A non-human community project which includes works on paper, free standing sculptures and audio components.

Project Statement

Each summer in my home state of Montana -and across much of the western U.S. and into Canada- the threat of wild land fires looms large. In the spring of 2021, while hiking in a burned forest near my home in Greenough, Montana, I was struck by the difference of devastation and renewal. The landscape felt both fragile and strangely beautiful. The fire had occurred in 2017, and most of the lodgepole pine, western larch and ponderosa pine trees were killed. The black trees, many still standing, contrasted with the ponderosa pine, western larch, and whitebark pine seedlings that the National Forest Foundation had since planted. Fireweed, arnica, lupine and scarlet paintbrush were some of the plants that had returned and color dotted the landscape.

The charred remains of trees in forests devastated by extreme wildfires serve as the conceptual and material foundation for Under A Changing Sky. Through this project, I seek to capture their presence in death and honor their existence, while examining the broader ecological and existential narratives they embody. This portrait series serves as both a lament and gesture of atonement for these once-living indispensable members of our forest.

Creative Process

To echo my deep commitment to working with and within the living landscape, and to honor the forest as collaborator rather than mere subject, this exhibition merges materiality with ritual speaking to themes of both impermanence and transformation.

I identify charred trees in a forest and begin the engagement by placing wet sheets of sustainable Japanese papers directly in contact with a burned trunk. I then coat my hands with the charcoal remains of the tree and run them along the paper, down the length of its scorched bark, creating an intimate haptic dialogue between myself and the once-living being. Ancient forms of mark-making come to mind as charcoal becomes both medium and metaphor.

Once the burned tree rubbings are created in the landscape, I photograph and digitally convert them into negative form. I make larger-than-life scale digital prints on bamboo paper from these files.

Finally, to deepen the connection between subject and image, I rub more of the tree's charcoal into the surface of the prints -an act that imbues each piece with tactile intimacy.

The resulting final works are both documents and meditations, visual elegies that grapple with loss while pointing toward resilience, inspiring awareness of shared vulnerability