New museum exhibit examines the effects of forest fires

IDAHO FALLS – A new exhibit at the Art Museum of Eastern Idaho in Idaho Falls offers a powerful visualization of the costs and benefits of forest fires.

“State of the Forest” documents the aftermath of forest fires through 30 three-panel sets depicting trees that have been burned. Along with the trees, the exhibit also includes 14 backing panels inscribed with the thoughts and observations of firefighter and author Lorena Williams.

Together, the paintings and the text tell an enlightening story about fires from multiple perspectives.

“(‘State of the Forest’) is a series that’s been going since 2011 for me,” artist Suze Woolf told EastIdahoNews.com. “I was doing a residency at the Banff Center in Alberta. I was there in the winter and they’d had some huge fires in the vicinity and I (spent) a fair amount of time hiking around looking at (the burned areas). They were really striking to me, especially in the snow.”

Woolf began painting the scenes she was seeing, not only in Canada but also in her home state of Washington. She came to notice details in the burned trees that sparked something within her.

“I came to realize that it was the char on individual trees that made my neurons buzz,” she said. “I started focusing in on that.”

Woolf’s earliest tree paintings were like photographs, rectangles stuffed with macro details of the char. Eventually, she came to the realization that she could manipulate the shape of the paintings any way she wanted to.

“I thought ‘wait a minute, this is paper, I can make it any shape I want,” she said. “I thought, I’m going to tear the paper to match the shape of the trees I’m seeing.”

The trees of “State of the Forest” start as watercolor on paper, which is then transferred to polyester and silk organza panels. The first panel is transparent, and together with a second, more opaque panel and a black backing, the trees are rendered in a way that takes on the three-dimensional, hologram-like effect.

“I like to say (the trees) are all the same and they’re all different,” Woolf said. “The temperature of the fire, the biology of the tree, the way it grew changes the shapes. The light in the atmosphere, the color of the sky, all those things are reflected in the char.”

“State of the Forest” is part of a larger traveling exhibit, “Environmental Impact II,” which aims to share the work of artists who focus on environments both locally and globally. “Environmental Impact II” also helps raise awareness of the consequences human actions have on the environment and how those actions are contributing to looming ecological crises.

That mission is reflected in “State of the Forest.”

“Underlying the fact that there are increasing and increasingly serious fires, it’s climate,” Woolf said. “There’s all kinds of data relating heat and drought to increasing fires and I think the last climate assessment said we’re going to have a six-fold increase.”

“I grew up thinking the forests are always there,” she added. “Seeing them on fabric makes you realize they’re not permanent. They’re ephemeral. They change and they can, of course, change quite quickly with a fire.”

It’s not all devastation. “State of the Forest” also documents the necessary role fire plays in the cycle of nature and also captures the strange beauty fires can leave in their wake.

“They’re beautiful in their own creepy way and I’ve learned a lot from foresters and biologists,” Woolf said. “I gave a talk at the University of Washington School of Forestry some years ago and one of the retired deans who was in the audience came up to me and said ‘Do you realize that there’s more biodiversity in a recovering burned forest than in an old-growth forest?’ So (this series) has made me look at aspects of (fire) with new eyes, both with an appreciation for ways in which fire actually belongs in a forest and the ways in which our impact has changed the scale and the catastrophic quality of fire.”

You can see “State of the Forest” now through April 2 at the Art Museum of Eastern Idaho in Idaho Falls. Click here for more information.