The Confluence Lab, in conjunction with the University of Idaho's Prichard Art Gallery , is seeking creative, visual works for an online exhibition series, Stories of Fire . As part of The Confluence Lab’s Pacific Northwest Stories of Fire Atlas Project , these exhibitions will highlight the manifold ways artists and designers are marking, mapping, engaging and articulating personal and community experiences of wildfire in the region. Organized into three parts, GROUND TRUTHS , FUEL LOADING and SIGHTLINES , each exhibition is loosely framed by a particular disciplinary lens— cartography, fire management and urban planning—and the range of ways artists express and explore parallel concerns. call for artists & designers Fire is transformative. While wildfires may trigger fear and loss, they also foster new growth. Fire is essential to forest health, as trees with serotinous cones need the heat of fire to drop their mature seeds onto nutrient-rich mineral soils. In human communities, fire enables new Sightlines to emerge. New ways of seeing and feeling about fire become visible in its aftermath. Resilience, humility, relief, and compassion may sprout, as communities in post-fire landscapes sift through what was lost, what was changed, and what was gained. ​ This third and final part of the Stories of Fire online exhibition series seeks new work that engages Sightlines for fire prone landscapes by envisioning speculative futures that help us live better with more fire. The exhibition will showcase creative works that explore collective emotional and material resilience by (re)imagining human relationships with fire across the Pacific Northwest. ​ works by artists featured in the Stories of Fire Online Exhibition Part II: FUEL LOADING . from top left clockwise: 1. Kate Lund 2. aj miccio 3. Lisa Cristinzo 4. Suze Woolf 5. Anne Acker-Mathieu What seeds could be planted and what social and ecological trajectories fostered? What opportunities are “ripened” by fire? Where do you want to support new abundance? Where does your community want to hold open lines of sight? What does it mean to live with fire and what does justice look like in a fire-prone landscape? SIGHTLINES jurors: Stacy Isenbarger’s artworks provoke viewers through dynamic interplay between media, perceived tensions, and open space. Isenbarger simultaneously investigates ideas and materials, transforming the familiar into forms that challenge our assumptions of our environment and cultural barriers we build for ourselves. Her sculptures, installations, & mixed-media drawings have been shown throughout the United States and in India. Stacy Isenbarger is an Associate Professor of Art + Design at the University of Idaho. Currently she shares her time between Moscow, Idaho, USA and Cardiff, Wales. When she's not teaching or making—and sometimes when she is—she's usually dancing since the act continuously validates her joy of community acceptance and shaking up sp ace. Sasha Michelle White is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work is informed by art, herbalism, field ecology and prescribed fire practice. Her creative investigations center the coloristic and medicinal properties of fire-adapted plants as a way of understanding human and other-than-human relationships with fire and fire-prone landscapes. Sasha studied printmaking and book arts at Bowdoin College, Maine College of Art and Cranbrook Academy of Art, has held fellowships at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy and the Lloyd Library and Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio, and earned a master’s degree in Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon in 2021. She is a member of the Fuel Ladder art research group and a Mellon Foundation Predoctoral Fellow with the University of Idaho’s Con fluence Lab. Megan Dav is 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. In result, her prac tice has become increasingly oriented around 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 in the Art + Design Program. ​ eligibility & terms: Artists & designers may be residents of the states of Idaho, Oregon, Washington, tribal sovereign nations of the region, or any artists responding to fires within the Pacific Northwest and adjacent regions. Som e of the artists selected for the Stories of Fire series may be invited to participate in the Stories of Fire Atlas , a brick-and-mortar exhibition (gallery construction pending), and other Confluence Lab opportunities. There is no submission fee or age expectation. Works submitted may be of any genre and must be original work. There are no size restrictions for work, but in line with an online exhibition, quality documentation is paramount. Interested participants are welcome to submit up to 5 works for consideration. Accepted works must have been created in the last 5 years. First, fill out the online Submissio n Form . Within it you will be asked to include: Short Artist or Collaborative Group Biography (Please no more than 250 words.) Responses to the following prompts: How does your submitted work relate to wildfire and to your conceptions of “Ground Truth”? Briefly discuss your work’s connection to the Pacific Northwest. Next, email the following to theconfluencelab@ gmail.com: Images files (we suggest keeping images files to 4MB each) or direct links to entries Title, Media, Dimensions, and Year Created for each work submitted Up to 5 works may be submitted for consideration, however an alternative angle or detail image i s welcomed with each submission. (10 submission images total) ​ important dates: Submission Deadline: November 1st Jury Notifications: November 13th Exhibition Opens: December 1st ​ submit Artists-in-Fire Residency for Artist & Writers Applications Opening SOON The Confluence Lab’s inaugural “Artists-In-Fire” (AIF) Residency will support a group of artists and creative writers in the Pacific Northwest and adjacent regions as boots-on-the-ground participants in prescribed fire . ​ learn more > Submission Inquiries? Please contact theconfluencelab@gmail.com ​ The Confluence Lab’s Pacific Northwest Stories of Fire Atlas Project preserves personal stories of encounters with fire in the region to document changes in human relationships with fire over time and help imagine healthy ways of living with fire in the future. In partnership with local communities, the Atlas gathers, tracks and maps stories and images of wildfire, especially those that foreground connections between fire, social and environmental justice, and traditionally underrepresented rural voices. It seeks to bridge history and speculative futures and link the origins and effects of the physical and social fires of the Pacific Northwest, by centering the question: “What lines has fire crossed in your community? What does that crossing undo, what does that crossing generate?” Funding for the Stories of Fire project made possible from generous grant from the Mellon Foundation’s “Just Futures ” Initiative for the Pacific Northwest Just Futures Institute for Racial and Climate Justice , University of Oregon. Next

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

Stories of Fire: online exhibition series As part of our Pacific Northwest Stories of Fire Atlas Project , we're working with the University of Idaho's Prichard Art Gallery , to showcase works by visual artists and designers in the online exhibition series, Stories of Fire . These exhibitions will highlight the manifold ways artists and designers are marking, mapping, engaging and articulating personal and community experiences of wildfire in the region. Organized into three parts, GROUND TRUTHS (Spring 2023), FUEL LOADING (Fall 2023) and SIGHTLINES (Winter 2023-24), each exhibition is loosely framed by a particular disciplinary lens— cartography, fire management and urban planning—and the range of ways artists express and explore parallel concerns. on view now calls for artists & designers part III : SIGHTLINES (applications due Nov. 1st ) ​ Participating Artists Laura Ahola-Young Jean Arnold Anne Acker-Mathieu ​ David Paul Bayles & Frederick J Swanson ​ Karin Bolender / Rural Alchemy Workshop ​ Lisa Cristinzo Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscapes: Overlook Field School Margo Geddes Kelsey Grafton Megan Hatch Alice, Maggie & Rob Keffe Kate Lund ​ Amiko Matsu + Brad Monsma ​ aj miccio ​ Julie Mortimer Meredith Ojala Eric Ondina Oregon Episcopal School & Sophia Hatzikos Asante Riverwind Martina Shenal Enid Smith Becker Siri Stensberg Liz Toohey-Wiese Mary Vanek Smith Justin Webb Sasha Michelle White Suze Woolf Next

Stories of Fire: Online Exhibition Series NOW ON VIEW project spotlight: Our lab, in conjunction with the University of Idaho's Prichard Art Gallery, is excited to host visual works for our online exhibition series, Stories of Fire . Part I: GROUND TRUTHS opened April 3, 2023 and Part II: FUEL LOADING opened September 23, 2023. 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. ​ As visitors to our site navigate through their work online, they also get a chance to learn more about these Stories of Fire artists: their inspirations, their intentions, and their interactions with their environments. read more submit to part III 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 who we are 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. thanks to our research partners & affliates: College of Letters, Arts & Social Sciences College of Natural Resources College of Art & Architecture lab stories & news Afire at the Kenworthy Ground Truths "The Wound is an Opening" Ground Truths: "Boots on the Ground" read more

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. 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 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 Next

ARTISTS-IN-FIRE an Inaugural, Immersive Residency for Artists and Writers ​ As communities in the Pacific Northwest grapple with an increasing reality of wildfire, new narratives that include the beneficial role of fire on fire-prone landscapes are a necessary part of learning to live well with fire. To build community resilience and familiarity with “good fire,” The Confluence Lab’s inaugural “Artists-In-Fire” (AIF) Residency will support a group of artists and creative writers in the Pacific Northwest and adjacent regions as boots-on-the-ground participants in prescribed fire. Selected recipients will train as wildland firefighters, attend an immersive prescribed-fire module, and share their experiences of on-the-ground fire with their home communities through their creative practice. Details coming soon. .. ​ Application period will open Fall 2023. Artist Sasha Michelle White lights at Coyote Prairie outside of Eugene, OR. Stories of Fire Online Exhibition Part III: SI GHTLINES Call for Artists & Designers learn more > Fire is transformative. While wildfires may trigger fear and loss, they also foster new growth. Fire is essential to forest health, as trees with serotinous cones need the heat of fire to drop their mature seeds onto nutrient-rich mineral soils. In human communities, fire enables new Sightlines to emerge. New ways of seeing and feeling about fire become visible in its aftermath. Resilience, humility, relief, and compassion may sprout, as communities in post-fire landscapes sift through what was lost, what was changed, and what was gained ​ deadline: November 1st Next

Submission Form Artist or Collaborative Contact Information Name Full Address Email Website Instagram Short Artist or Collaborative Group Biography (Please no more than 250 words.) Exhibition Questions How does your submitted work relate to wildfire and to your conceptions of “SIGHTLINES"? Please briefly discuss your work’s connection to the Pacific Northwest or adjacent regions. Submit The Stories of Fire Online Exhibition Series is being hosted by the Prichard Art Gallery, in conjunction with the Confluence Lab, while the gallery's brick-and-mortar location is the process of being moved to its new location in downtown Moscow, Idaho. Return to Submission Call Information >

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

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

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

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