Stories of Fire On line Exhibition Ser ies Part II I : “The future is always in the present.” Sonia Sobrino Ralston ​ “... by looking at a few horizons, we can imagine a multitude of futures.” Emily Schlickman + Brett Milligan Fire is transformative. While wildfires may elicit fear and loss, they also clear the way for new growth. In fire-prone ecosystems, fire renews the growth of grasses and shrubs, and triggers trees with serotinous cones to drop their mature seeds onto nutrient-rich mineral soils. In human communities, fire enables new sightlines to emerge as new ways of seeing and feeling 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 features creative and collaborative work that engages the concept of sightlines by envisioning speculative futures that might help us live better with fire. These works explore emotional and material resilience by beginning to reimagine human and other-than-human relationships with fire across the American West. They provoke attention to the opportunities that are “ripened” by fire, asking who and what needs to be made visible and what processes and networks, both ecological and social, need to be supported. They invite our engagement and hold open the questions of how we will choose to live with fire and with each other and what justice could look like across these fire-prone landscapes. This work is presented in collaboration by: And made possible by the generous support of: Emily Schlickman + Brett Milligan Pyro Postcards ​ Greetings from your PYRO FUTURE postcard reversed side text: Given thousands of years of collective human experience with fire, we know we are not separable from it. It has remade us, and we have remade it, based on how we engage it. In gleaning from the past, we can see just how different human relationships with fire can be, and how conseq uential and formati ve these differences are for landscapes. Landscapes change elastically and responsively to fire. Any relationships we now make with fire will still bear a heavy imprint of our agency, which is why design by and with fire is so important. We h ave, and always have had so much choice in what nascent, fiery landscapes can be. Pyro Postcards feature unique text on their backside. Read more from this series here . Jackie Barry 1. Boys in Truck 2 . Medio Fire 3. Cole , 35mm film shot on Olympus Stylus Epic, 2020 ​ Sightlines "bears witness... sparking a range of emotions about what becomes visible, and felt, when the flames are extinguished." read more on how these artists act as agential partners in our shifting landscape Allison McClay Olallie Burns , acrylic on wood, 20"x16" 2022 Kasia Ozga RE_MOVE N.22 batik, ink & watercolor on handmade paper , 2020 ​ "Fire’s ashes are seedbeds for necessary new growth." read more considerations of just futures expressed in Sightlines . Andreas Rutkauskas from the series Silent Witnesses 1. Nk’Mip Fire , 30"x40" 2. Underdown Creek Fire, 40"x30" 3 . McDougall Creek Fire, 30"x40" inkjet prints on baryta mounted on dibond, 2023 Explore Pyrosketchology ​ Miriam H Morrill developed Pyrosketchology as an approach for building awareness of the fire environment through observations, sketching, and nature journaling practices. Her fire environment observations are threaded throughout this guide to dev eloping a deeper sense of place which includes fire. read more Chat Katie Kehoe Wildfire Shelters for Small Animals 35.66754°N, 105.43550°W, Santa Fe National Forest, NM, photographic documentation of site-specific installation, 2023 Gerard Sarnat poem & accompanying screenshot image Not So Wide Or Hard-Hitting Home-Hardening ​ Town Center organized an Earth Day symposium On how to mitigate fire risks In forest-rich Northern California Portola Valley. I’m impressed & overwhelmed With expert gung-ho-ness DIY Preparedness Panel Neighbors spending $75K easy. TMI sesh, which sadly was attended on Zoom by 7 Includes few presenters/looks like Less than 5 in-person, clearly didn’t reach masses. At end when wrapping up, emcee Who didn’t seem to mean or appreciate her humor Queries, Any burning questions? Man asks if large animals evac’ed to Cow Palace. (Slide said to be borrowed from City of Beverly Hills) Doug Tolman & Alec Bang Response and Responsibility, above: film still right: performance artifacts, barbed wire, dining set, 2019 Doug Tolman Serotiny coniferous log, splitting maul, 2023 "Like a serotinous cone opened by fire’s heat, Sightlines releases a range of aesthetic and affective seeds: new ways to visualize, reimagine, and feel [our] way into possible fiery futures and our potential role in making them. " read more about Sightlines affect through Jennifer Ladino's juror's essay Allison McClay Sucia Saves Us a crylic on wood, 20"x16" 2022 Kasia Ozga RE_MOVE N.24 batik, ink & watercolor on handmade paper , 2020 ​ Fire Resilience Workshop Design Collaboration ​ Two years after the Almeda Fire in Oregon’s Rogue Valley, local community leaders mapped their hopes for their county in a Confluence Lab led Fire Resilience Workshop. Designer Megan Davis then partnered with these groups to adapt their concepts into these featured shareable assets. read more Chat Sonia Sobrino Ralston Forests as Data Governance digital animation & collage, 1920x1080px, various digital collage sizes, 2023 Andreas Rutkauskas from the series Silent Witnesses, McDougall Creek Fire 40"x50", i nkjet print on baryta mounted on dibond, 2023 further considerations "The Future is Patchy" Sightlines , the third and final exhibition in our Stories of Fire series, builds on the themes of Ground Truths and Fuel Loadings , adding new dimensions to art’s ability to represent “fire’s mercurial nature as well as the rich range of emotions that fire can produce .” Sightlines envisions what Pyro Postcards creators Emily Schlickman and Brett Milligan emphasize is a “multitude of futures”: some are “bleak. Some are exciting. Some are just fucking weird and stick in your mind.” Any of this multitude could come to fruition depending on how creatively we navigate the climate crisis, how honestly we reckon with injustice, and how successfully we learn to live with more fire. The Sightlines exhibition grapples with the reality that, as one of the more unsettling pieces in Pyro Postcards reads, “the future is patchy.” Like a serotinous cone opened by fire’s heat, Sightlines releases a range of aesthetic and affective “seeds”: new ways to visualize, reimagine, and, to cite Schlickman and Milligan’s artists’ statement, “feel [our] way into possible fiery futures and our potential role in making them.” With a palette of earthy colors that echo historical public lands promotional materials and PSAs, Pyro Postcards operates in unusual and sometimes startling affective registers. Some postcards invoke nostalgia for familiar images and aesthetics with playful reinvention of what we think we know; others traffic in more ominous tones that conjure but defamiliarize the dominant fear-and-dread mode of engaging with fire. On the playful end of this spectrum, the artists replace Smokey Bear and his individualistic “Only You” campaign with fresh nonhuman animal faces, shifting to a collective model of fire resilience led by more-than-human community members. (Vote for a new “pyrophilic mascot” here ! ) A savvy squirrel named “Sooty” welcomes other “Pals” to help reseed after fires. Clothed in an official-looking uniform “Grazie the Goat” stands ready to chomp on flammable matter and reduce fire risk. A cougar crew boss with “Pyro” inscribed on their hard hat appears determined to take advantage of the perfect prescribed burn conditions. Like their human counterparts, these critters put safety first; woodpeckers and bobcats alike sport hard hats and Nomex. These “babes in the woods” are not passive victims; they have co-evolved with fire and can teach humans how to live with it. Other postcards take more serious turns: a promotional postcard featuring Giant Sequoia offers tourists the chance to see “earth’s largest dead trees,” and one postcard that seems to be burning from the top down simply warns: “We’re Fucked.” Overall, Pyro Postcards invokes a kind of affective dissonance, asking us to sit with uncomfortable, conflicting, non-cathartic emotions about fire and to harness that dissonance for justice. Kasia Ozga also recognizes the mixed feelings about fire that so many of us carry. In her artist’s statement, Ozga describes being struck by wonder when confronted with the scale of Pacific Northwest forests, where trees dwarf and humble us, reminding us that we’re a tiny part of a vast ecosystem. At the same time, Ozga feels “exhaustion from the intense thick smoke that blankets the region when forest fires are in abundance,” a common embodied reaction to what Lisa Cristinzo , in her artist’s statement for Fuel Loading , calls “the build up, the burn, and the burn out.” Yet Ozga’s work brings me from suffocation to relief and a kind of release. RE_MOVE N.22 draws the eye upward from root system to canopy, from a rich soil-like red clay, to wispy smoke-like tendrils. The texture of the hand-made paper conjures the crispness of burned bark. The perspective is road-like, two throughlines coming closer together, gradually, to simulate motion. A cleverly placed set of binoculars offers itself up as a tool for sharper vision. I feel poised to turn right, with the lines, and face what’s around the corner—our always invisible future. RE_MOVE N.24 is even more viscerally inspiring, with a beating heart at its center, and tree-like branches that are also lung-like, signaling for us to breathe deeply, spread our arms, and trust the ways that new growth post-fire will re-oxygenate our bodies and sustain our lives. Forests as Data Governance , part of Sonia Sobrino Ralston’s more expansive Uncommon Knowledge project, also moves viewers, but taking a digital rather than an organic approach. Ralston’s project responds to a 2022 fire that threatened Google’s first hyperscale data center in The Dalles, Oregon, prompting the use of LIDAR scans to envision and anticipate future threats to digital infrastructure. Ralston adds forests to these pointlouds of data at the site to show how “plants become critical infrastructure, a form of long-term information storage” that requires protection and stewardship. Converting a forest into binary code, Ralston illuminates the motion, beauty, and agency that are easy to miss in more mundane representations of tree life. By turning plants themselves into infrastructure, Ralston highlights their vulnerability as well as their essential role in planning for a healthy future. Like Ozga’s, this work guides our vision in multiple directions: upward, to migratory birds and tree canopies, and downward, by way of an elegantly twirling conifer, to the intricate and enormous root systems that anchor individual trees in place, reminding us there’s often more going on below ground than what we can see above. Real forests are messy places; in Ralston’s deft hands, digital forests become uncanny pixelated versions of the real thing, both defamiliarizing our relationship to the material world and introducing us to magical new materialities, in which trees are information-rich, illuminated, and illuminating. Patchy Kasia Ozga's RE_MOVE N.22 Two ways works form Sightlines reminds us to look up: (left) from Sonia Sobrino Ralston's Forests as Data Governance , (right) from Miriam Morrill's Pyrosketchology At the other end of the representational spectrum from binary code, Miriam Morrill uses analog methods to bring the fire environment to life via a practice she calls pyrosketchology: a unique kind of nature journaling that builds hand-on awareness of fire by using sketching “to develop better observation skills, awareness, and understanding of the natural world.” Pyrosketchology uses simple materials—drawing tools, sketchbooks, human hands—to reveal the complexities of what Morrill calls the fire environment, which includes the traditional components of the fire triangle along with “fire seasons, ignitions, mitigation, effects, and regimes.” Available for free online, the full Pyrosketchology book includes guided activities to invite us into a more intimate relationship with the fire environment—a relationship founded on simultaneously apprehending fire’s visual, emotional, and scientific dimensions. Two activities featured on our site include one for measuring flammability by way of a leaf burn test and another for estimating tree cover in a forest by isolating and sketching a representative section of the canopy. Through generative prompts like these, Morrill’s pyrosketchology renders science and art deeply embodied, intertwined practices and inspires us to be curious as both citizen scientists and citizen artists. Whether through the white spaces on a page, the distance between pixels, the layers of handmade paper, or the tensions between nostalgic, familiar aesthetics and ironic, playful reinventions of them, the art in Sightlines complicates well-worn emotional ruts and opens up other ways of feeling about, and with, fire—including those that are exciting and just fucking weird. Typically, fire feelings are reduced to variants of fear and sadness, and for valid reasons: when apocalyptic orange skies dominate news headlines, our anxieties are stoked; when catastrophic destruction and loss of life result from unfightable wildfires, we grieve. Yet to focus only on fear and sadness oversimplifies the range and complexity of our feelings about fire and can have negative impacts on management: a frightened public might be more prone to support total suppression and to shun the prescribed burning that is essential for healthy fire management. Sightlines encourages a more expansive affective repertoire as we resee and reconsider our “patchy” fire futures. "When the Smoke Clears" Jackie Barry's Cole Sightlines challenges artists to envision what happens when the smoke clears and we are confronted with fire’s impacts on human bodies, landscapes, and the built environment. The exhibition bears witness to these impacts, sparking a range of emotions about what becomes visible, and felt, when the flames are extinguished. What emotions are mirrored back to us in the eyes of wildland firefighters and others facing fire’s front lines? What pressures do we put on younger generations to both symbolize and create a better future? Who and what survives, and might even thrive, in fiery futures? Sightlines artists invite us to learn lessons from fire that might shape not just how we respond to it but also how we anticipate and prepare for it, how we work with fire as an agential partner in a shifting and shared world. ​ Part of a hotshot crew, Jackie Barry took a camera into the field in 2020 to film their fellow crew members. The result is an intimate set of images that challenge us to reckon with, perhaps to justify, what firefighters do: the labor, the risk, and the “burnout.” Many people are aware that firefighters are underpaid and overworked, and that romantic visions of firefighters as akin to war heroes can encourage us to put them in harm’s way unnecessarily. But beyond stereotypical images of urban firefighters—with their red trucks, their fire stations, the highly visible structure fires they extinguish—what is life like when the backcountry is your workplace, when wildland firefighting is your job? Barry’s position as hotshot crew member enabled them to catch their coworkers in casual moments and expose the gritty realism of a very hard job. In Medio Fire , a cluster of hotshots gaze across a valley at smoke on the ridge opposite them. What seems like repose is both warranted (they work excruciatingly long days, sleep on the hard ground, and carry extremely heavy packs) and also probably not repose at all; most likely they’re analyzing fire behavior and strategizing for the next day’s work. This perspective contrasts with the close-ups of the “boys” in Boys in Truck , an image that makes me curious to hear what they’re talking about right then, and to understand more about their day-to-day work lives. Too often we only see fire from afar, on a distant ridge or not at all—a far-off flame front, or billowing smoke columns, or orange skies in a photo next to an alarming headline. Barry’s photographs make fire personal, not by showing flames but by showing us what human bodies that work with fire look and feel like. I feel challenged by Cole ’s close-up stare, and by his slightly downturned lips: Is this worth it? Are you asking too much of us? And what does his unflinching look juxtaposed against a field of sunflowers begin to tell us about this traditionally masculine workplace? What becomes visible when we focus on the people who work in and with fire are questions of justice, then, at root. Allison McClay’s Olallie Burns echoes Medio Fire in that it frames a distant fire from the perspective of a human—and, in McClay’s image, companion animals. Facing fire alongside these figures, we viewers are looking out with them on a landscape that is burning, has burned, will burn. Here we see the familiar red skies and what looks like a lake reflecting that umber hue. What I find most fascinating about this image—aside from the dogs, who outnumber and look up to the human figure—is the hands on hips stance. This can signal frustration, bemusement, determination, or anger. Without a facial expression, it’s hard to tell. But the piece is powerful for the way it shifts attention from figures to background, asking us to reflect on what we see and feel looking across this landscape with this triad of animals in the foreground. As McClay puts it in her artist’s statement, her work implores us to reconsider “what a healthy relationship to destruction and to existential doom could look like.” In Sucia Saves Us McClay recalibrates doomism toward hope. Gently winding tree limbs cradle a harmonious multi-species community of ravens, white-tailed deer, and human children, in a magical realist mood that suggests salvation. Pushing back against depictions of children as emblems of the future or requisite symbols for hope, though, it is Sucia—an island in the San Juans—that “saves us” here. As the Pacific Northwest adapts to longer and more intense fire seasons, McClay’s paintings are refreshing in their indication that “alarm” is only one affective attunement, even when fire is always in the background. Returning us to central tensions in Ground Truths —between mourning and renewal, death and regeneration, destruction and new growth—Andreas Rutkauskas’s Silent Witnesses series refuses to resolve them. Instead, these photographs expertly show how fire’s power is both destructive and restorative, and prompt reflection about what roles humans should play, as witnesses and stewards, in capturing, rerouting, or simply admiring what Ruskauskas describes in his artist’s statement as “fire’s power to sculpt the land.” Rutkauskas’s photographs get at this question, in part, by re-centering plant agencies, using an outdoor strobe light to illuminate what he rightly considers valuable “members of a community.” Rutkauskas’s framing disrupts the common anthropocentric perspective of looking down and out across a burned-over area by positioning a dried-out shrub in the foreground. What first appear to be almost black-and-white shots quickly take on multiple dimensions of color and texture. White tufts of dandelions pop against a blackened forest. Ponderosas are marked by vibrant orange splotches beneath the bark, which shine neon against charred trunks and signal the emergence of new layers of growth. In all three images, the foreground glows, attracting my eye and heart to brightness rather than the threatening sense of dread or the grief that often overwhelms us when confronted with destruction. One thing that becomes visible, and felt, from this vantage point is a sense of near-miss relief: the feeling that things could have been even worse. But what strikes me most is the bright green understory, which brings a spirit of resilience, even joy, to the darkness. smoke clears Andreas Rutkauskas, from Silent Witness Katie Kehoe, Shelters for Small Animals Katie Kehoe’s Wildfire Shelters for Small Animals operates in a similarly dissonant mode. Small animals often imply cuteness or play, but fire shelters are deadly serious. Trained firefighters practice deploying shelters very quickly, with the knowledge that they are last resorts for survival, to be used only when a flame front is overtaking the crew—in other words, when death is imminent. These triangular shelters are arranged so that their tips touch in a kind of wheel, conjuring a “circling the wagons” sense of protection. But who is included in the circle, and who is the implied enemy? How do we protect not only ourselves, but other animals as well, from destruction? What “survival architecture,” to cite Kehoe’s provocative phrase, is required for our hearts? Kehoe’s art asks what “lifesaving devices” we need to develop to survive and perhaps even thrive in uncertain fire futures. They also beg a more basic question: who is the “we”? Why should large mammals—humans in particular—get priority for survival? Kehoe’s shelters, like Pyro Postcard’s “babes in the woods” avoid a sentimental Bambi-ism but nevertheless tap into a profound and common human concern for “small animals,” harnessing that concern for fire awareness. Ultimately, Kehoe’s project, like all of the work in Sightlines , confronts us with the harsh material realities and the “survival architecture” we must create in the face of extreme conditions—individual wildfires, changing fire regimes, and, more broadly, the climate crisis ​ "Just Futures" Sightlines returns to one of Fuel Loading ’s central insights: that fuels build up “not just via ecological accumulation, but also via social tradition and routine.” Sightlines suggests that our ecologies and societies may be so deeply and complexly intertwined that only art can disentangle them and help us see the distinct threads, and their intersections, more accurately. Recognizing that we’re all implicated in the buildup of these social fuels, how might we form new partnerships for justice? What new collaborations might be fertilized in the ashes of wildfires? How does resilience feel, and what practices and modalities—from mapmaking to performance art—might help nurture it? Does justice require a new suite of emotions to kindle and fuel it, and if so, what might that suite include? A sense of humor can be a kind of lifesaving device, a kind of fire shelter for the heart. As the wildland-urban interface (WUI) takes center stage in larger conflagrations, irony and dark humor can remind us of the incongruities in our attempts to integrate prevention into communities. Gerard Sarnat’s ironic treatment of a poorly-attended online fire safety session for residents of the City of Beverly Hills suggests the difficulty of reaching even privileged communities. Sarnat’s alliteration is harsh—hard-hitting home-hardening—but it uses that attention-getting craft technique to alert us to class-based injustice. The poem is structured like an interlocking toolkit, with line lengths that could be assembled like puzzle pieces. The lines of verse mirror the Zoom screenshot’s blocky text, which (if we read it “right”) is red to green, left to right, implying a tidy, simple building block style of home protection that eludes the randomness of fire’s impacts. Anyone who’s seen its impacts will have noticed the way fire jumps around, skipping some structures entirely while demolishing others. Like Kehoe’s small animal shelters, Sarnat’s work questions which protective tools are available to which kinds of animals. Sarnat notes a moment of perhaps unintentional humor—the meeting host asking if there are “any burning questions.” Intentional or not, this gestures toward the multitude of ways that fire rhetoric permeates everyday discourse, shaping material practices alongside attitudes about fire. The audience member’s question about whether large animals are evacuated to “Cow Palace,” a former livestock pavilion converted to an indoor sports arena, warns of a potentially unhealthy use of humor: as a deflection or self-protective mechanism, a way to avoid grappling with the seriousness of wildfire risk. just futures Gerard Sarnat’s zoom screen capture from Doug Tolman and Alec Bang's Response and Responsibilty Megan Davis from Pyro Postcard series Doug Tolman and Alec Bang take direct aim at colonialism, reckoning with injustice at both personal and broader scales. Their short film opens with Bang eating a sandwich and seeming oblivious to his surroundings: the empty place setting across the table, the barbed wire fence to his right. The camera cuts to a scene in which two people roll a bundle of barbed wire (which the artists describe in their statement as “a tool of bifurcation and colonization”) down a hill like a giant tumbleweed. We get a glimpse of them wrapping the table in the wire before cutting to a black screen, when the familiar crackling sound of fire consuming wood reveals that they’ve set the wrapped table ablaze. The artists describe this work as a performative response to an especially large wildfire in their region as well as “a response to the barbed wire that colonized the West, and a responsibility as settler-descendants to find our roles in unsettling.” What’s left of the table is threadbare, barely holding together. A film still looks alarmingly as though Bang is about to be, or has just been, burned over by the flames to his right, conjuring memories of activists using self-immolation to make their points. Sitting face to face with fire, engulfed in smoke and breathing its toxicity in close proximity to the burning table, Bang forces viewers to bear witness and to feel complicit alongside him. Tolman and Bang find inspiration in the concept of serotiny, which they visualize via a family heirloom: a maul with its sharp edge embedded in a conifer, which was cut down after a prescribed burn in Tolman’s home region. Serotiny strikes me as a kind of performative land acknowledgment that recognizes colonial legacies and invites reflection on what reconciliation might look like, both in terms of fire management—recentering Indigenous burn practices and enabling serotiny—and in terms of social justice as well. Megan Davis’s work gives voice and vision to a community trying, collectively, to process the Almeda Fire’s impacts. Davis and other members of the Confluence Lab Stories of Fire team partnered with Coalición Fortaleza and Our Family Farms to host a workshop in 2022 . Lab members brought art supplies and a simple prompt: participants were asked to map their visions for a resilient future. Some teams braided yarn to signify their interwoven community; others created a door using layered paper, signaling a sense of welcome. For Davis, an experienced graphic designer, rendering hand-made images with a professional, design aesthetic allows her to create “unified digital designs” that are impactful and versatile. Working closely with community members to ensure integrity of vision, Davis’s creation of shareable files results in both distinctive artifacts unique to this community, this fire—artifacts that can be posted publicly to amplify community members’ voices—as well as templates that can be repurposed elsewhere. My favorite is an image of a large wave about to crash and overwhelm a tiny sand castle in the corner of the frame. But this impending destruction is not something to be feared. Rather, a small caption reads: “May our needs propel us to break and rebuild the very systems that left us in need in the first place.” This mantra, or prayer, bears repeating. Some structures and systems need to be “burned down” so they can be rebuilt with justice at the center. For settlers, recognizing complicity with land theft, displacement, and repression of Indigenous burning practices is essential. As Indigenous fire practitioners have always known, fire is not necessarily destructive. Fire also cleanses, as Lab member Isabel Marlens reports in her essay “Fire Lines.” Fire’s ashes are seedbeds for necessary new growth. Like a wildfire, art can be a mechanism for “burning down” systems of injustice, clearing space for better futures and providing the seeds to grow toward them. Pyro Postcards exemplifies this creative destruction. Schlickman and Milligan repurpose Smokey’s neoliberal paternalism (“Only You…”) for decolonial ends in a postcard showing California’s tribal borders that implicates viewers in justice, captioned: “Only You Can Decolonize.” Another reads, in bold, all-capped, block letters, “LAND BACK.” Their “Right to Burn Fire Service” postcard speaks to a future where Indigenous burning practices are upheld as a valuable right as well as an ecological good. As we continue to make the future now, moment by moment, day by day, fire season by fire season, we’d do well to find more ways to invite, center, and amplify Indigenous fire knowledge. As a writer, I had hoped Sightlines would help me articulate a sort of conclusion to our three-part exhibition series. It didn’t. Instead, Sightlines leaves me feeling productively unsettled. These artists showcase the power of art to generate visions of futures that will “stick in your mind” for some time, and I’m left with wildly dissonant affective orientations to fire, with no single end game, no clear future, to pin my hopes on. But this lack of resolution doesn’t have to be scary. As Sasha Michelle White puts it, each “wound is an opening ,” an opportunity to see the world more clearly and to rebuild it with new insights, better tools, and sharpened vision. It’s true that the future is an open question. But it’s equally true, as Sonia Sobrino Ralston reminds us, that “the future is always in the present.” Our vision of what comes next may be patchy, but these artists remind us that isn’t a bad thing. A patchy forest can be a sign of a healthy ecosystem, one where fires have been able to do what they’re meant to do: produce a messy mosaic and a resilient natural landscape. Perhaps human-led resilience efforts might be patchy in this positive sense, as we feel our way forward, toward murky but more just fire futures. ​ further considerations contributed by Sightlines Juror Jenn ifer Ladino, February 2024 Next

featured artist Kelsey Grafton Lewiston, ID As a mother and a maker, Kelsey Grafton is drawn to issues of stewardship, home, family heritage, and the impact humans have on the world. She is an award-winning artist and illustrator working with local, national, and international clients and currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Art at Lewis-Clark State College in her hometown of Lewiston, ID. She earned her BFA in Illustration from Cornish College of the Arts in 2001, and after spending a decade in the Seattle area, traveled the globe experiencing diverse cultures. Her time in Africa, where she worked with the African Child Foundation’s Women’s Empowerment Program teaching handcrafts and developing programs to secure sustainable incomes for families in need, inspired her use of texture to capture and hold memory in a tangible form. Grafton previously served as the Exhibit and Programming Coordinator at Lewis-Clark State College Center for Arts & History and earned her MFA from the University of Idaho in 2021. featured artwork "Remnant" three views "Becoming," ceramic, organic materials, found objects, and conviction, 8.3ft x 3ft x 5ft, 2021 view of "Becoming" "Becoming" detail "Morphosis," ceramic & organic found object, 16in x 4in x 2.5in, 2019 "Morphosis," detail of interior responding to Fuel Loading My work is a series of place-based responsive works investigating my family homestead, in Colville, WA, where my great-grandparents settled in 1905 after emigrating from Germany. I hand-harvest earthenware clay, pull textures from fallen structures, and gather artifacts left behind by my ancestors as a way to preserve our fading family history through art-making. The homestead property has been under increased threats of wildfire and in response, tree thinning has been used as a preventative measure. This act was devastating and we have spent the past several years clearing and burning slash piles. As the years pass, new growth has begun: time and circumstance will tell if these measures were worth their efforts. The Trees of Morrow series is an allegory for our interconnected relationship with our natural resources. In it, I seek to lend a kindred voice to the trees, in hopes that we might see ourselves tied to their fate. If we fail as stewards of our collective ecosystem, we will all suffer the consequences. more from Kelsey's perspective Creating Mourning Smoke, Plein Air: Kegel Family Homestead, 6in x 6in, 2021 ​ Kelsey: "Before dawn, I hiked out to capture the sunrise over the homestead. The mourning sky was salmon pink. Ash sprinkled my pallet from the nearby wildfires on the Colville Reservation. I tried to appreciate the warm cast for the beauty it was, rather than the beauty it should be." Kelsey pulling textures from the sawed end of a weathered log on the homestead. Kelsey pushing clay into the weathered knots of the fallen tool shed on the Kegel Family Homestead. Kelsey with her kids, Marlow (left) and Molly (right) on The Rock at the Homestead: “They are my inspiration and my ‘why.’” Chat back to exhibition Chat

LAB publications How Nostalgia Drives and Derails Living with Wildland Fire in the American West Jennifer Ladino, Leda N. Kobziar, Jack Kredell, & Teresa Cavazos Cohn, editor: Natasha Ribeiro Fire, 2022 ​ open access link Feeling skeptical: Worry, dread, and support for environmental policy among climate change skeptics Kristin Haltinner, Jennifer Ladino, & Dilshani Sarathchandra Emotion, Space & Society, v.39, 2021 ​ PDF available annual LAB reports: 2022 2021 2020 2019

featured artist Eric Ondina Tampa, FL Eric Ondina received his BFA from Florida State University in 2013 and his MFA from the University of South Florida in 2019. Eric’s practice is based out of his studio in Ybor City, a lively historic section of Tampa, Florida. His approach to craft harkens back to early traditions of painting while his subject matter engages the contemporary moment. Eric exhibits locally and nationally, including most recently at The Ringling for the 2021 Skyway Exhibition and at the UCF and Rollins Art Museums for the 2022 Pathways Exhibition. He teaches art and design at Hillsborough Community College and the University of Tampa. featured artwork "Check," emulsion on canvas, 2021 "Nearer My God to Thee," 2021 "Hot Leather 3," emulsion on board, 2020 "Inferno," 2020 responding to Fuel Loading Fire and water are primary motifs of my work. These elemental forces fueled the industrial revolution through steam and now threaten to consume us on both ends as fires rage in the West and sea levels threaten low-lying communities in the East. The works included here draw conceptually and literally from the fires consuming the Pacific Northwest by using the imagery to represent our social malaise as we grapple with the forces of unyielding natural and political environments. I create paintings from snapshots captured in spaces where social forces collide. I seek out the moments where contrasting visual elements and human values intersect, drawing inspiration from the reality I document and the media we consume. I strive to depict a society in the midst of its discontent, desperately trying to make sense of a destiny that often feels elusive, slipping beyond control and comprehension. In an era characterized by skepticism and doubt, I aim to challenge our shared understanding of truth through my art. I paint with a unique recipe of egg tempera. Blending a viscous balsam, fossilized hard resins, egg yolk and water ingredients that are incompatible, but with pressure and patience, merge and form a harmonious whole. While my technique pays homage to traditional painting methods, my intention is to connect with the present moment, speaking directly to the soul of our current experiences through an organic style and topical subject matter. more from Eric's perspective Eric working in his studio. My paintings are an invitation to contemplate the cycles of history framed by the lens of our time; a time of pervasive frustration, mistrust, and fear, but also boundless advancement, change, and opportunity. I compose my paintings from snapshots collected from spaces experiencing a convergence of social forces. Often my paintings contain interpolations presenting an obvious pastiche, yet much of the most absurdist subject matter directly quotes from documented reality. Chat back to exhibition Chat

featured artist Enid Smith Becker Bellevue, WA Enid Smith Becker lives and works in the Seattle area. Inspired by the complex dynamic between humans and the surrounding world, her paintings remind us of how our interactions with nature can transform ourselves and the land. Enid studied art at the University of Washington and has taught art in secondary school. Her paintings are in numerous collections around the US and abroad. ​ In her work for this show, Enid presents a fluid, multifaceted experience that mirrors our own interactions with place and time as we frame our experiences through the screen of a mobile device. The sharp edges of the planes within the painting represent the human influence on the land. The layering of multiple perspectives invites the viewer to see the world through shifting lenses of time, scale, and space. The work is painted in acrylic on canvas. featured artwork "Witness" acrylic on canvas, 30in x 48in, created in response to the Maple fire that burned on the Olympic peninsula in 2018 responding to Ground Truths Witness was created in response to the Maple fire that burned on the Olympic peninsula in 2018. This is a painting of contrasts- the contrast of the organic of the old growth forest and the sharp cut edges of the windows of fire (representing the human impact), the contrast of the cool green of the woods and the hot orange of the fire. If ground truthing establishes the veracity of a map, I see my painting as a verification of reality -a kind of map that asserts the veracity of climate change. Like all my paintings, there is an intentional beauty in the depiction of the natural space in order to draw the viewer in. But the beauty of the old growth forest is broken by the windows of fire. A reminder of what has happened and what will happen if we don't work to protect our natural world. The painting presents a kind of ground truthing for the future- both a warning and an admonition. As a native Washingtonian almost all of my paintings are inspired by the pacific northwest. It's a place I know well and love. I spend a lot of time outdoors. The places I explore and the photos I take are the starting point for my paintings. Within each painting the windows I create tell a story about the place be it a change of season, a new perspective or an event such as a wildfire. more from Enid's perspective Salish Tides, acrylic on canvas, 48in x 72in The Salish Sea, Hood Canal, is a place Enid often goes. Her one room cabin is surrounded by old growth forest. The beach view is the one you see here. It was also from this perspective that Enid watched the Maple fire burn on the Olympic peninsula in 2018, inspiring the painting, Witness. Spring Stream, acrylic on canvas, 24in x 48in This work is inspired by an area that Enid hikes through, just east of Seattle. As is often the case in Enid’s paintings, the sharp edges of the frames within the image represent the human view and action upon the land. Winter Woods , acrylic on canvas, 48in x 72in Enid painted this work a year ago, inspired by a winter storm and how snow drains color from the land it covers. The trunks of the Douglas firs are brown and their branches are dark green, but the effect is one of a black and white landscape. Brighter Haze , acrylic on canvas, 30in x 40in This painting was inspired by the song “Brighter Haze,” written by Enid’s friend, the singer songwriter Kristin Chambers. Chambers wrote it while watching the color of the sky change during a forest fire. Chat back to exhibition Chat

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

featured artist Sasha Michelle White Moscow, ID Sasha Michelle White is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work is informed by art, herbalism, field ecology and prescribed fire practice. Her creative investigations center the coloristic and medicinal properties of fire-adapted plants as a way of understanding human and other-than-human relationships with fire and fire-prone landscapes. Sasha studied printmaking and book arts at Bowdoin College, Maine College of Art and Cranbrook Academy of Art, has held fellowships at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy and the Lloyd Library and Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio, and earned a master’s degree in Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon in 2021. She is a member of the Fuel Ladder art research group and a Mellon Foundation Predoctoral Fellow with the University of Idaho’s Confluence Lab. Although she still calls western Oregon home, she is enjoying creating new friendships with the flora and fauna of the Palouse. featured artwork "The Containment" Installation View SMW Poem TINCTURE/TINGERE—THROUGH KIDNEYS, THROUGH LUNGS ​ YARROW (Achillea millefolium) in early-summer, count flowers, count leaves. a thousand flowers, a thousand leaves, a thousand wheres to grow. wetland and woodland, roadside and ditch, open pine forest, the lowest sage desert, the highest wet meadow, the mulch-laden pathway. white-green fades to ivory-yellow, fades to palest brown. seek early. seek fields, clusters, leaves with their thousand cuts. black resin on your fingers, hopeful closing of your wounds. ask bees, ask flies. (whose lands are you on?) pass by where others picked before you. pass by more flowers than you pick. stay still. cranes fly overhead. ​ ARNICA (Arnica amplexicaulis) in mid-summer, seek circles of ash. circles where no grass grows, no polemonium, no cinquefoil, no penstemon. in mid-summer, by the creek crossing. ash as evidence. no grass, no cinquefoil. seek brilliant yellow flowers. seek some. seek many. follow the rough stems into ash, follow the pale runners. follow scent, follow color, follow the way they grow. test trauma, test the way they grasp the earth. capillaries breaking. your hands will be black with char. ask the sapsucker. (whose lands are you on?) ask ash and char. ask trauma. ask arnica, reaching in from the edge and holding on. ​ BALSAM ROOT (Balsamorhiza sagitatta) in late-summer, when the leaves are crisp and insect-eaten, scatter seeds and wait. probing crevices of pine, closer than your arm will reach, ask the brown creeper. (startle to the gunshots in the night—whose lands are you on?) dig a hole. dig carefully. dig with shovel or trowel or hands. watch for side roots. dig deeper than your arm will reach. move gravels. pry pebbles. ​ ask the brown creeper. dig deeper. carefully. gently. ask patience. smell resin, smell wounds. the old-man perfume surrounds you. you are sweating and thirsty. your head hurts. you are breathing smoke. dig deeper. move gravels. pry pebbles. wrap the plant’s body in your shirt. strap the plant’s body to your pack. smell resin, smell wounds. the old-man perfume surrounds you. hike the root out. keep it cool. wet the linen. keep it cool. drive the long hours home. use pruners, loppers, handsaw. crack the outer bark. chop the inner pith. cut the pieces as small as you are able. fill a jar. pour alcohol. stained, grateful. the old-man perfume surrounds you. steep three weeks in darkness. scatter seeds and wait. ​ TALL OREGON GRAPE (Berberis aquifolium) in autumn, in winter, walk where the woodpeckers cache their acorns in the tall poles of powerlines. here in oak woodland, in thickets of poison oak, ask how to ask the black bear. (roots torn from soil, tops scattered—who decides whose lands you are on?) choose somewhere else. harvest from gardens in town, from stems reaching for light and in need of pruning. towhee, scrub jay, hummingbird. the ever-present weaver finch. ask who. ask land. cut, the stems show yellow. the wound is an opening. open the mouth, open the skin. enter bodies, exit bodies. through the Other’s hold. through gut, through kidneys, through lungs. "The Containment" installation view Burn Salve from "The Containment" Charcoal Powder from "The Containment" Tinctures from "The Containment" responding to Ground Truths Within the fire-prone landscapes of the Pacific Northwest, many plants that thrive with the recurring disturbance of fire are also useful for the injuries and illnesses acquired in proximity to fire. Many native and non-native species can rebound quickly in the post-fire landscape, including arnica who invades heavily burned soils, snowbrush ceanothus who collaborates with soil bacteria to fix nitrogen and return fertility to the land and that lover of disturbance, St Johns wort. ​ My project FIRST-AID KIT FOR THE FIRE-PRONE engages these and other fire-adapted plants from Oregon landscapes as medicines and dyes. The Containment, the most “kit-like” work of this project, utilizes plants gathered from areas in the southern Willamette Valley and The Nature Conservancy’s Sycan Marsh Preserve and builds from historical, cosmopolitan interchangeabilities of aesthetic and medicinal substances. The work centers an “image” of the landscape that is less about visual apprehension and more about material, sensual and processual relationships, and how those relationships eschew rigid boundaries and property lines. By emphasizing the relationships between fire, tending and healing, The Containment seeks a “ground truth” that both allies with Indigenous fire sovereignty and promotes a pro-active, cross-cultural attending to our fire-prone landscapes. more from Sasha's perspective The seed of snowbrush ceanothus (Ceanothus velutinus) requires fire scarification to germinate. Without fire or other disturbance, its seeds can persist in the soil for centuries. Where prescribed fire burned a hillside on TNC’s Sycan Marsh preserve, though no mature shrubs had been observed, ceanothus germinated in great numbers. The shrub has a symbiotic relationship with Frankia bacteria to fix nitrogen, improving post-fire soil fertility. The stem and root bark of ceanothus, also known as red root, can be used as medicine and as a dye; using various soils in which the shrub was growing as mordants changed the color acheived. Fuel Ladder is an interdisciplinary research collective of artists, designers, and thinkers in and around Eugene, Oregon, who are exploring climate crisis through the social and ecological complexities of wildfire. Chat back to exhibition Chat

AIF crew 2024 Adam Huggins Galiano Island, BC, Canada Adam Huggins is an artist, podcaster, practitioner of ecological restoration, teacher, and naturalist living in the Salish Sea of southwestern British Columbia, on Galiano Island - the unceded lands and waters of Hul’qumi’num speaking people. As an environmental professional, he implements watershed-scale ecological restoration projects for the Galiano Conservancy Association and teaches a class in the Restoration of Natural Systems program at the University of Victoria. As a storyteller and musician, he produces and co-hosts the Future Ecologies podcast, which is currently wrapping up a 5th season of long-form audio pieces at the intersection of the human and more-than-human worlds. TREX involvement More on his story in Fall 2024... but until then, Adam notes he is looking forward to this opportunity because "ecologists have hypothesized that pyrodiversity begets biodiversity. I am especially interested in the human diversity of the prescribed fire movement, and so I am most looking forward to meeting the other attendees at the TREX and learning more about who they are, where they are from, and what they hope to accomplish when they return home. " ​ Also give the podcast he produces and co-hosts a listen! Chat back to AIF residency Chat

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

featured artist Liz Toohey-Wiese Vancouver BC Liz Toohey-Wiese is a settler artist residing on the homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and sə̓lílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. She is a graduate from the MFA program at NSCAD University. She completed her undergraduate degree in painting at Emily Carr University, also undertaking coursework at the University of Victoria and the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. She has taken part in solo and group shows across Canada, and recently was the artist in residence at the Sointula Art Shed (2019), the Caetani Cultural Center (2020/21), Island Mountain Arts (2021) and upcoming Similkameen Artist Residency (2022). Deeply interested in the history of landscape painting, her paintings explore contemporary relationships between identity and place. Her most recent work explores the complicated topic of wildfires and their connections to tourism, economy, grief, and renewal. She is a full time Fine Arts faculty member at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, BC. featured artwork Billboard installed outside of Vernon, BC from August 2020 - March 2021 responding to Ground Truths Landscape art has long been used as a form of truth-making, influenced by the stories humans are telling themselves at that particular moment about the environment around them. My practice has remained curious about the history I find myself in conversation with as a Canadian landscape painter, and has attempted to look at ways to undermine the myth of the Canadian landscape as a site of vast, untouched wilderness. ​ My wildfire paintings attempt to grapple with the repercussions of our direct influence on our forest landscapes: the increased prevalence and severity of fire on the landscape is happening because of decades of colonial forest management practices, and the warming of the planet through climate change. What if, instead of looking away from this reality, we stare directly at the changes that are happening right now, accept and grieve the losses we are experiencing, and find the renewal that is happening amidst the destruction? more from Liz's perspective ... Liz Toohey-Wiese walking around the White Rock Lake fire in 2022, not far from where her billboard was installed the year prior. Chat back to exhibition Chat

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

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