that directs them to focus on targeted topics, but also can cause generalizations and hyperbole, especially when discussing topics such as humans-vs-fire. Just as Yu learned to respect fire as an outsider, she was able to share her knowledge about storytelling with experienced firefighters. To end her presentation, Yu had her team members write their own short stories about fire. She had them draw words or phrases out of a hat that had to do with their TREX experience, such as “flame length” or “weather” or “burn,” and then had them use those words to construct a tale. She said that it was a really fun experience, and they all read the stories together. Overall, this experience helped Yu as an author to expand her “aperture of thinking and writing” in a way that a classroom setting cannot. While academia is valuable for writers, Yu explained how sitting in a classroom all day is not necessarily synergistic with writing: “As a writer and as a grad student, it's so easy to just get totally consumed by your immediate day to day. There's a way in which sometimes it feels like my entire world is one square mile of the campus and everything I do is this one square mile and everyone I know are the people in this one square mile. And as a writer, that is bad, because you cannot conceptualize the world outside of yourself.” Yu is currently working on a novel about human relationships with climate and the environment, and the Artists-in-Fire Residency Program has helped her understand how fire behaves and has given her a real understanding of what it is like to be in such close proximity to such a powerful force. This hands-on research will influence her novel in a way that not all authors get to experience.

featured artist Jackie Barry Longmont, CO Jackie Barry is a multidisciplinary artist, forester, and wildland firefighter based in Colorado. They are interested in the integration of the arts and humanities into natural resource management, and how art can increase ecological literacy for communities. They graduated from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia in 2011 with a BFA in Printmaking/Book Arts and are scheduled to graduate from Oregon State University's School of Forestry this spring with a Masters of Natural Resources, focused on Forest Ecosystems and Society. Jackie currently works as a forest ecosystem manager and wildland firefighter in Boulder, Colorado. featured artwork "Medio Fire", 35mm film shot on Olympus Stylus Epic, 2020 "Boys in the Truck", 35mm film on Olympus Stylus Epic, 2020 "Cole", 35mm film shot on Olympus Stylus Epic, 2020 responding to SIGHTLINES This body of work was created over the fire season of 2020, one of the most "prolific" wildfire years in American history. At the time I was a wildland firefighter on the Santa Fe Hotshots, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Throughout the season, I carried a film camera with me and tried to document life on the crew and some of the fire suppression activities. The images were shot in New Mexico, Arizona, and California. When people think of firefighters, large red engines with ladders and people in bulky fire uniforms come to mind. You see and hear the engines flashing their lights and blaring their sirens throughout towns and communities all over the country. When you ask people what they know about wildland firefighters, most people don't know what to say; they either don't know what the difference is, or don't live in a part of the country that is regularly exposed to wildfire. The difference between structure firefighters and wildland firefighters is visibility: you don't see us when we work, we aren't in the front-country. When we get a fire call, we load up into our trucks or buggies, make our way to the incident–sometimes days away–and hike miles into the fire over wild, harsh terrain–carrying chainsaws, enough rations and water for the day, emergency shelters, tools, and anything else we might need. We are hardly ever witnessed, and therefore, not celebrated the way that structure firefighters are. In sharing these images, I hope to increase visibility of wildland firefighters and hotshots. I hope that raising awareness around wildfire and wildland firefighters will increase support for better wages for wildland firefighters and increase ecological literacy regarding forests and the wildland urban interface. I began my work as a wildland firefighter in Twisp, Washington in 2018; my love for the PNW and its relationship to fire runs deep. more from Jackie's perspective Performing Burn Ops on the Bighorn Fire in Tucson, 2020 Organizing the woodlot with the tractor in Boulder, Colorado, 2023. Working with an air tanker on the Bumblebee Fire, Bumblebee AZ, 2020. This tanker doused our crew buggies in retardant on roadside, and sprayed some traffic on the highway as well. Hiking in the snow looking for Christmas tress towards the end of their 2022 season. Chat back to exhibition Chat

Part of the larger Stories of Fire Atlas Project , Where There Is Smoke is a crowd-sourced digital map that documents experiences of wildfire smoke in the Pacific Northwest and further afield. Once built, the map will serve as a spatial and temporal nexus of images and stories connecting the smoke in the air to the historical, social and ecological conditions and pre-conditions of fire on the ground. Through the inclusion of many voices, Where There is Smoke will highlight how changing climate and increasing wildfire are impacting communities across seasons and topographies and cooperatively build a greater understanding of how fire and fire management intersect with environmental justice. Help build the map. Contribute your Smoke Story. This project is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s “Just Futures ” Initiative . COMING SOON explore the Where There is Smoke... website! This map is part of The Confluence Lab’s Pacific Northwest Stories of Fire Atlas Project. Next

Our Changing Climate Finding Common Ground through Climate Fiction Jennifer Ladino, Kayla Bordelon & Idaho Community Members funded by the Idaho Humanities Council Opportunity Grant 2019-2022 Modeled on the successful "Let's Talk About It" series, Jennifer Ladino (English and Environmental Science, University of Idaho) and Environmental Science PhD Kayla Bordelon hosted conversations about climate change in four Idaho communities: Coeur d’Alene, McCall, Grangeville, and Lewiston. Ladino and Bordelon, both former National Park Service rangers, drew on NPS audience engagement strategies to invite discussion and encourage participants to share personal stories. They used Barbara Kingsolver’s climate change novel Flight Behavior as a gateway to identifying common ground and common concerns about climate change, and to start dismantling communication barriers that may impede progress on environmental problems in rural communities. Next

featured artist Laura Ahola-Young Pocatello, ID Laura Ahola-Young received her MFA from San Jose State University and her BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She currently resides in Pocatello, Idaho where she is an Associate Professor of Art at Idaho State University. Originally from the Iron Range and Boundary Waters Canoe Area of Northern Minnesota, Laura is influenced by landscape, winters, ice and resilience. She is currently developing work that incorporates scientific research, plant physiology, critical plant studies, geology and personal narrative. featured artwork "Mapping Oxygen" mixed-media on board,18in x 18in, 2021 Two Pines Down (after the Fire) graphite, ink and watercolor on paper, 20in x 16in, 2023 "Found Object 2, Cut, Burned" ink and watercolor on board, 22in x 22in, 2023 "Found Object 1, Cut, Burned" ink and watercolor on board, 22in x 22in, 2023 "Lichenization 2 and the Marking of Fire" mixed-media on paper, 18in x 12in, 2023 responding to Ground Truths These works are inspired by a collection of photos from fire landscapes I encounter. Initially, my goal in taking these photos was to identify the first plant life after the fire, and while this investigation continues as part of my practice, these pieces departed from those intentions as I became interested in how humans have marked the land before fire and the skeletal remains of trees acting as maps of time, oxygen and carbon. As an artist I attempt to provide evidence of the intricacies of regeneration, of life in the forest. The findings on the ground after a fire reveal the marks of fire itself: lichen, mycology, growth, decay and the complex relationship between human actions and vegetal life. I understand the need for a forest to regenerate itself through fire—yet fear, destruction and abundance of the wildfires in the Pacific Northwest are a new experience that terrifies and humbles me. I hope that my work situates my past with my present in a way that represents the forest—and all that is vegetal—in a reverent and ethical depiction of life. more from Laura's perspective Gibson Jack Trail: Laura's favorite hike in Pocatello, part of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest a view of Pocatello, Idaho where Laura lives: Pocatello, a high desert and a sage steppe landscape is in the Southeast corner of Idaho an example of Laura's source imagery: a photo from her collection of visiting and documenting forest fire sites Chat back to exhibition Chat

featured artists Sophia Hatzikos Portland, OR Oregon Episcopal School Portland, OR Sophia Hatzikos is a site-specific artist who looks towards our past to evaluate our future. She is concerned with impending environmental collapse and gains insights from experts whose deep knowledge of natural systems comes from their working relationship with the land. Sophia is interested in interdependence and the contrasting fragilities of the natural world and capitalistic demand; she investigates these themes through a scientific lens. Through exploration and observation, she throws light on the ways in which structures and environments have been built over time, giving special attention to the imprints and inerasable marks left by those who wield power. featured artwork "Lift, Coil, Zip" retired wildfire hoses, steel, ties, 2022 responding to Ground Truths This project was a collaboration with students from Oregon Episcopal School who were enrolled in I.M.P.A.C.T (innovate / make / act / collaborate / tinker), a course that encourages experimental thinking about the impact of public art. Discarded fire hoses from the Redmond Fire Cache acted as a throughline to different projects, questions, and themes that were explored by the class. If the fire hoses, used in wildfire suppression during 2020 and 2021, had not become part of the project, they would have gone to a landfill. Using an upcycled material allowed for an expansive creative environment: mistakes could be made and our budget could be spent on other materials to expand the scope of their projects. The students designed individual work around their research into wildfires, climate change, material processes, and the industry of wildfire-fighting, and all thirteen students were involved in the final collaborative effort. Lift, Coil, Zip was shaped through site visits to the Lake Oswego Gallery without Walls , where it has been on display since the fall of 2022. The students were excited by the tall trees around the platform and its location right next to the firehouse. Seeing the environment where their work would live helped finalize the design and the students embraced the process of strategizing and refining ideas for their public art installation. The work will be looking for a new home come August 2023; hopefully, it will stay in the region to continue to tell the story these students crafted! more from their experience Chat back to exhibition Chat

Ground Truths showcases creative works that experiment with this practice of knowing, engaging on-the-ground perspectives and firsthand experiences of wildfire’s presence (or threat of presence) in the Pacific Northwest. Stories of Fire On line Exhibition Ser ies Part I: If a map is to be used for navigation, it functions only insofar as its relationship to the ground is true. Any map that represents the land from above inherently prioritizes certain features, distorting or omitting others. Scale, resolution and framing, along with what is labeled and what is left out, color the viewer’s relationship with a particular territory and the spatial representations of a map imply particular ways of knowing. Ground truthing is a cartographic practice which seeks to establish the veracity of any given map: how does an embedded experience differ from the abstracted perspective represented by the map? GROUND TRUTHS showcases creative works that experiment with this practice of knowing, engaging on-the-ground perspectives and firsthand experiences of wildfire’s presence (or threat of presence) in the Pacific Northwest. It catalogs the various ways artists are orienting themselves to their changing communities, and how they are thinking through the materials, textures, and living beings of their local landscapes to understand wildfire’s new place in their lives. Through these works, we experience fire as a wild force and a management tool, a lively presence and a haunting specter. We see it through the eyes of children and adults, and stretch into the worldviews of other species, too. As both agent and inspiration, wildfire rips across the landscape, but just as often it finds tinder in the artists’ imaginations. Here, then, we have assembled a map deep and twisted, one that honors the rich sensory, intellectual, and instinctual experiences of wildfire even as it reckons with wildfire’s undeniable material reality. This work is presented in collaboration by: “Seeking truth involves boots on the ground while looking for clues in the clouds.” David Paul Bayles And made possible by the generous support of: Megan Hatch almost there - losing ground archival pigment print, 10in x 27in, 2022 Jean Arnold Malden 3: Remnants acrylic on canvas, 20in x 22in, 2020 Meredith Ojala ALL I SEE IS RED oil on canvas 18in x 24in, 2018 Margo Geddes Standing Dead Silver Gelatin Print, 10in x 10in, 2022 Margo Geddes left: Heart Boulder right: Black Ground Silver Gelatin Prints, 10in x 10in, 2022 "To live in the Pacific Northwest these days is to live with the pervasiveness of fire in its many guises–with the smoke that signals fire, over there; with the flames that signal fire, right now; and with the charred landscapes that si gnal fire, back then. Fire is present here, even when it is not." Erin James read more on how the ubiquity of fire is explored in Ground Truths. Laura Ahola-Young Found Object 1, Cut, Burned ink and watercolor on board, 22in x 22in, 2023 Laura Ahola-Young Found Object 2, Cut, Burned ink and watercolor on board, 22in x 22in, 2023 Siri Stensberg From the Smoke, For the Birds video and audio. 2020 Julie Mortimer Crow Memories watercolor, 12in x 16in Asante Riverwind Waldo Wilderness and Mountain Bluebird acrylic on canvas, 8in x 10in Mary Vanek Smith Sky on Fire oil on canvas, 11in x 14in Justin Webb Skeletons of Soda Fire 2 silver gelatin print using Ilford glossy RC paper, 5in x 7in, 2021 Justin Webb Skeletons of Soda Fire 1 silver gelatin print using Ilford glossy RC paper, 5in x 7in, 2021 Kate Lund Are You Sure We are Going the Right Way? cattle marker and graphite on panel, 3ft x 4ft, 2016 David Paul Bayles & Frederick J. Swanson from Typologies: Charred Abstractions series Laura Ahola-Young Mapping Oxygen mixed-media on board, 18in x 18in, 2021 Kate Lund Downdraft installation view & detail, cattle marker & graphite on paper, 5ft x 23ft, 2016 Enid Smith Becker Witness acrylic on canvas, 30in x 48in, 2018 Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscapes (FIPL): Overlook Field School various projects from five week workshop, 2021 "Being in the thick of things –or gra ppl ing wi th fire from within, as opposed to witnessing it from afar– is essential to understanding not only what fire is tod ay, but what it means to the various commu nities that live with it in our region." Erin James read more about Ground Truths artists with "boots on the ground ." Maggie Keefe West of Cabin RX watercolor Alice Keefe collage Maggie Keefe Upper Hatter RX watercolor Laura Ahola-Young Two Pines Down (after the Fire) graphite, Ink and watercolor on paper, 20in x 16in, 2023 David Paul Bayles & & Frederick J. Swanson Typology Series: Canopy Triptych David Paul Bayles & & Frederick J. Swanson Typology Series: Charred Abstraction Triptych David Paul Bayles & & Frederick J. Swanson Chronosequence Series: Photopoint FFR 2 views from Finn Rock Bridge looking down the McKenzie River to prow of an island with jam of wood floated into place before fire, 2020-23 David Paul Bayles & & Frederick J. Swanson Chronosequence Series: Photopoint FFR 17 views looking up the McKenzie River valley in a mixed hardwood and conifer forest on a terrace high above the river, 2020-22 Oregon Episcopal School & Sophia Hatzikos Lift, Coil, Zip retired wildfire hoses from Redmond, OR fire cache, steel, zip ties, 2022 Lift, Coil, Zip in progress, spring 2022 Laura Ahola-Young Lichenization 2 and the Marking of Fire mixed-media on paper, 18in x 12in, 2023 "Our region is full of wounds, of ruined shells in the forest that testify to fires that are too hot and too big. But these “wounds” are also openings... " Erin James read more about openings offered through Ground Truths artists. Sasha Michelle White The Containment (FIRST AID KIT FOR THE FIRE-PRONE) 2020-2021. Tinctures of Arnica, Balsam Root, Tall Oregon Grape and Yarrow. Silk, wool and cotton dyed with Blackberry, Ceanothus, St Johns Wort, Tall Oregon Grape, and Yarrow. Charcoal Powder. Burn Salve. Protocol poems and photographs. Megan Hatch almost there - losing ground archival pigment print, 10in x 27in, 2022 Jean Arnold Malden 8: Shreds ink and gouache on paper, 11in x 14in, 2022 Kate Lund Microburst wire fencing, rip-stop nylon, flannel, deer fencing, tent poles, 9ft x 9ft x 4ft, 2016 Megan Hatch the way isn't clear - and yet here we are archival pigment print, 27in x 10in, 2022 Jean Arnold Malden 1: After the Inferno acrylic on canvas, 20in x 26in, 2020 Jean Arnold Malden 5: Phase Change gouache on paper, 12in x 14in, 2022 Jean Arnold Malden 2: Gutted acrylic on canvas, 20in x 26in, 2022 Liz Toohey-Wiese Billboard installed outside of Vernon, BC from August 2020 - March 2021 further considerations "Ubiquitous Fire" A key theme of the art that features in the Ground Truths collection is the ubiquity of fire. To live in the Pacific Northwest these days is to live with the pervasiveness of fire in its many guises–with the smoke that signals fire, over there; with the flames that signal fire, right now; and with the charred landscapes that signal fire, back then. Fire is present here, even when it is not. As Meredith Ojala notes in her response to the call for submissions, her oil on canvas Seeing Red is one painting in a set “made at the time when wildfires felt all-encompassing, when the world felt like it was on fire.” Her experience of driving through and living in fires in Southern Idaho, Eastern Oregon, and Washington in the summer of 2018 was so sweeping that it defined the daily rhythms of her life. She fell asleep looking out at wildfire from her windows and was woken up by the sounds of water-bombers. Even her dreams turned red. She notes that wildfires took over many of her paintings, even when she “had no plans to incorporate them.” The ubiquity of fire looms large in the wild abstractness of Ojala’s painting: we are unsure if we are looking at flames, or wildfire scars, or red dreams. The image is both beautiful and terrifying. It, like fire, appears multiplicitous–expansive and unbound to any one meaning or experience. Indeed, the very everywhereness of fire in our region is one way of conceptualizing the diversity of vantage points and materials with which the Ground Truths artists come at the subject. Margo Geddes’ work, too, grapples with the all-presence of wildfire. She notes that “fire season has become ubiquitous during the summer months in Montana,” and her photographs are one way of processing the “swiftly changing” landscape as it moves through fire’s various phases. Geddes’ prints illustrate fire’s mercurial nature as well as the rich range of emotions that fire can produce. The starkness of Standing Dead evokes familiar narratives of fire’s capacious destructiveness–its ability to rip through a landscape, leaving only wounds behind. But the patient observer will notice life among the ruins; what initially appears as a luscious shadow of a tree in the photograph’s bottom right corner encourages the eye to recalibrate and open itself up to the trees that live and thrive amongst the char. This emotional movement, from that of scars to that of regeneration, repeats in her photo of the Heart Boulder. While driving through the Bitterroot National Forest, Geddes spotted granitic boulders previously hidden amongst forest foliage but now exposed by fire’s wake. By capturing this moment of legibility, before the boulders are hidden again by fireweed, Geddes’ work illuminates yet another version of fire–one of reveal, regeneration, and renewal. Ojala’s and Geddes’ descriptions of their artistic process suggests that one way to grapple with the ubiquity of fire is to drive through it, literally. This act of experiencing fire on the move, or moving with fire across space and time, is even more apparent in Siri Stensberg’s From the Smoke, For the Birds . Filmed while driving through a dust and smoke storm in Eastern Washington in early fall, 2020, Stensberg’s piece is a visual and auditory echo of the “Fable of Tomorrow” that opens Rachel Carson’s seminal book Silent Spring . The video, which at first appears peaceful, quickly becomes filled with what is missing: no birds perch on the telephone lines, and the reason for their absence becomes clear as audio of a voicemail from Stensberg’s grandmother tells us about birds dying of smoke inhalation after fleeing a fire. Stensberg explains that the video and layered vocals create space for viewers to “mourn the wildlife and ecosystems lost in forest fires of the Pacific Northwest.” Her piece also asks us to linger on the various ways, both immediately perceptible and not, that fire lingers in our lives. Two additional pieces similarly turn to the non-human to illuminate fire’s ubiquity. Julie Mortimer’s Crow Memories brings to life the ghostly presence that defines Stensberg’s video, demanding that we shift our perspective from human to bird to experience wildfire and its effects. The misty air that dominates public imaginations of the Pacific Northwest is present on the edges of Mortimer’s watercolor. But this moisture gives way to dirty smoke in the painting’s center, such that the titular crow must turn its head to breathe. Stensberg’s video asks us to live in a world in which the birds have fled, or died. Mortimer’s work, on the other hand, tasks us with inhabiting a moment of captivity during which the crow attempts–and perhaps fails–to find the air to escape. The crow, a powerful cultural symbol of both death and the future, is here caught between the two in a landscape that similarly hovers between one version of itself and another. If Mortimer’s crow is trapped in the moment of, Asante Riverwind’s bluebird thrives in the time after. Mountain Bluebird and Waldo Wilderness is inspired by Riverwind’s experience of the 1996 Wheeler Point Fire in Eastern and Central Oregon, which he himself fought to save structures and forest for five brutal days. Like the crow, Riverwind struggled to breathe the smoke and see through the air that enveloped him. But as a longtime resident of the area trained as a USFS sawyer and firefighter, he remained to experience the aftermath of the fire. As he explains, the bluebird is a “resilient species well adapted to fire ecology,” and his particular bluebird, thriving brightly amongst the snags and debris, reminds us that “life is truly resilient, as are we all.” His painting visually declares that blue skies, like bluebirds, are also part of the fire cycles of our region. Finally, Mary Vanek Smith’s painting provides us with yet another perspective of fire and its ubiquity–this time a highly emotional one. Sky on Fire takes, as its subject matter, the presence of active fire. But rather than menace or destruction, Smith’s oil painting evokes beauty and tranquility. Its brilliant orange imagery and symmetry foster a sense of calm, and the foregrounded fence suggests a certain safety from the wildness of Ojala’s red dreams. Indeed, the painting could easily be one of a stunning Western sunrise; as Smith explains, the painting’s “beautiful natural display” stands in for “hundreds of thousands of acres of forest being burned.” The painting thus cleverly captures the cognitive, emotional, and affective dissonance of finding beauty in terror, and locating a new tomorrow in the fires of today. Ubiquitous Fire Meredith Ojala ALL I SEE IS RED Margo Geddes Standing Dead Boots GTruth "Boots on the Ground" Boots on the ground: in many ways this is a clichéd phrase that, with its evocation of military action, brings to mind images of war, soldiers, defense, and attack. As such, it fits a popular narrative of fire in the twenty-first-century Pacific Northwest as an adversary that we must defeat–an evil presence escaping out of the woods that demands active fighting. The complete story of fire in our region is, of course, much more complicated: modern wildfire is both too hot and too fast, seeded as it is by decades of the fuel loading that has resulted from federal- and state-supported suppression policies, and a necessary part of the lifecycle of many of the region’s ecosystems. Having boots on the ground in our contemporary firescape is thus also much more complicated than the military connotations of the phrase suggest. As many of the contributions to Ground Truths attest, being in the thick of things–or grappling with fire from within, as opposed to witnessing it from afar–is essential to understanding not only what fire is today, but what it means to the various communities that live with it in our region. Kate Lund’s contributions to Ground Truths began when she was in fire: while studying as an art student, Lund spent eight summers working as a wildland firefighter with the United States Forest Service (USFS). As she explains, she used firefighting to “fuel” her artistic practice, collecting “images, objects, and sensations over the course of each summer in the landscape.” That collection is on vivid display in Are You Sure We are Going the Right Way , Downdraft and Microburst –gestural renderings and sculptures that not only evoke her experiences of fire operations but carry within them remnants of the urgency and distress of being in the field. Microburst, for example, makes use of expired and cast-off tents and outdoor firefighting equipment to conjure the way that wind moves during a fire. Fencing, nylon, and tent poles hang together to situate the viewer within the actual wildfire’s wind–“short, sharp bursts of air strong enough to mow down 200 foot-tall trees in a matter of seconds.” The work of David Paul Bayles and Frederick J. Swanson similarly originates in situ. A western Oregon photographer and a retired Research Geologist with the USFS’s Pacific Northwest Research Station, respectively, Bayles and Swanson have made dozens of site visits over two and a half years to the landscape blackened by the 2020 Holiday Farm Fire to better understand wildfire and its effects on our region. As they eloquently explain, “seeking truth involves boots on the ground while looking for clues in the clouds,” as “that’s what trees do.” Bayles and Swanson use a variety of scientific and artistic methodologies to try on a tree’s perspective, working together to combine the photographer’s eye for form and color with the scientists’ focus on biological and physical processes. Their meditative treeness, or quiet on-the-groundness, is clear in the two styles of photographic work that feature in their Ground Truths contributions: Typologies (groups of images of single subjects) and Chronosequences (photographs that track change over time). “Truth may be lodged in the tread of our boots,” they note–a sentiment made visual in the rootedness with which we must observe the treetops in their Typologies: Canopy series and its observations of the forest’s resilience. The Keefe family shows us the intergenerational ramifications of fire field work. As their artist’s statement explains, the Keefes “study fire from a variety of disciplines and perspectives”: Rob as Director of the University of Idaho Experimental Forest (UIEF), Maggie as a watercolor painter, and their nine-year-old daughter Alice as a collager. Maggie’s paintings pull directly from Rob’s work in the UIEF, capturing the results of prescribed burns that prepare the site for regeneration and low-intensity fires that burn the understory to reduce grass and shrub fuels. The prescriptive titles of Upper Hatter Rx and West of Cabin Rx signal the tone and intent of these paintings; the Keefes explain that “prescribed fire is one of our most effective tools for reducing wildfire in the Pacific Northwest,” and these paintings “show the use of good fire in forests on the Palouse Range.” We see this “goodness easily in the latter painting, which depicts a fire manager walking calmly amongst a stand of healthy trees and signals the harmonious relationship of the prescribed burn and landscape via the fuzzy border between flame and grass. Alice also captures the “goodness” of prescribed burns in her collage–a bright and cheerful work that illustrates what this fire means “to her soul” as she remembers “seeing the flames for myself disappear as they burn down the pile.” Her collage, evoking the safe and the domestic in its doily base, offers us the same challenge as her mother’s paintings: what if we understood fire to be not “wild” and destructive, but peaceful and familiar? Finally, work from two field schools once again highlights the power of being boots on the ground. Members of the Overlook Field School , funded by the Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscapes, spent five weeks in the summer of 2021 visiting post-fire sites in the Willamette National Forest, most of which had burned within the past thirty years. Their focus was on “recovery,” which they explain as “analogous to resilience, restoration, and regeneration . . . a return to a previous state–perhaps a new normal.” The temporary landscape installations recorded in their Recovery booklet track not only these forest explorations but also the exceptional conditions of their field work, including the record heat wave of their first day of field school and the wildfires that dominated the final design stage. Their work is thus triply-site-specific, in that it studies wildfire in place, takes inspiration from the environment in which it is produced, and demands that exhibit visitors, too, inhabit this specific location. Similarly, the collaboration between Sophia Hatzikos and the students of the Oregon Episcopal School enrolled in the I.M.P.A.C.T. (innovate/make/act/collaborate/tinker) course activates situated public art to generate new knowledge about climate change and the wildland firefighting industry. Inspired by site visits to the Lake Oswego Gallery without Walls, particularly the nearby tall trees and the next door firehouse, the students repurposed fire hoses originally used in wildfire suppression during 2020 and 2021, now destined for the landfill, to create Lift, Coil, Zip . The three hose towers, which cleverly summon visual and formal connections to tree rings and silver birches, intertangle contemporary forests in the Pacific Northwest and the fire suppression efforts that have created and maintained them. They ask: how much does our experience of the region’s forests rely upon the wildfire-fighting industry and its policies of suppression? Where does hose end and tree begin? And what might the landscape look like in the absence of either? Oregon Episcopal School Lift, Coil, Zip in progress Bayles & Swanson Chronosequences Series: Photopoint FFR 2 wound openings "The Wound is an Opening" Enid Smith Becker Witness When I look at Enid Smith-Becker’s Witness , I initially see a scene of devastation. Columns of red interrupt an otherwise peaceful scene in the forest, burning upwards as they lay waste to the trees and understory. The stark vertical lines of flames literally chop the image up into before and after, or, rather, what once was/is and what will be. But, the longer that I look at this painting, the more diplopic, or double-sighted, it becomes. A second scene emerges, in which the columns of fire are not incinerating trees, but held within them. This interpretation foregrounds the idea of serotiny, a term associated with cone-bearing trees such as many species of pine, spruce, and sequoia that depend upon a blast of heat to trigger the release of their seeds. The longer that I look at Witness, the more clearly that I see two fires: one angry and devastating and another the first step in regeneration. I also see two sets of trees, respectively: one in the moment of collapse and another brimming with energy, potential, and life. The double-nature of Witness brings to life for me a line in the poem that accompanies Sasha Michelle White’s The Containment : “the wound is an opening.” The wound in the poem refers to delivery mechanisms in and of the body by which we can receive treatment and begin to heal. But it also strikes me as a powerful prescription for understanding the fire-prone and -affected landscapes of the twenty-first-century Pacific Northwest, or appreciating the two sets of trees that we see in Witness. Our region is full of wounds, of ruined shells in the forest that testify to fires that are too hot and too big. But these “wounds” are also openings of various kinds. Some of these openings are literal, in that many plants in our region need fire to open up to survive and thrive. Still other openings are figurative, in that they assert alternative burning practices and fire regimes that understand and use fire as a tool of life rather than one of only violence and annihilation. (Hence, also, the refrain that runs through White’s poem: “whose lands are you on?” ) Her work encourages us to think of not only the burn, but also the salve that follows. Several contributors to Ground Truths emphasize the violence of today’s wildfires and the wounds they cause. See, for example, Justin Webb’s photographs of the aftermath of the 2015 Soda Fire. The two trees that dominate Skeletons of Soda Fire 1 and 2 remain, six years after the event, as evidence of what we have lost. As Webb writes in his contributor’s note, his photographs are inspired by the experience of “seeing a landscape that I grew up exploring stripped of its already limited plant life.” The stark black and whiteness of Webb’s arboreal photos revise Ansel Adams’ iconic images of National Parks for the Pyrocene era. Webb swaps Adams’ wild and abundant sublime for the sublime of what is now absent and the wrecks that remain. See, too, the trees that similarly haunt the backgrounds of Jean Arnold’s paintings of what is left in Malden, Washington. In September 2020, the Babb Road Fire burned 15,000 acres and over two hundred buildings–including 67 homes–in a few hours. The five paintings in Arnold’s Malden series foreground this domestic devastation, documenting the exposed interiors of shattered houses with brutal clarity. Yet is the background that haunts me most in these images. Behind each set of ruins stands a set of trees that signals just how far the loss stretches. The trees in Malden 8: Shreds and Malden 5: Phase Change , in particular, remind me that it is not only our homes that are disappearing, but the homes (and lives) of countless other species with which we share this region. The ghost of what once also lingers in Liz Toohey-Wise’s striking Billboard , which anticipated the White Rock Lake Fire in 2022. Be quick, the billboard says to us with its tongue in its cheek; see this landscape while you can, as it won’t be here long. Other contributions to Ground Truths function at a different scale of time or engage alternative cultural practices to help us see wounds as the first step in healing and, often, a necessary phase in life. This perspective is perhaps loudest in the powders, salves, and tinctures of White’s The Containment –part of her larger project FIRST-AID KIT FOR THE FIRE-PRONE . Featuring medicines and dyes she made from fire-adapted plants of the southern Willamette Valley and The Nature Conservancy’s Sycan Marsh Preserve such as arnica, snowbrush ceanothus, and St John’s wort, White’s kit draws our attention how we might use plants that thrive with the recurring disturbance of fire to treat the illnesses and injuries that fire can cause. As she explains, her kit emphasizes “fire, tending, and healing,” particularly those central to Indigenous fire regimes that are not based solely on suppression, to present us a ground truth that “promotes a pro-active, cross-cultural attending to our fire-prone landscapes.” Justin Webb Skeletons of Soda Fire 2 Jean Arnold Malden 8: Shreds Megan Hatch almost there - losing ground The work of Megan Hatch is similarly interested in healing and renewal. A queer, multidisciplinary artist from Portland, Hatch began her project in the summer of 2020 and took inspiration from the interconnections between George Floyd’s murder, the COVID-19 pandemic, and what was, at the time, Oregon’s worst-ever wildfire season. Her photographs potently insist that we grapple with what is broken and how we might mend it, and each diptych tasks us with viewing, simultaneously, images of death and images of life. A thin golden line inspired by the Japanese art of kintsugi, by which broken pottery is mended with gold, yokes together each pair of images. Hatch explains that kintsugi vessels “hold our hurt and our hope,” and, similarly, her images tell us that “there is healing to be found in holding multiple truths in our awareness at the same time.” I see this hurt and hope strongly almost there – losing ground, which binds together an enticing forest path with stark snags. Which came first, the photographs ask: the life or the death? Can we truly have one without the other? And what binds them together? Several years ago, when I started to study literary representations of fire, I had a conversation with a fire ecologist friend about the evolution of fire regimes in my current home state of Idaho. She told me that prior to 1900, fires annually burned at least two million acres in the state. These fires had a different texture to the big, hot fires that we see today, she explained; the historical fires burned mostly lower elevation forests and rangelands, were smaller and more numerous, and largely were ignited by lightning or indigenous fire practices. I was surprised to learn that post-Big Burn federal suppression policies have produced a fire deficit–my friend told me that we actually need more fire in our region, just fire of a different kind. She was very clear on this issue: no fire is not the answer, and we must learn to see fire not as bad but part of the land’s personality. Laura Aloha-Young’s work and artistic process crisply captures the swirl of emotions that followed this conversation. Attempting to “provide evidence of the intricacies of regeneration, of life in the forest,” her pieces begin with photos that she takes of fire landscapes that “reveal the marks of fire itself: lichen, mycology, growth, decay.” I clearly see the tension between growth and decay in her work and the ways that it mixes media and species to grapple with the emotional complexity of fire. Much like Becker-Smith’s Witness , I initially see a scene of devastation when I look at Two Pines Down (after the fire) --the dark colors and jagged lines return me to the melancholy of Webb’s skeletons, and the hazy shapes that surround the lines heighten the ghostliness of the image. But when I look again, I see that these hazy shapes are alive. They are not ghosts of what we have lost, but fungal and vegetal assemblages in the process of emergence. The image is thus one of simultaneous wound and opening, past and future. Its depiction of post-fire blossoming–and the revelation of this meaning as late-maturing, like serotiny–reminds us that our relationship with fire must be complicated and double-sighted. It also promises that in our search of the material evidence that remains after the flames burn out, and the layers of meaning that we find there, we may access a new ground truth of acceptance, regrowth, and fortitude. further considerations contributed by Confluence Lab member Erin James, April 2023. Laura Ahola-Young Two Pines Down (after the Fire) Next

The Confluence Lab engages in creative interdisciplinary research projects that bring together scholars in the arts, humanities, and sciences, together with community members, to engage in environmental issues impacting rural communities. Celebrating the Artists-in-Fire Crew project spotlight: The Confluence Lab’s inaugural Artists-In-Fire (AIF) residency is supporting artists and writers from the Pacific Northwest and adjacent regions as boots-on-the-ground participants in prescribed fire. Over the course of 2024, they will travel individually to participate in a Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (TREX ) or other immersive, prescribed fire experience. Returning home, AIF artists and writers will reflect upon their experiences through their creative practices and share those reflections with their home communities. read more AIF Sam Chadwick with other participants of WTREX at the Niobrara Valley Preserve in Nebraska in April 2024. Note listen to AIF resident Adam Huggins' experience via the Future Ecologies podcast Artist-in-Fire Spolight: Jennifer Yu Artist-in-Fire Spolight: Kylie Mohr Our central premise is that the tools of the humanities and arts—especially those related to storytelling, representation, emotions, and communication—are important complements to scientific knowledge and can help develop novel approaches to environmental issues. We use the creativity generated through interdisciplinary and community-based approaches to partner with diverse communities on pragmatic projects that work toward more just, sustainable, and equitable futures, focusing especially on issues such as public land use, wildland fire and fire management, and the causes and effects of climate change. our primary goal thanks to our research partners & affliates: College of Letters, Arts & Social Sciences College of Natural Resources College of Art & Architecture Read More About Our History lab stories & news Sightlines "Just Futures" Sightlines "When the Smoke Clears" Sightlines "The Future is Patchy" read more

AIF crew 2024 Kylie Mohr Missoula, MT Kylie Mohr is an award-winning freelance journalist and High Country News correspondent based in Missoula, Montana. Many of her stories focus on the intersection of science, policy and people in the wildfire space. She's covered everything from how fire impacts evolution to the experience of two hikers trapped by a wildfire. Mohr also writes about conservation, lands, water, wildlife, recreation and climate change in the West. Her editorial bylines include National Geographic, The Atlantic, E&E News/POLITICO, Hakai Magazine, Deseret Magazine, CBS News, Vox, NPR, CNN and more. Mohr earned her bachelor's degree from Georgetown University and a master's degree from the University of Montana. When she's not clacking away behind a keyboard, you can find her deep in the backcountry on skis, backpacking through wildflowers, or trail running with her pup, Nuna. TREX involvement More on her story in Fall 2024... but for now, Kylie is very much looking forward to experiencing fire with her own two hands and feet. She writes, talks and thinks about fire often as a journalist covering wildfire, but fire as a force (and a force for good!) still remains abstract to her in some ways. She's excited to experience the preparation and execution of a prescribed fire viscerally, from up close, and be able to translate that experience into future reporting projects. She hope her readers will be able to tell the difference! Chat back to AIF residency Chat