More on wilderness....

Most of the wildernesses I have experienced are not endless expanses, but small patches within our larger civilized lands. I can only imagine what it must have felt like to  the native peoples, explorers, and pioneers. The mysterious, frightening, even mystical  wilderness. One can come close to it in the vastness of Alaska perhaps, if you are lucky enough to be able to get into the bush.

What makes wilderness wild is the edge of fear and wonder. The unease of not being in control.I just finished reading Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams. He writes that the arctic peoples have a word for that edge. It is "quamaneq": The shaman light to see in the dark, joy and violence together, the edge of the primitive. How wondrous it is to experience wilderness in all its glory, its fierce and dangerous beauty. There is no sentimentality there, and to survive in the wild one must proceed carefully.

I have tried to put the sort of quamaneq I am talking about into my recent paintings. The people in them are merely visitors. They seek something rare that can only be found in a wild landscape. Something that is missing from their lives.

Cityscapes: The City As I See It

I am pleased to announce that She Waits juried into the new show at The Gallery At The Watershed in Eugene, Oregon. I am looking forward to checking out the exhibit Friday night at the artists' reception.

321 Mill St. Ste. 6, Eugene, OR 97401

541.844.1668

"The City As I See It" opened on November 4th and runs through December 13th.

The Artists' Opening Reception coincides with

November's First Friday Art Walk:  

Friday, Nov. 7, 5:30-8:00 p.m.

Announcing the wilderness exhibition...

Wilderness 50: Artist's Statement

In thinking about this show, I wanted to explore how we modern Americans deeply need and celebrate our wilderness environments. Particularly, I am curious about the possibilities and resources that these protected areas provide for us as a species within an ecosystem. I chose trees to provide the structure and focus for this series. Most wildernesses have trees, and I wanted to look at how untouched trees have adapted in different climate zones creating the complex mature ecosystem possible in a wilderness.  I also wanted to see how humans adapt to those climates and how they may possibly interact with a specific wilderness.

I became attracted to the metaphor of “cambium”, a tree layer between the inner bark and the wood, which produces new bark on the outside and new wood on the inside of trunks, stems, and roots originating all growth and forming the annual rings of wood. Like trees, human learning and growth occurs on both the outside and the inside simultaneously, the bark and rings becoming a sort of memory of experience. 

In the painting Cambium: Wet, I worked with winter dormant bigleaf maples and red alders found in the Rock Creek Wilderness rain forest near the Oregon coast. I show the cutthroat trout solely found in the pristine streams that flow into the ocean from the Pacific Northwest coast range. 

Another winter piece, Cambium: Dry has water sensitive black cottonwood from Central Oregon high desert where development is a huge challenge in the fragile desert ecosystem. 

My summer piece is Lost In Time. This enormous old Douglas-fir is located in the Rougue Umpqua Divide wilderness and is covered with old man’s beard moss. 

 

Wilderness 50: The Retreat

In June I hiked into the Boulder Creek Wilderness with three of the artists who will be showing with me in the Wilderness 50 show. We were focused on the burned over forest and examining the regeneration that has occurred since the wildfires of 1996 and 2008. We found much to be glad about. Among the standing charred trees were many many young trees. Native wildflowers were varied and abundant, and the extravantly white and lavender blooming ceanothus were a shoulder high cloud  in the black stemmed understory. The forest was very much alive and thriving.

 

The Cambium Layer

cambium

   

 
cam·bi·um

a layer of delicate meristematic tissue between the inner bark or phloem and the wood or xylem, which produces new phloem on the outside and new xylem on the inside in stems, roots, etc., originating all secondary growth in plants and forming the annual rings of wood.

The vascular cambium  forms tissues that carry water and nutrients throughout the plant. On its outer surface, the vascular cambium forms new layers of phloem, and on its inner surface, new layers of xylem. The growth of these new tissues causes the diameter of the stem to increase. 

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I am working on paintings for the upcoming Legacy of A Promise show responding to the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, and I find myself exploring trees. I feel such different energy than when I work with birds. I feel the bottoms of my feet firmly anchored, attached to roots that descend into the deep substructure of the earth. Time is slow and sustained, as if I am reaching back through hundreds, even thousands of years. I feel weight, stubborn power and impenetrable wildness.

Trees are time travelers and witnesses. With their stems that grow and remain through dormancy, they pierce into the future from the past. They house and support multitudes of organisms, including humans. As they grow, simultaneously from without and within, they clean the atmosphere and utilize the complex detritus left behind in the forest. The ancient trees, especially those found in the primary forests, are an enormous mystery. Yet when I am with them I feel safe, as if I am on hallowed ground..

 

ArtWorks NW 2014

I had a great time last night at the opening of the annual ArtWorks NW juried exhibition put on by the Umpqua Valley Arts Associatiion. It is a strong show of work by contemporary Pacific Northwest artists juried by Ryan Pierce, recipient of the Individual Artist Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission.. Sandee McGee, gallery director, designed the show with a sophisticated eye. Cash awards were given and I was honored to receive the Hundred Valleys Honorable Mention award for my piece She Waits.