The 2020 Holiday Farm Fire and access to burned forest on McKenzie River Trust lands have attracted writers and artists who want to wrestle with the tensions among tragedy, stark beauty, and hope in the fire-blackened landscape. Former writer-in-residence theologian Vince Miller (University of Dayton) returned to explore the theme of hope in collaboration with photographer David Paul Bayles. Painter Erika Osborne (Colorado State University) visited to extend the fire-themed work she has been practicing in California and Baja. Four book artists led by Eugene artist Susan Lowdermilk visited in October to exercise their creative practices with materials and inspiration from the fire zone. A long-term art-sci collaboration of photographer David Paul Bayles and researcher Fred Swanson, involving thousands of photographs in several distinct bodies of works, has been shared in a duet performance via an ecoartspace video and in an ecoartspace blog post. In each case, the Andrews Forest offers a green frame of reference for inquiry in the fire zone. Stay tuned for fire-themed programming from The Spring Creek Project and the Andrews Forest Reflections program to see the fruits of this work and more.
Photo: David Paul Bayles hard at work amidst fireweed at Finn Rock on McKenzie River Trust lands along the McKenzie, by Fred Swanson.