I created this assembled installation in spring of 2020, during a quarantine artist residency at Cobb Mountain Art and Ecology Center in a heavily forested region of Lake County, California – an area that is under constant wildfire threat.
Commemorating the trees that have been obliterated due to fires, I draped large clay slabs over charred tree trunks that had been felled and/or burned in controlled burns – for wildfire prevention.
The inside of each slab captures the bark texture. On the outside I imprinted text about traditional Miwok and Pomo lifestyles, their use of the land that is now Lake County, and their ancient wildfire prevention methods.
Other texts came from quotes I had collected at the onset of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic and the racial conflicts that escalated across the United States during that same time. The quotes address racial injustice, ecology and climate crisis, as well as the consequences of a global pandemic, social distancing, sheltering, and deprivation of so many things that we had taken for granted.
The clay for these pieces was harvested locally, kneaded and prepared by hand, and fired in a traditional Anagama kiln, over 9 days, and fueled with that same wood that had been cleared out to prevent wildfires. The local clay partly cracked in the long firing, and with the characteristic wood-fire buildup the overall installation reminds of destruction, devastation, the remnants of a disaster.
