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.