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AIF crew 2024 Erica Meryl Thomas Portland, OR Erica Meryl Thomas is an interdisciplinary artist, educator and labor organizer. Her work explores the ways we relate our personal histories to social, political, and natural histories. She uses the art making process to illuminate and celebrate visible and invisible labor, and visit with the darker sides of place. Her work is collaborative, site specific and often participatory, demanding flexibility of form: installations, printmaking, artist books, storytelling and dialogue, and other experiential forms among them. Her recent practice has centered on the human relationship with wildfire and smoke, utilizing foraged charcoal from wildfire burn sites to produce handmade ink and printing images to tell stories of the landscapes. In 2023, she co-curated and was a participating artist in a group exhibition, Obscurity: life inside the smoke, (World Forestry Center in Portland, OR). Her printmaking and installation presented stories and images of incarcerated wildland firefighters printed with her foraged charcoal ink. The installation invited visitors to send messages to the incarcerated wildland firefighters, and concluded with a show in a minimum security prison where some of the firefighters are based.. In 2014 she received an MFA in Art and Social Practice from Portland State University where she is now a faculty member teaching interdisciplinary courses on art, design and social theory. She is the Co-Chair and Chair of Political Action for Portland State University’s adjunct faculty labor union (PSUFA-AFT local 3571), and uses her voice to create art and action in solidarity with interconnected political, social and environmental movements. TREX involvement More on her story in Fall 2024... but for now, Erica is looking forward to the physical experience of being near and working with fire, and all of the sensory elements (smell, touch, sounds, etc.) that go along with the work. She loves a physical challenge and prefers to learn through doing, so she is excited for the opportunity to be among a crew working together as a means of experiential research. Chat back to AIF residency Chat

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

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

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

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

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 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 Suze Woolf Seattle, WA Suze Woolf’s work is about human relationships to nature. A painter she explores a range of media from watercolor to paper-casting, from artist books to pyrography and installation--sometimes all together. Her background includes fine art, computer graphics and interface design. She has exhibited throughout the U. S. West and across the United States and Canada, received numerous art awards and held residencies in Zion, Glacier, Capitol Reef and North Cascades National Parks, as well as the Grand Canyon Trust, Banff Centre, Vermont Studio Center, Willowtail Springs, Jentel, PLAYA, Centrum, Mineral School and Sitka Center for Art & Ecology. Her work is represented in both private and regional public collections. Her installation “State of the Forest,” based on 14 years of painting individual burned trees, is currently part of the Environmental Impact II tour ( 2019-2023). featured artwork "Splintered," varnished watercolor on torn paper mounted on laser-cut polycarbonate & shaped matboard, 52in x 25in, 2023. An ancient burned juniper from the new BLM wilderness area Oregon Badlands. "Core Values," fabric installation of knit/felted tree cores, woven ice cores, dyed and quilted sediment cores, dimensions variable, up to approx. 18 sq ft, 2023 "Carved Out with Fire Pit," tree: Varnished watercolor on torn paper mounted on shaped Gatorboard with wood hanging cradle. fire pit: black paper, rocks, spray-painted gas pump handle, empty propane tank, coal, insulator, corn cobs, 2022. barbed wire, model airplane, model semi-truck and model oil tanker railroad car added 2023 "Logged, Drifted and Burned," varnished watercolor on torn paper mounted on shaped foam core with wood hanging cradle, 52in x 25in, 2023. washed-up log found on Newskowin Beach, Oregon. responding to Fuel Loading Raised and based in Seattle, I have watched glaciers shrink and burned forests increase across my home, the Pacific Northwest. At first, I painted beautiful intact landscapes but was increasingly compelled to portray their ecological disturbances: portraits of individual burned trees became my metaphor for human impact. Despite my anxiety, I also see unusual beauty. Fire-carved snags are all the same – carbonized, eaten away; yet each different – the fire’s physics and the tree’s structure create unique sculptures. Painting them is my meditation on climate crisis. Recent expansions of the works have added a "fire pit" in front of the paintings, where the contents are blackened symbols of the largest carbon-emitting sectors: energy production, transportation and agriculture. "Core Values," a "craftivist" installation of hand-made fabric ice, sediment and tree cores, adds speculative, future layers to a scientific data set that only shows the past. Some of the simulated tree cores are burned, some have insect pathogens, some grow faster and some become dimensional lumber; according to OSU’s Dr. Beverly Law, there is more carbon stored in a burned forest than a logged one. more from Suze's perspective The first encounter with the log that was the model for Logged, Drifted & Burned on Newskowin Beach while a 2023 artist-in-residence at Sitka Center for Art & Ecology. photo credit: Orchidia Violeta Suzee and friend Chris Moore hiking through the 2021 Cedar Creek burn as she admires the totem that eventually became the painting Burned at the Roots . photo credit: Steve Price. Suze installing After the First Death, a temporary winter installation of the painting After the First Death wrapped around a living tree near Mazama, Washington. photo credit: Ruth Nielsen Chat back to exhibition Chat

Wilderness Suite Music, Video, and Rephotography Ruby Fulton w/ Teresa Cavazos Cohn, Benjamin James & icarus Quartet Spring 2020 - present video clip of Wilderness Quartet courtesy of icarus Quartet Composition Professor Ruby Fulton (Composition and Music Theory) is currently midway through the research and creation process of “Wilderness Suite,” an evening-length multi-movement piece of music for the celebrated two-pianist, two-percussionist chamber ensemble the icarus Quartet and pre-recorded electronics, in collaboration with U of I filmmaker Benjamin James (English). Their project is an art counterpart to the rephotography project in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, led by geographer Teresa Cavazos Cohn . The project brought the icarus Quartet for a three-day residency at the Lionel Hampton School of Music in February, 2020, when they rehearsed the music in open workshops and presented on their work with music about science. The quartet returned to the Lionel Hampton School of Music in April, 2022 to perform the new music together with film created by Benjamin James, using old and new photographs gathered in Cohn’s scientific study. “Wilderness Suite” uses music and video to examine the impact of humans on the environment, and emphasizes the importance of community in research at every level. This interdisciplinary collaboration between science and the arts will engage both rational and emotional processing systems, maximizing meaning-making and allowing for real communication on the challenging yet pressing question of the impact of human-environmental relationships. The story of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness is more than the science, more than the river, more than the people. Our understanding of wilderness and need for wild spaces differs for each of us. Members of the Confluence Lab — Teresa Cohn, Ruby Fulton, Ben James, and the icarus Quartet — are dedicated to helping people explore their relationship with wilderness including their views of the Frank. listen to more from: Next

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

AIF crew 2024 Doug Tolman Salt Lake City, UT 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, Global Change and Sustainability Center Fellowship, and 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 generational rock hounding, map reading, 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. Doug's TREX reflection Good Fire On The Ground As I sit down to write this reflection in Salt Lake City, wildfire season in my bioregion is in full swing. A fast-running grass fire just happened in the foothills above my house, while big old-growth wildfires are smoldering out in the ranges above both my parents’ and grandmother’s homes in Southern Utah. After 40 hours of asynchronous safety training this past spring, my time as an Artist-in-Fire began as I crossed the Great Basin in my rickety old truck. The basins and ranges passed like waves as I made my way west, Elko, Pyramid Lake, Reno, and finally Plumas County, California to participate in a regional Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (TREX). Before this experience, I’d had minimal direct fire experience - most of my fire knowledge was obtained from stories of my dad’s experience in wildfire suppression, watching smoke columns rise from neighboring mountains, cauterizing wood surfaces with a torch, and exploring burn scars. photo credit: Jade Elhardt The event, Plumas CalTREX was hosted by The Watershed Research & Training Center and Plumas Underburn Cooperative . We were stationed at a summer camp within the scar of the 2021 Dixie Fire. It was a somber background to show up to - nearby Greenville was still in the process of rebuilding. The nerves of being a newcomer to both fire and place settled quickly as I learned how genuine and welcoming this community is; expectations of macho fire culture were quickly dispelled. We were split into crews, following a rigid chain of command which somehow felt non-hierarchical despite the top-down structure. Each day was spent in workshops and drills leading up to a prescribed burn on the property during our final day. Drip torch drills were balanced out by a workshop on cultural burning with Danny YellowFeather Manning. Long, hard hours of digging line were softened by fire art therapy with Zach Browning of the Sierra Institute . Given the setting, structure, and community, it was essentially six days of prescribed fire summer camp. On the final day, everyone gathered to put good fire on the ground. It was very reminiscent of a metal pour - anticipation built as we accepted position assignments, working together toward a common goal as smoke soaked into our fire-resistant clothing. I spent most of my time on holding, using hoses and hand tools to follow and care for the fire as it crept along the property. It felt good to steward the fire as it moved itself along, a living being breathing oxygen and eating carbon. I’m now back home working on an ArcGIS story map that involves prescribed burning of invasive Phragmites weeds here at Great Salt Lake Shorelands Preserve , and spending time building Beaver Dam Analogues with Sageland Collaborative - something I see as very adjacent to prescribed burning (Beavers after all were taken from the West around the same time as good fire, the lower water table and channelized streams left behind are closely associated with increased fire danger ). Though nothing concretely in the realm of art has propagated, the impacts of seeing good fire on the ground have trickled into my everyday life and work, the line of inquiry is continuing to grow and integrate. By the time an opportunity opens, hopefully this line of inquiry has developed into a place for an installation piece. My Final Takeaways: Buffer the corner, corners are where most problems happen. Fire is a life form that breathes oxygen and eats carbon. Oaks are prized and cared for in the Sierra, but are seen as ubiquitous in the Wasatch. Land tells what it needs, spend the time to listen. -Doug Tolman, summer 2024

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