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.
