WILDFIRES: POINTS OF ORIGIN (2020)
Every year, as the environment becomes hotter and drier, more and larger wildfires have torn across my state. For many of us, wildfires have become a source of angst and dread, an awesome reminder of our powerlessness and the fragility of our existence.
These collages reflect my preoccupation with each fire’s origin story – an illicit campfire, sparks from a car tire blowout, wind-whipped electrical wires, an arsonist’s match. Happenstance aligns with the weather, corporate indifference and the terrain to transform the landscape into a firestorm, generating chaos and overwhelming loss.
Constructed from strips of torn paper – itself a combustible material – the images invoke the complex beauty of California’s terrain at each fire’s moment of ignition. Each panel offers a geographically precise, expressive rendering of the beginning of a catastrophe, a visual metaphor for the speed and ferocity with which the micro can become macro.