From left to right:
Wildfire Painting: Rock House Wildfire (Texas 2011), 2012, Handmade wildfire carbon pigment: burned grasses, dirt, animal bones, cacti. Acrylic medium, 23 karat gold leaf, varnish, 65.5″ x 17″ x 2.5″
Wildfire Painting: Wallow Wildfire (Arizona 2011), 2012, Handmade wildfire carbon pigment: burned trees, pine needles, pine cones. Acrylic medium, 23 karat gold leaf, varnish, 65.5″ x 17″ x 2.5″
Wildfire Painting: Las Conchas Wildfire (New Mexico 2011), 2012, Handmade wildfire carbon pigment: burned trees, pinecones, pine needles, grass. Acrylic medium, 23 karat gold leaf, varnish, 65.5″ x 17″ x 2.5″
Wildfire Painting: Waldo Canyon Wildfire (Colorado 2012), 2012, Handmade wildfire carbon pigment: burned trees, pinecones, pine needles. Acrylic medium, 23 karat gold leaf, varnish. 65.5″ x 17″ x 2.5″
An Offering to Stolen Nature, 2012, Wildfire burned debris (volcanic rock, trees, grass, pine needles, pine cones, animal bones, bark, cacti, dirt) and hand-hammered Tibetan song bowls: Wallow Wildfire 2011 (AZ: Apache National Forest), Rock House Wildfire 2011 (TX: Private land, Marfa & Davis Mountains State Park), Waldo Canyon Wildfire 2012 (CO: Pike National Forest), Las Conchas Wildfire 2011 (NM: Bandalier National Monument, Los Alamos, & Valles Caldera National Preserve)
Charred Earth: Rock House Wildfire (Marfa, Texas 2011), 2012, Archival pigment print, 40″ x 60″
Exhibition view: Carbon 13, Ballroom Art Space, Marfa, Texas, 2012.
Charred Earth: Rock House Wildfire (Marfa, Texas 2011)
2012
Archival pigment print
40″ x 60″
Edition of 3
An Offering to Stolen Nature
2012
Wildfire burned debris (volcanic rock, trees, grass, pine needles, pine cones, animal bones, bark, cacti, dirt) and hand-hammered Tibetan song bowls: Wallow Wildfire 2011 (AZ: Apache National Forest), Rock House Wildfire 2011 (TX: Private land, Marfa & Davis Mountains State Park), Waldo Canyon Wildfire 2012 (CO: Pike National Forest), Las Conchas Wildfire 2011 (NM: Bandalier National Monument, Los Alamos, & Valles Caldera National Preserve)
Charred Earth: Rock House Wildfire (Marfa, Texas 2011)
2012
Archival pigment print
40″ x 60″
Graphite & Charcoal Trees: Las Conchas Wildfire (New Mexico 2011)
2013
Archival pigment print
22″ x 33″
Edition of 5
Fire Mandala: Spiral No. 1 (Silver Wildfire: Gila National Forest, New Mexico 2013)
2013
Wildfire burned debris (rocks, trees, pine needles, pine cones, bark, cacti, dirt) and hand-hammered Tibetan song bowls
Approx. 8′ x 8′ installed
Exhibition view: Water, water every where… Solo exhibition, Woman & Their Work, Austin, TX, July-August 2013
Description: At the time of this exhibition of the Fire Mandala, the Silver Wildfire was still burning and was not contained.
From Left to Right:
Blackened Forest: Las Conchas Wildfire (New Mexico 2011), 2013
Archival pigment print, Dibond, wood frame. 22″ x 33″Wildfire Painting: Rock House Wildfire (Texas 2011), 2012
Handmade wildfire carbon pigment: burned grasses, dirt, animal bones, cacti. Acrylic medium, 23 karat gold leaf, varnish. 12″ x 12″ x 2.5″Wildfire Painting: Wallow Wildfire (Arizona 2011), 2012
Handmade wildfire carbon pigment: burned trees, pine needles, pine cones. Acrylic medium, 23 karat gold leaf, varnish. 12″ x 12″ x 2.5″Wildfire Painting: Las Conchas Wildfire (New Mexico 2011), 2012
Handmade wildfire carbon pigment: burned trees, pine cones, pine needles, grass. Acrylic medium, 23 karat gold leaf, varnish. 12″ x 12″ x 2.5″Wildfire Painting: Waldo Canyon Wildfire (Colorado 2012), 2012
Handmade wildfire carbon pigment: burned trees, pine cones, pine needles. Acrylic medium, 23 karat gold leaf, varnish. 12″ x 12″ x 2.5″Exhibition view: Water, water every where… Solo exhibition, Woman & Their Work, Austin, TX, July-August 2013
Blackened Forest: Las Conchas Wildfire (New Mexico 2011)
2013
Archival pigment print, Dibond, wood frame
22″ x 33″
Edition of 5
Ghost Mountain (Homage to O’Keeffe): Las Conchas Wildfire (New Mexico 2011)
2013
Archival pigment print
22″ x 33″
Edition of 5
Dry River Beds
2013
Projection: River bed in Terlingua, Texas, 2010; River Bed Installation: dried river bed pieces from Gila National Forest 2013
Dimensions variable
Exhibition view: Water, water every where… Solo exhibition, Woman & Their Work, Austin, TX, July-August 2013
Smoke: Las Conchas Wildfire (Los Alamos, New Mexico 2011)
2012
Archival pigment print
40″ x 60″
Edition of 3
Carbon Field Notes: Wildfires 2011-2013
Handmade wildfire pigment (burned trees, grasses, pine cones, and pine needles), 23.5k gold, scientific burning flask, metal stand, sketch book, archival pigment prints, mounting tape, pencil, ink.
Official submission to the Field Remediations Library—a collaboration by artist Karolina Sobecka and Cybernetics Library, which aims to reframe cultural practices that underlie environmental degradation through collected texts, objects and narratives.
Library of Congress Subject Tags: Wildfires—Climatic factors; Ecology; Forest resilience—Climatic factors; Loss (Psychology); Nature (Aesthetics)
Wildfires:
In April of 2011, after seven months without rainfall, the Rock House Fire ignited in Marfa and raged across the beautiful landscape of far West Texas, devastating the region’s environment. I was living in Marfa at that time and, in those weeks while the wildfire reigned, I began collecting material from the burned landscape—carbonized trees, cacti, dirt, animal bones, grasses—and photographed the charred remains and blackened earth.
By July 2011—the 317th consecutive month with above average global temperatures—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Monitoring division had already ranked 2011 as having seen the largest amount of acreage burned in the US from wildfires than in the twelve years previous. Extreme drought across the American Southwest from climactic disruption exacerbated wildfire conditions that year, causing the largest wildfire in Arizona’s history, the second largest wildfire in New Mexico’s history and the third largest wildfire in Texas’ history to occur within just a few months.
I followed those devastating wildfires throughout the summer of 2011 to Arizona and New Mexico, again in 2012 during the wildfire season in New Mexico and Colorado and finally in 2013’s season in New Mexico. I have documented five major wildfires across of the southwest in this way, gathering burned material from the Rock House Wildfire (Texas 2011), the Wallow Wildfire (Arizona 2011), the Las Conchas Wildfire (New Mexico 2011), the Waldo Canyon Wildfire (Colorado 2012) and the Silver Wildfire (New Mexico, 2012).
For the Wildfire Paintings, I hand-grind the burned debris into a fine carbon pigment and then adhere it to a gilded-edged panel, allowing the raw material to sit on the surface. Each wildfire pigment varies slightly depending on each location’s indigenous flora and fauna as well as how hot the fire burned. In the Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado wildfires the highly iridescent sheen across the surface of the black carbon tells the story of a very hot fire fueled by burning timber. In contrast, the Texas wildfire consists mainly of grasses and dirt and so the pigment is more matte and slightly brown in tone.
For the installation, An Offering to Stolen Nature, I filled hand-hammered Tibetan song bowls with charred trees, grasses, pine cones, and pine needles and displayed them alongside burned volcanic rocks, animal bones and cacti. All of these materials were collected from areas that were private, state, or federal land. At each location that I gathered debris, I was at some point evicted from the land, and in one case was asked to put back the burned material I had collected. This piece considers the innate sacredness of nature alongside the human desire to own or manage the land, exploring the question: has our land ownership in one sense stolen the land from nature? In stealing it back, the piece intends to re-sacralize nature beyond our possession of it.
In the photographic works, I documented the thick smoke of the active fires and the blackened landscape in the aftermath of fire’s blaze.
These works become forensic evidence of the crime of anthropogenic climate disruption—they are a eulogy to the wildfires, and homage to the nature they consumed. Yet, as carbon is both the building block of all life and is itself an artifact of light, these works also intend to look to the regeneration that is possible as we look for solutions.
—Erika Blumenfeld
